A Bit Much

7 Ramadhan, 1441

So much to eat, to drink. So much to read. So much to watch. So much to listen to. So much to be thankful for.

Embodiment

6 Ramadhan, 1441

One thing I don't enjoy about online teaching, possibly the only thing I don't enjoy, is having to sit down to teach, sometimes for quite a length of time if lessons run into each other. Over the weekend, when I wasn't teaching, I experienced one of those searing moments of back pain when I was simply doing a bit of work at the table, and I'm sure it was connected with the discomfort I'd been feeling during lessons. Fortunately whatever was going on in my back wasn't completely debilitating. I was able to continue with my prayers without having to make adjustments - always a useful pointer to the degree of damage done. But a few days of aching in my lower back followed. And there remains a faint echo of the pain even today, although it feels as if recovery is almost complete.

Now the thing is, that at the same time as suffering from an aching back I was also dealing with the sort of vague headaches the first few days of fasting tends to generate in me and also trying to cope with the accompanying tiredness. I wasn't a happy soldier, to say the least - but I could also put it all into perspective, confident that this all would pass and I wasn't exactly 'suffering' to any real degree (despite my use of the term above.)

I was, in fact, repeating a lesson I've learned many times but still need to revise. The body has a mind of its own. (Distressingly comically clumsy statement - but let it stand.) Whatever thoughts I was thinking were coloured, to put it mildly, by physical discomfort. My world view was filtered through a narrow spectrum of consuming achiness. I sought to rise above all this, and managed to do so for sometimes minutes at a time, but soon enough the body took over and did my thinking for me.

One of fasting's most powerful lessons. You are your body, for better or worse. And when it's worse you must struggle to hold on to whatever remains of the better.

Ups And Downs

5 Ramadhan, 1441

Down: The early afternoon and a bit of a break between lessons, and I mean a 'bit'. Back aching - I really don't like delivering lessons seated. Quite a bit of stuff to deal with, incoming, and I don't mean a 'bit'. My body tells me it's time for a break and a drink, and seconds later my brain tells me that can't be done - the drink, I mean. Frustration - not so much over not being able to drink - that's okay - but over those few seconds of foolish, irritatingly misplaced desire.

Up: Noi's patented lentil soup, with bread - coming to the end of bowl of. I comment that it's almost perfect, but there's something lacking. A cold night in Istanbul, on which to eat it. Hah! But a warm evening in this Far Place is a very close second - and even though I haven't been outside all day, somehow I feel in possession of the world. Amazing what a bowl of soup can do for the soul, eh?

Sort Of Special

4 Ramadhan, 2020

An odd set of circumstances meant that a sort of special day didn't have quite the pizzazz that has come to be associated with it in recent years. And here's the paradox: the sort of subdued nature of the day made it sort of more happily Special.

Pulling Through, Sort Of

3 Ramadhan, 1441

Continuing to struggle with what should come easy. The month of fasting always provides a window through which one is allowed glimpses of the self that can be less than reassuring - and sometimes extremely penetrating glances that prove disconcerting in the extreme.

I suppose that accounts for the strange sense of triumph that is felt when it's over - for simply having pulled through. And also accounts for why that sense of triumph is rightfully heavily compromised. The real accomplishment lies in seeing oneself with greater clarity, thus developing greater humility - or, at least, aspiring to do so.

Twice Again

2 Ramadhan, 1441

For some reason I tend to find the second day of fasting a tad more demanding than the first, and thus it proved today. That wasn't helped by the fact that there was nothing to demand alertness from me during the morning which I managed to haplessly fritter away. Sometimes you need a purpose to take your mind off your immediate needs - which turn out to be not exactly needs in the most real sense after all.

As a corrective to my lethargy, I tried to spend some time thinking of those who are fasting in far less comfortable circumstances than my own. So many of those. Forgot yesterday to wish Selamat Berpuasa! to all observing the fast, so I'll do so now, not least to remind myself that, appearances notwithstanding, the fast is ultimately about community, as is the faith.

Once Again

1 Ramadhan, 1441

In previous years beginning the month of fasting signalled a fruitfully dislocating break with routine. Disturbance. Re-orientation.

Today felt like returning to somewhere familiar and sure. Located. Here.

Right Now

Am having a jolly good time at the moment teaching a selection of the poems of Carol Ann Duffy, so it felt oddly serendipitous to chance upon her WRITE where we are NOW project. Typically excellent idea from everyone's favourite Poet Laureate.

(I've dipped into a fair number of the verses on offer and there are some belters in there, by the way, not least those from the pen of Ms Duffy.)

Way Out

I mentioned a couple of days ago how being able to watch musicians perform pieces somehow added to the experience of listening to those pieces for me. This morning, in a lull between classes, I found further confirmation of that idea when I chanced upon a video of a performance of Steve Reich's Music for Eighteen Musicians. It's a brilliant piece, of course, but this version transported me to another place when I really should have stayed where I was. One way of escaping the lockdown, I suppose.

The Fog Of History

Have just reached the beginning of the sixth episode of Ken Burns's compelling documentary series on The Vietnam War. The build-up to the Tet Offensive makes for fascinating viewing, especially for this viewer whose contemporary awareness of what was happening in Vietnam back in 1968 was beginning to coalesce. I would have been eleven years old at the time and knew precious little but did realise that the Yanks faced a huge set-back and were in one heck of a mess.

It was in the summer of that year that I first felt any genuinely strong emotion related to what might loosely be termed political events with the assassinations of Doctor King and Bobby Kennedy. I distinctly recall being in the back-yard of our house at Gresham Street and reading a blow-by-blow account of the Kennedy shooting that made me very sad on account of the pointlessness of it all. (Though perhaps I should qualify this by acknowledging I'd felt sad when JFK was murdered back in 1963. It's just that there was a clarity about my mature thought aged eleven that hadn't been there in the earlier version of myself.)

Something I learnt only today - many of the North Vietnamese genuinely believed the Tet offensive would bring an end to the war with those in the South rising against the government in Saigon. How wrong they were, though exactly why I've yet to discover. I'd assumed they regarded the Offensive as being a sort of morale-booster as opposed to a game-winner. Yet further proof, if it were needed, of how little we can know for sure, except in the light of hindsight.

Focus

I've come to realise over many years that experiencing music in a live context adds to the value of that music immeasurably for me. I used to think this could be accounted for in two ways. The first was the obvious fact that it simply sounded better as it was coming at me directly, unmediated by a mechanical system of reproduction. The second was the idea that watching the music being made was a reminder of the difficulty involved in the making of it, leading to an exciting sense of the danger that it might all go wrong and a concomitant excitement when it didn't.

I now think there's a third reason, and this relates to the odd satisfaction I feel when watching recordings of live performances, a satisfaction not far off that felt by being there for the real thing. It's a simple, rather obvious point, so obvious that I've rarely consciously acknowledged it. And here it is: Watching musicians perform gives a non-musician like myself an abundance of clues as to how the music works and what I need to be listening for. It's an aid to focus, and I need more help in that direction than I sometimes care to acknowledge.

This has come home to me with unusual force of late when I've been listening to music on youtube for which someone has uploaded the scores. Now I know that on the surface that's something quite different from watching musicians play, yet the idea of being afforded a visual aid enabling focus is essentially the same. In truth, I can hardly read music at all, but watching the broad ups and downs of what I see in the score acts as a kind of commentary, shedding enormous light on the sound world I'm trying to navigate.

Today I was listening to a particularly gorgeous piece by the ever-wonderful Toru Takemitsu entitled Rain Spell. I'm sure its spell would have been cast on me without being able to view the score as I went along, but trying to follow the score seemed to draw me into the music in an almost physical way, acting as a guarantee of undivided attention. And the rewards were spectacular - quite out of this world.

Real Meaning

We're gearing up to Ramadhan in the gentlest of ways. Fasting begins next Friday, but so much that is associated with the month will be lacking. Yet, none of that matters in the slightest, since the central meaning of the fast transcends all such concerns. Indeed, I have a suspicion that this fasting month will carry with it an overwhelming intensity of significance for the community such as to render it powerful beyond measure.

Satisfaction Guaranteed

Teaching from home has proved an interesting challenge and more time-consuming than I expected - not that that's a bad thing. I'm more than happy to be busy in the current circumstances. But it has meant that my reading has moving forward in fits and starts. And, again, that can be a good thing with the kind of book you need to take slowly.

Unfortunately, C. J. Sansom's third outing featuring his sort of Tudor detective, Matthew Shardlake, pithily entitled Sovereign, isn't such a novel. It's well written enough to warrant reading at a gentle pace but when the whole point of a great story is to get on with the great story, it's sort of irritating to take four days to get to page 72. Mind you, the thought of the pleasure involved reading what lies ahead in the remaining pages is some compensation. I just hope I can up the pace.

Funnily enough I'd never heard before of Henry VIII's Progress to the North, around which the story is based. The description of that alone would be enough to keep me happily engaged without the murders. (One so far, and highly satisfactory.)

Plenty

In a time of dearth, Dylan gives us plenty.

(By the way, I actually laughed out loud at Chopin's preludes - the goofy rhyme capped the whole song so perfectly.)

All Made Up

I'm reluctant to criticise the kind of Malay dramas that Noi enjoys watching. Apart from anything else, she enjoys them and it seems to me that any form of entertainment that someone, anyone, can wholeheartedly enjoy has value, and some degree of expertise of craft must be involved in the making of such programmes, even if it's not a craft conducive to what I would want in a tv drama. Also I enjoy a fair few of the series she watches myself, especially those originating in Singapore (as opposed to Malaysia or Indonesia.)

But there's one aspect of these dramas, which seems consistent across all types & genres that I find genuinely puzzling. I'm referring to the heavy application of make-up for all the ladies involved - though I should qualify that and specify all the ladies who are meant to look attractive in any degree. And I'm talking about the application of such make-up in every scene - including those when the character being played is lying on a hospital bed in a coma. Of course, something suspiciously similar is the case in, say, those American series that have at their heart a kind of aspirational glamour. I'm thinking of those old warhorses Dallas and Dynasty - because I don't watch anything like that on the telly these days - but I'm guessing there are modern equivalents. But it's the consistency of this phenomenon in pretty much all Malay drama that's so striking.

And, most striking of all for me, is how the make-up is still applied to the ladies even when they are supposed to be dwelling in rural kampongs and the series they are in revolve around the contrast between simple village life and that of the sophisticated city. This is probably the most common trope in dramas produced in Malaysia, and it's easy to see why, given how relevant that contrast is to the actual experience of many Malays (and Chinese and Indians, for that matter.)

It just seems so obvious to me that this kind of drama would be hugely enhanced in its impact if the producers chose not to glamorise the young ladies assigned to a difficult life in the rural backwaters. I'm sure that a fair number of those involved in the creation of such work must feel the incongruity themselves, which is an indication, I suppose, how just how powerful the conventions are that dictate a sometimes comical level of unreality. Isn't it strange that most viewers somehow don't see what is there, even when they are in some sense admiring what they see?

Extremes

Phoned John just now to find out how he and Maureen are going on. He sounded cheerful enough. I was somewhat relieved to hear that Louise is no longer working at the care home  where she'd been employed as a hair-dresser, given the very worrying news about the parlous state of some of those homes in the current crisis. Also, in entirely selfish terms it's one less doubtful link between John and Maureen and the outside world.

John was unusually perspicacious in guessing that Noi and myself remain far from troubled by current circumstances. It's a disturbing irony, isn't it? Our situation remains a comfortable one in a time when many others, here, there and everywhere, are being pushed to their limits. Disease is a powerful connector but not an agent of equality - or, rather, acts as such only at the extreme.

Size Matters

I was slightly taken aback today to read that Donald Trump is some six feet, three inches in height. I was vaguely aware that he's a big bloke, but for some reason he always looks small on the telly - and it's impossible to imagine him as anything but a little sort of chap, isn't it? I wonder why that is.

Still Reading

Forgot to mention the other day in all my excitement over 'discovering' Balzac that I also finished Gwee Li Sui's very interesting anthology, Written Country - The History of Singapore through Literature. It does a pretty good job of presenting a picture of the island's history since 1942, at least to someone like myself who isn't exactly an expert. I did spot what I would have thought of as gaps regarding possibly highly contentious aspects of that history, but it may well have been the difficulty of getting permission to use certain texts, or the possible over-representation of certain writers, that acted as a constraint. It would be discourteous in the extreme given the quality of the anthology as a whole to cavil over supposed omissions - so I won't name names, or subjects.

The single biggest surprise for me in my reading was just how powerful I found the scenes excerpted from Haresh Sharma's Still Building, the ones centred on the three characters trapped after the collapse of the Hotel New World. I've never actually seen the play, and when I read it I found it difficult to figure out the relationship of these scenes to the other scenes featuring different characters played by the same actors they are juxtaposed with. In Written Country you get the scenes in a continuous sequence, and they pack an almighty wallop. I'm not sure how they'd work on stage, but on the page they capture a powerful sense of victimhood mixed with genuine affection for the characters.

I suppose I'm supposed to be a 'good' reader. My job certainly requires that, to be done well. But I'm keenly aware of how often different kinds of failure are involved in my encounters with texts. Must get back to the full play and see what I obviously missed.

Top Man

Finished Balzac's Le Père Goriot this afternoon, and what a read it was! Incredibly overwrought in every way you can think of, yet utterly compelling, even at its most melodramatic - and there's lots of that: the death of Goriot, the arrest of Vautrin, the betrayal of... just about everyone.

How does Balzac get away with it? I suppose it's down to two entirely conflicting aspects of his work. On the one hand, there's the larger than life poetic truth of it all - Goriot as Lear; on the other, there's the obsessive realism. Balzac is even more concerned with exact amounts of money than Trollope, and that's really saying something. And on that note, thank goodness for the excellent Penguin edition and its wonderfully thorough notes - I didn't follow all the financial stuff exactly, but I could have done if I'd wanted to (too busy wanting to know what happens next to slow down) and I got enough of the gist to make sense of it all.

I suppose a parallel with Trollope isn't too fanciful, come to think of it, but whereas as the English novelist is relaxing and sort of English, Balzac is manically hyper and very, very French.

Wonderful stuff! I'm a fan on first acquaintance.

Certainties

We've run out of episodes of Doc Martin that we haven't watched on Netflix, so that's ended our recent little ritual of late-night viewing. It's been replaced by the equally addictive Midsomer Murders. We can always count on at least two gruesome killings and, on a particularly good night, three or four. And, of course, we can also count on a neat solution by Chief Inspector Barnaby with everything satisfactorily wrapped up before bedtime. What's not to like?

We've even come to terms with the new Barnaby. It's surprising how quickly one adapts when it's one's comfort on the line. And now I'm just off to prepare for tonight's offering, with hopes of an especially high body-count to round off a gently peaceful day.

Uncertainties

Writing yesterday's post about my on-going reading prompted me to pick up the Moody biog and get on with Part Two. I'd broken off a few days back at the point when EP was about to meet Il Duce in 1933 thinking that made for a reasonable point to pause and get on with other reading and that it would be easy when the time came to pick it up again to read of this fascinating encounter. And it was. Moody is very good on explaining why Mussolini in 1933 wasn't quite the Mussolini we think of today. I don't know enough about the period to be sure Moody gets it quite right (despite doing European history of the period for 'O' level), and I wonder sometimes whether Moody has enough of a soft spot for old Ez to indulge in a degree of special pleading, but his picture of the Italian dictator as someone who could be respected for getting things done with the benefit of his countrymen in mind at this point in time rings true.

Indeed, reading of the uncertainties of the period, political and economic, was a useful reminder of just how uncertain anyone in the world at that point in history must necessarily have been regarding what directions countries should go in and what the future might hold. Sounds suspiciously like the times in which we live, eh?

Must say, though, EP comes across as more than just a little bit crazy in his certainties - warning signs of what was to come, I'd say, though Moody holds back on such easy judgements. Probably rightly. I'm good at getting things wrong.

A Question Of Momentum

I've lost a bit of momentum in my reading over the last few days, largely as a result of having to adapt to a whole new way of working. Plus trying to keep up with the latest news with regard to the pandemic has occupied a fair amount of what free time I've hacked out.

I'm still moving slowly through WC Williams's poems and Moody's Pound biog, which is an appropriate way to read both. And I've made surprising progress in a sort of anthology of Singaporean Lit edited by Gwee Li Sui entitled, Written Country - The History of Singapore through Literature. It's helped that most of the pieces therein are short and can be read at one go in those odd moments here and there. It's cleverly arranged in chronological order, starting in 1942, and I'm up to 1985, getting close to the year I arrived on these shores.

But it's the novel I'm currently reading that has caused me most excitement. To my embarrassment I need to confess that I've never read any Balzac before, I suppose constituting the biggest gap in my reading regarding the major figures of western writers. I'm now thoroughly embarked on Le Père Goriot (Old Man Goriot in my Penguin translation) and it's a blast. Tremendous energy in the writing. You might guess that Balzac was strung out on coffee when writing it, if you didn't already know of the writer's addiction. The thing is, though, that I've only really been able to get down to serious reading late in the day, usually when in bed, and my energy doesn't quite match that of the novelist.

Fortunately I've got a bit of a break this Easter weekend so I'm hoping to immerse myself in the Paris of the early nineteenth century. It's a fascinating place to be.

A Sense Of Loss

Another frantic day, but an interesting one. So frantic I quite forgot, until just now, to carve out time to reflect on Mum's life on this, the anniversary of her death.

And now reflecting on that life I'm struck by both how ordinary it was, reasonably typical in most ways of that of a working class lass from around Stalybridge way in the north of England in the twentieth century, and how fascinating: the many jobs, the conversion to Catholicism, the dancing, the visits to Singapore in old age, et al.

And a further thought strikes me: I suppose it's true of everyone, really. The interest, I mean. In our odd particularities we cannot avoid being unique and when any one of us leaves this mortal world to be gathered into Eternity a whole universe is lost.

True Royalty

Bit of a frantic day today making preparations for a whole new way of working. But found time to goof off for 10 minutes for a cup of tea whilst listening to Prince's brilliant version of a bona fide Led Zep classic.

Led Zeppelin II was a key album of my teenage years. Pretty much every kid (male) wanted to be Jimmy Page. Ever the contrarian, I wanted to be John Paul Jones. Heartening to think His Purple Highness must have been a fan. Oh, and the guitar solo is way better than anything Mr Page put on vinyl.

Important Matters

Popped out for a quick cuppa at Arab Street ahead of the big lockdown coming on Tuesday. A reminder of how precious the perfectly ordinary sharing of the cup that cheers with the Missus is - though I didn't need too much reminding. I've gotten pretty good in my old age of being aware of what really matters.

The Bright Side Of Life

Lovely story in yesterday's MEN about the almost-a-century-old lady who survived infection from the coronavirus. I felt like cheering when I read it. They breed them tough in Stockport, do they not?

And the reference to her predilection for marmalade sandwiches for some obscure reason caused in me a rush of memories of childhood. Funnily enough I'd been talking about the joys of marmalade on toast back in December at John & Jeanette's, but it was only today that I found myself for a good five minutes meditating on the taste of marmalade spread on white bread (and really, really fancying some.)

There are some things worth living for, eh?

Great Stuff

I'm not the slightest bit inclined to nominate whom I would consider as the greatest guitarist, the greatest bassist, the greatest drummer - that sort of thing. I don't think it adds much to the conversation, the sum of human wisdom - that sort of thing. Indeed, as soon as I might name one musician I admire in any of those (or other) given categories, another nine or ten spring to mind. But if I had to name the greatest drummer I've had the good fortune of watching live four times, then I'd unhesitatingly name the wonderful Bill Bruford. (Just as a matter of interest that includes one occasion on which he played with the equally wonderful and even more extraordinary Jamie Muir, which goes beyond ordinary good fortune into the realm of absolute blessing.)

Today I chanced upon a splendid interview with Broof in Rolling Stone which confirmed what I've long suspected: the sheer intelligence of the guy. Indeed, for a moment I found myself entertaining the thought that maybe what takes a musician to the next level is a kind of innate talent combined with a keen intelligence - but then I thought of Ginger Baker and realised that, plausible as the idea was, it broke up against the odd actuality of how things are.

Back In Action

It's a relief to get back to the gym. The enforced lay-off has had results, and they're not exactly positive - I wasn't on form in any sense this evening. Use it, or lose it, as they rightly say. I was keenly aware of just how much had gone.

Despite a so-so performance I must say I felt a stronger sense of purpose working out than is usual for me. Trying to get reasonably fit is one way of building up at least some immunity to what life might just decide to throw at us. I'm not keen on the role of entirely passive victim.

No Fooling

The Missus was asking me earlier whether anyone had played any good April Fool's tricks at work today. It was the entire lack of any that brought home to me the general sense of sombre sobriety that is prevalent in this time of crisis. Yes, there is humour, of course, but of an understandably more muted variety.

Fortunately on the home front we had the excellent advice of Malaysia's Women and Family Ministry to cheer us up. The thought of Noi (who is, after all, a citizen of that fine nation) imitating the voice of Doraemon to soothe my brow made the world seem a friendlier, happier place, and as for her completing her statements with a coy and feminine laugh... - the mind boggles more than fulsomely.