Shakespeare Our Contemporary

I'm still haunted by Sunday's King Lear. Any number of unforgettable moments. Just one, for now: the audience's knowing laughter on, Get glass eyes, / And, like a scurvy politician, seem / To see the things thou dost not. 

How did WS know so much about Brexit four centuries before it happened?

Just Listening

Odd coincidence: after writing a little bit yesterday about an article detailing, very convincingly, the therapeutic benefits of walking, which I've always been sort of aware of but never quite able to articulate, today I find myself writing about a tasty post on Open Culture alluding to the therapeutic benefits of listening to music, specifically of the ambient variety, which, again, I've always sort of known but never quite made concrete to myself, if you know what I mean.

So the weird stuff I discovered as a teen has been doing me good, despite the efforts of so many of the great and good to get me to turn it down. (Got to confess, though, when I first heard Fripp and Eno's Evening Star, which I picked up free as a review copy for a university newspaper, I seriously wondered at first what my two heroes were up to. Now I know. (Inventing ambient music as well as blowing easing my mind.)) (The version I link to above is not, of course, the one essayed by the Frippster and his chum. But it stands as evidence, if it were needed, of the genius of the original. Listen, and be healed.)

Just Walking

Still don't feel sufficiently recovered from my recent bout of back trouble to dare to go to the gym. Missing it keenly. But felt better today on perusing an excellent article related to the health benefits involved in walking, of which I deliberately do as much as possible at work (and IRL, as they say, when I get the chance.)

The article served to confirm things I've intuitively felt since those long-ago days when I went wandering around Manchester and environs, partly to save on bus fare, but mostly because I felt I just had to. What a strange kid I was: entirely gormless in most respects; oddly wise in others.

Transformation

I studied King Lear for 'A' level and I've taught it in the classroom for several years. I suppose I'd say it was my favourite play, if that term means anything. I certainly can't think of any other play with quite the same power. Yet I've never actually seen it 'live' in the theatre. In fact, I think I've only ever watched two productions of it (both on telly) all the way through: the BBC version with Michael Hordern as the mad king, and the Olivier version done for tv a few years later. That is, until today. I've just come back from watching one of those National Theatre filmed versions they show at the Esplanade starring Ian McKellen in the titular role (which I think he played a few years back in the same theatre, and which I missed then due to bad timing and tickets running out.)

I thought highly of the BBC version, in which Hordern was typically excellent. If I'm not mistaken it was directed by Jonathan Miller and he rendered a very straight reading of the play, but did so with genuine depth. I wasn't as impressed with the Olivier version - which garnered a heck of a lot of publicity at the time. I remember it as a fairly stodgy version, though Olivier was excellent and I was moved, as always.

Today's experience of watching the play put previous viewings well into the shade. Sir Ian was just astonishing, which I kind of expected, but the whole production was brilliant, taking many, many chances with not a dud moment (or a dull one.) A powerful, strident Cordelia, a female Kent, the Fool as something close to a comedian from a working man's club. It sounds gimmicky, but everything worked. A play I've had in my head since I was seventeen suddenly became something new, yet recognisable, something rich and strange and achingly familiar at the same time.

Transformations

If someone were to ask me which is my favourite amongst all the shows I've had a hand in creatively, the answer would be immediate and simple: the one I'm involved in, at any given time. I know this sounds glib, but it happens to be true. The intensity demanded by any production results in complete, almost obsessive, absorption and over time I've come to realise the attendant transformatory power (magic, really) is so invigoratingly palpable that whilst it lasts it can be close to intoxicating. I'm talking about the power of a script becoming something real and living on a stage; the ways in which all involved in generating the drama are rendered changed in some way by it, especially relative youngsters; the reality of having one's world widened by acts of necessary empathy.

I suppose all forms of performance art possess something of this power. Great dance, great music does something to you. But it seems to me that only drama can lead us with something akin to surgical precision into an understanding of the minds, the emotions, the sufferings, the joys of others. We should be better people for our involvement in it - as creators, if we're lucky, and as spectators. If we fail to be so then it would seem a kind of betrayal.

Mind you, I feel obliged to confess that one transformation just worked on me now our most recent work for the stage has come to an end (and a highly satisfactory one at that, I'm pleased to report) was very noticeable this morning. After three weeks or so of waking early with a distinct awareness of energy emerging from somewhere to deal with the particular day ahead, this morning I struggled to overcome a not unpleasant lassitude of a very high order. I did get some things done, but with a ponderous deliberateness quite foreign to my recent experience. Yes, I'm back down to earth.

Out Loud

Ultra-busy these last few days mainly because of the show, but I never mind this kind of busyness since 1) it has a point and 2) it's actually rewarding. Part of being busy is physical, which is no bad thing since I'm still aching a bit in my left leg, so the gym remains out of the question and all the running around means I'm getting some kind of exercise. The bigger part, however, is mental and that's the really tiring aspect of it all, though also that's where the exhilaration lies.

There was a moment yesterday when I needed to attend a meeting ahead of a rehearsal that I found myself talking out loud in an attempt to focus on the key things that just had to be done, plucking them somehow from the mental storm that engulfed me. (A bit over-dramatic that, I know, but it's not a bad attempt to capture the flavour of my thoughts at the moment in question - though it fails to acknowledge that I was quite enjoying wandering through the storm.) The problem is that the talking out loud took place in a fairly public place, and I reckon a couple of colleagues thought I'd finally lost it completely.

The funny thing is that the last time I can remember very consciously and deliberately talking aloud to spell out my intentions was when I was a nipper being looked after by my gran. Yes, it looks like second childhood is finally upon me. Quite fun really.

That Kind Of Day

William Blake: One law for the lion & the ox is oppression. (From The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.)

(Yes, it's been that kind of day.)

Other Places

Was glancing in my journal of 15 years ago and came upon this for 23 July, 2004:

More on Darfur on this morning's news, before I set off to work. A child's funeral. Women asked to raise their fingers to indicate how many family members have recently died.

Struck me that I'm not at all sure how the situation in South Sudan has played out over the years. Embarrassed not to know.

Thinking now of what's going on now in Hong Kong, and the possibilities 15 years hence. More cause for deep concern.

Feel blessed to be where I am, but that's no excuse for indifference.

Out Of A Can

Is that laughter real? asked Noi just now from the kitchen where she was preparing dinner, in relation to a Malay comedy programme that I wasn't really watching. I knew immediately what she meant. There was something very artificial about the reactions of the non-existent studio audience. Yes, canned laughter, and done very badly. Which is particularly odd since, as far as I can remember, Malay variety shows of this ilk don't make use of it, at least, not nowadays.

In fact, part of the enjoyment of this kind of show is the very distinct quality of the audience response - often raucous, and over-the-top in a likably extreme sort of way. The sound of people having a genuinely uncomplicatedly good time. The performances call for it being profoundly unsubtle, something akin to the healthily daft traditions of English Music Hall of the old days or panto as it is now, and ever was.

The actual show, entitled J.K.K., I think, looked quite well done, but the falsity of the laughter made it close to unwatchable, at least for me, when I finally gave it a bit of attention. Must say, I was puzzled as to why an actual studio audience wasn't involved. I suppose they saved some money somehow, but at quite a cost, or so it seemed to me. 

Great Television

It's rare I get frustrated over missing something on the telly, but this morning I was reminded of the fact that sometimes I'm not able to watch material of real quality, essentially due to the pressures of work, and I'm the poorer for it.

I was getting some necessary marking done, before going off to rehearsals for our forthcoming show, and had put Sky News on in the background just to get a sense  of whether anything big was breaking in the bigger world. In fact, it wasn't exactly news that was on, but a documentary on the Chernobyl disaster, obviously drawing on the interest sparked by the recent dramatization for tv of the event. In fact, it incorporated footage from the show into its narrative of what took place, though it was dominated by shots of the desolation of Chernobyl and environs today and interviews with survivors. Rightly no cheesy voice-overs were used as the survivors told their disturbing, moving tales, with just subtitles to assist. But since I was marking I couldn't really follow anything. I kept pulling myself away from the scripts, usually on completing a paragraph, to try and get the gist of the programme, but this was highly unsatisfactory.

It was brilliant, compelling stuff. Totally gripping, except I couldn't afford to be gripped. And the same was true, I remembered, of the dramatization. I watched a chunk of the last episode knowing it was so good that one day I'd sit and watch the whole series. But when that day will be, I sadly know not.

Nothing Out Of The Ordinary

A fairly routine Friday in its way. Busy, but largely profitably so. Ending in a very ordinary way, with Noi, watching one of her Malay dramas on the telly. Something worth settling for.

Continuing To Function

For the last few days I've found myself waking around 4.00 am with quite an ache in my left leg. This seems to be brought on just by lying in bed. It's not incredibly painful, but it's bothersome enough to prevent further sleep. Now this might sound like an odd thing to say, but in some ways this is quite useful. When you get to my age it's not too difficult to function on fewer hours of sleep and I seem to be able to manage on around four to five, which I'm getting. Waking early gives that bit more extra thinking time which is incredibly useful when working on a production - there's never quite enough time to consider all the details that it's useful to consider no matter what, but the sense of starting the day with an opportunity to mentally get to grips with most of what needs some kind of hold on is relaxing in its way.

Of course, once I get to this time (around 10.25 pm) I feel pretty much wiped out. But then there's something oddly pleasant about being so tired you just don't care anymore.

The Height Of Cool

I'm on a Stevie Wonder binge at the moment, an excellent place to be. Downloaded Fulfilingness' First Finale the other day and it was even better than I remember it, and I remember it exceptionally well.

In trawling around for live stuff, which I've rarely heard for some reason, I came to realise that SW performing Superstition on the children's programme Sesame Street was highly regarded by more than a few folk. Now I remember catching odd clips of Stevie playing the song with his band of the period, Wonderlove, around the time of Talking Book, but we didn't get Sesame Street at that time in the UK, and I'd never realised he'd done the show.

Today I watched the performance and came instantly to the conclusion that it made SW, known by one and all to be one of the coolest twenty-odd-year-olds of the period, officially the coolest of all. Why? Three reasons. 1) He and the band tear it up in the funkiest possible fashion. 2) They're doing it on a kids' programme! 3) Just watch SW totally into every nuance of the gorgeous sound he creates and tell me this is not supremely cool.

Gentle Reader, if you don't smile when watching and listening I'm afraid there's no hope for you.

Feeling Champion

Woke up to the news that England won the World Cup cricket. Instantly regretted not trying to stay up to watch and then read how sensationally close it was and realised I would have probably suffered heart failure if I'd actually had to watch live. Caught up with various aspects of the action during the day and, yes, it might well have the greatest one-day game of all time.

A few days back Peter and I were bemoaning the fact there were no Aussies around to taunt after they'd been demolished in the semi-final. Today we'd have liked a few more Kiwis around to congratulate on their brilliant performance and sportsmanship. Let's face it, it was a draw in the end and both names should rightly have been on the trophy. Told this to the one Kiwi around, my virtual namesake BJC, and we agreed that, for once, talk of winners and losers was irrelevant. I mean, what a game, eh!

Getting Going

I've been intending to read something by the novelist Kate Atkinson for quite some time now. Everything I've read about her, and whenever I've picked up something by her, has given me the distinct sense that she's a writer I would very much enjoy.
 
So when I picked up a cheapo cheapo copy of her highly praised Life After Life at Bras Basah some time ago I assumed it would make easy reading, thinking of it as something to be devoured, probably with ease, in the June vacation. Now here's the thing: I found it very difficult indeed to get started on, even though I had a fair idea of how the narrative was supposed to work. It's possible that the pain I was in from my back coloured the experience in some way, but I came fairly close to putting the novel to one side - essentially giving up. What kept me going was something like a sense of guilt, plus the desire not to waste $5.90. (Being a complete cheapskate has its uses.) The guilt stemmed from the fact that I regularly inflict fairly demanding texts on the kids I teach and assume that somehow they'll find the wherewithal to keep going, even though those who genuinely struggle in terms of comprehension are obviously in a heck of a worse position most of the time than I found myself in on this occasion.

Anyway, I ploughed on intermittently, bit by little bit, and continued to do so, sometimes half a page a time, when back at work, still in some pain, and very busy. I'm now about a quarter in, in the segment that jumps to 1947, and wondering why I was making such a fuss at first. It now seems not exactly an easy read (due to the startling disconnections of chronology amongst other features) but an absolutely gripping one. Can't wait to see what happens next!

Sounding Good

After finishing my reading of the Sylvia Plath Collected I moved on to James Wright's Above The River: The Complete Poems, and I'm glad I did. He begins as a poet of great formal 'correctness' and euphony and splendidly loosens up over time. I'm still reading the early stuff, relishing the command of rhythm and rhyme, and finding more meat, in terms of content, than when I've just dipped into the poems in the past. Mind you, when words sound as good as this I'm not convinced that meaning is that much of an issue.

By No Means Useless

For some reason I haven't been settling down to read the journals I buy this year as much as in the past. I've only read a single hardcopy of The New York Review of Books since January, for example. Normally I'd have read five or six by this time. I suppose I'm now tending to read the same material on-line, which somehow isn't quite as satisfying, but just comes so much more easily to hand. Perhaps not such a good habit.

It also took me a long time to get round to reading my second ever copy of the Mekong Review, the May - July issue. I finally got down to doing so last weekend and zoomed through it in four days. It turned out to be an excellent read and I'm definitely going to look out for the next issue come August. There was an intriguing interview with Ma Jian, the Chinese novelist, that convinced me I needed to expand my horizons to stretch as far as at least one example of his fiction, plus a sort of interview-cum-profile of Anwar Ibrahim that reminded me of what a genuinely fascinating politician he is. But the most striking piece in this issue was actually the first one in, a sort of review by Robert Templer of a trio of books related to climate change, that frightened and depressed me in a way that I suspect I needed to be. It's couched as a sort of letter to a 'Maldivian' from some time in an imagined and very bleak future and it doesn't hold out much hope for the Maldives or Singapore, or pretty much anywhere else for that matter.

Oh, and I really should mention an excellent short story in the issue by Preeta Samarasan - a new name for me - entitled Useless. The title makes it sound bleak, and it was, but eminently readable. Must look out for more by Ms Samarasan (whom I needed to google, just to be sure I got her gender correct. Her narrator in Useless is male, and completely convincingly so.)

Highly Complimentary

A colleague remarked to me today that she couldn't think of anyone less like Boris Johnson, the likely future Prime Minister of my homeland, than myself. Explaining the nature of the conversation that led to this comment would be tiresome and convoluted, so I won't bother. But I will say that I regard this as praise indeed. A compliment of the highest order possible, no?

Just Sitting

I stopped taking the medication - essentially muscle relaxant - for my back today. I'm still aware of a kind of sciatic achiness in my leg and a mild, gentle, vague tingling in my foot, but am feeling nothing like the degree of dreary aching that afflicted me last week. The thing is though, I know things could deteriorate without warning because that's the nature of the condition. In fact, first thing this morning I thought I was experiencing a bit more pain than in previous days, but by the time I found myself on duty in an examination hall at 7.30 that had largely faded.

The truth is that our bodies are a fascinating, sometimes worrisome, mystery to us. And the part of them known as the back is the most mysterious of all. At least in my case it is. 

I'll declare myself well again when I am confident enough to go to the gym, but that could still be a long time off. In the meantime I'm relishing feeling something close to normal, sitting on a sofa and watching the telly with the Missus.

Something Splendid

Walked out just now to lock up some rooms and was confronted by a healthily thick crescent moon. Like nothing so much as a chubbily radiant toenail. Puzzled as to why the sight made me feel so cheerful, but gratified that it did.

Something Forgotten

I was glancing at one of those ranking lists, so ubiquitous on-line, of top albums by a musician yesterday when I realised I had managed to allow a magnificent double album to drift entirely from my mind. The muso in question is the incomparable Stevie Wonder and I was expecting to see either Talking Book or Innervisions at the top of the list. Instead there stood Songs in the Key of Life at the pinnacle, and I immediately understood why (though mildly disagreeing. For me it would have been Innervisions. Though, having said that I could have accepted any of the four albums following Music of my Mind without demure - Fulfillingness' First Finale also being outstanding in its way. In fact, I'd even accept Music of my Mind, come to think of it.)

The mystery was how I'd come to sort of forget Songs in the Key of Life. I suppose the fact I never owned it on vinyl played a part. Being a double album it was expensive and back in 1976 I decided I couldn't afford it. But since it was played by everyone at university, pretty much all the time when it first came out, and was easy to borrow, it somehow didn't seem necessary to own it. In contrast, yesterday ownership became a priority as I desperately needed to hear it again, and I downloaded it from iTunes in next to no time.

Of course, the big hits from the album - Isn't She Lovely?, Sir Duke, I Wish - were entirely familiar to me before listening. It was the other tracks that I'd sort of forgotten, but recognised immediately in that odd I know what's coming next way that fascinated me. Astonishingly there's absolutely no filler involved. Which leads me to a simple conclusion: the five albums noted above must be the greatest five-in-a-sequence that have ever been released in terms of unrelenting quality: great writing, great playing (most of it coming from the wonder man himself, great singing, great production.)

In A Better Way

This time last week I was in a mess. Lying on the floor of our bedroom in Mak's house in Sungai Petai, I was seriously wondering if it was going to be possible to get up to walk to the toilet, or if I was going to be able to get any sleep at all when night finally arrived. Whatever other thinking I did, apart from  monitoring the pain I was in, related to trying to figure out whom I needed to message regarding work-related matters since I was entirely sure I wouldn't be attending my place of employment when Monday arrived. In the event I seemed to nod off around four in the morning for a couple of hours, and when I woke up the pain in my left leg was not quite as bad. As Sunday morning went on I actually found myself able to get to the shower and have a shave, and began to consider the possibility I might just get better.

Today, after five fairly tough days spent at work, trying to allow for various incapacities, I'm glimpsing the astonishing possibility of getting back to something like pain-free normality. It's difficult to express how grateful I am for even just a glimpse of that state of health, but this is my weak attempt.

Mad, Going

Felt somewhat saddened to read today about the demise of Mad magazine - but was also a little surprised to find out it was continuing to be published at all. In my mind it's forever associated with the time I read it as a kid - the late 60s and early 70s. (Its readership peaked in 1973.) When we used to go to Auntie Kathleen and Uncle Vic's for Christmas Day one of the highlights of the visit was me being allowed to read Cousin Paul's stash of the mags in his bedroom. It struck me then as representing the height of cool, though I don't suppose the word cool was a working part of my vocabulary in those long ago supremely uncool days. I suppose its seemingly sophisticated irreverence was a useful aspect of my education: I turned out more than a little mad myself, I'm happy to admit.

Something Of Value

Excellent article today in the Guardian on-line relating to the idiotic British MEPs who turned their backs on the EU anthem the other day. It almost compensated for the anger and shame I felt at the behaviour of my countrymen. Actually the focus of the piece is on Beethoven's Ninth in itself and its richly symbolic political associations rather than the shabby idiocies of the present. It's good to think the symphony will outlast us all, eh?

A Bit Of A Pain

It's a bit iffy to say this, but there's something horribly fascinating about pain when one is in it - assuming, that is, that the pain is this side of bearable. That's the case with mine, at present, and I'm selfishly consumed with monitoring it. The thing about sciatica, or the version of it I've got at the moment, is that the pain involved shifts around and you can experience startling changes in the mobility of various chunks of the body in the space of a few hours. Case in point: on Monday I had no problem sitting in a lowish chair for as long as I needed, though higher seats were out, causing a viciously aching upper left leg in less than a minute. Now sitting down for any length of time beyond three minutes is generally impossible. Another example: for two weeks before my Saturday crisis I could barely bend forward at the waist at all. (Bending in the standing position for Prayers, for example.) Now I can bend forward with almost complete freedom, despite being in a general mess in other ways.

I feel sorry for colleagues who compassionately ask me how I'm feeling. If they're really unlucky I tell them in detail, at length, fascinated as I am by my own body betraying me. A real pain for those poor souls, I'm afraid.

A Touch Of Class

I'm quite irritated with myself for not finding a way to access the on-going Women's World Cup live. Following it in the papers, at a bit of a distance, and some of the highlights that get to youtube, it's been a classy competition. I'd love to watch the semi between England and the USA, but will have to settle for waking up to find out the result. It'll be quite something if the women outdo the men's team in terms of progress in the big tournament - and the signs are they could pull it off, despite the strength of the USA. If they manage to do so it'll make up just a little bit - but not enough - for the on-going national humiliation known as Brexit.

Postscript: So now we know it wasn't to be. Again. But we can be proud of the team in defeat. (Though I would have preferred to be proud of them in victory.)

Just Getting Through

My aim today was simple: Get through a day at work. I would have thought this impossible when I was lying on the floor on Saturday, but it seemed a possibility at 8.00 pm yesterday. In the event I succeeded, but am now feeling the effects. And tomorrow is another day.