The Living Word

Just finished reading Wodwo as it is represented in the Collected Poems. This means there was none of the prose to read as it's all been omitted, understandably so. My paperback of the collection is in KL, so I've had to put up with the feeling of missing something important, but since the poems are so brilliant I can live with the temporary loss.

And just how brilliant the collection is came home to me with the triple whammy of the final three poems: Gnat-Psalm, Full Moon and Little Frieda and Wodwo itself. The variations of style, tone and voice mean they could be by three different writers, yet somehow they are all authentic Hughes.

I couldn't help but notice that the last line of the poem which immediately precedes them, The Howling of Wolves, is in itself, in miniature, the work of a great master: The night snows stars and the earth creaks. Isn't that just gorgeous? - and in context so perfect, The Howling of Wolves being one of those poems I've sort of always taken for granted as being typical Hughes yet which came ferociously alive for me this time round.

Dipping In

I acquired my satisfyingly chunky copy of the revised version of Sid Smith's In the Court of King Crimson on my last foray to the Book Depository. Soon after it came into my clammy paws I decided not to indulge myself in a cover-to-cover read of what for me was the ultimate fanboy biog. And why not? Well, I'd read the original, published in 2001, a couple of times and was steeped in Crimson lore regarding the years up to the 1990s, so revisiting all this sequentially somehow wasn't so attractive. Indeed, I was keen to jump straight to the later years, and jump I did with fascination, such that it struck me that a very cunning plan might be to read the tome in a sort of random fashion. This would involve deliberately dipping in at a point when I just happened to be listening to something from that period and sort of randomly felt the need to know what lurked behind the musical treasure that unfolded from that particular version of the Beast.

This plan has proven exceptionally cunning in that it has served as a reminder of the inherent randomness of the making of great music. There's nothing inevitable about the right musicians coming together at the right time. When it happens we're lucky and need to celebrate that good fortune as a triumph against the odds.

Of course, it helps that Mr Smith writes so very well.

Clicking

Of late I've been listening hard, but not hard enough, to some of the symphonies of Sir Malcolm Arnold. They haven't clicked for me in the way those of RVW did years ago, but I know there are riches involved and I'm determined to get at least some understanding of the treasure.

That's the advantage of being brought up in a system that told you that high culture was something you needed to live up to. I've never lost that sense of the need to learn enough to gain access to rarefied worlds beyond me and although it's a bit of a silly idea all told, and it smacks of the breeding of a kind of empty pretentiousness, it's worked for me in the past and continues to do so.

The moment that it all clicks is the moment you realise there was always more to you than met the eye. Even your own.

Complicity

For quite some time now I've been puzzled by the behaviour of many Republicans in office in the U.S. who obviously know their sad emperor has no clothes yet won't point this out, even now it's clear that the Republic itself is genuinely in danger. Today I got to read a brilliant analysis of the situation by Anne Applebaum that seeks to answer the question: Why have Republican leaders abandoned their principles in support of an immoral and dangerous president?

Her answer is clear, cogent and entirely convincing - and should be compulsory reading for all who care for the Republic (and if not for this republic, then for democracy in general.)

Time And Time Again

Had an odd experience this afternoon. We were rehearsing a 'live event' for a forth-coming Open House and I was assigned the easy role of audience, meaning I was monitoring the real work being done by the others presenting and producing. One of the many technical problems that needed solving was the issue of lag time. The producer pressed the requisite button (or whatever) and the something that needed to happen did so on screen, but only after some ten seconds had gone by. So I was getting a double exposure, being in the same room as one of the presenters and hearing the presentation both in real time and ten seconds later. All well and good; the old ears and brain sort of gradually adjusted.

But as the rehearsal wore on the lag became more protracted. Eventually what I heard in real time came to the screen a good six minutes later. Let me tell you, this was very disorienting. Like being trapped in a deja vu tunnel. But sort of fun, if you didn't try too hard to figure out where in the tunnel you were located.

Then this evening, once my brain had unfried itself, it came to me that for most of this month of June I'd been vaguely troubled by a sense of living through two versions of the month. In real time there was the actual June of school and teaching and in unreal time there was the june that would have been, the june like previous uncluttered junes stretching out over thirty years plus, the june of letting go and hanging loose and not being terribly fussed about anything at all.

In a funny brain-fried fashion it's sort of okay to have both.

Beyond Reason

Earlier this week I made a little vow - even writing it down somewhere - that somehow or other I would carve out time to watch Herzog's Aguirre, Wrath of God and the latest production being streamed by the National Theatre, Small Island, a very highly rated adaptation of a novel by Andrea Levy. In the event I find I have failed to fulfil that vow, owing to a sort of strategic error. I knew I was going to be busy with the Toad, Work, but I didn't reckon on quite how busy. That meant I was never going to find time to watch both ahead of the weekend. And foolishly I opted to view the movie first, essentially because I just couldn't stop myself. I completely forgot there was a deadline on the NT's streaming, and that deadline arrived today. Just now I glanced at the opening segment of Small Island and recognised right away it's my kind of show. Except it now can't be because I just can't fit in in.

I've even had to break up my viewing of Aguirre into four segments watched on four different days. That meant that it wasn't quite as an immersive experience as the first time I watched it years back, but possibly that was a good thing as it's such a powerful and disturbing film that it was a bit of a relief to break it up. But having said that, I found the potent images Herzog conjures up still hypnotise.

Indeed, I think those final shots of the raft spinning on the river, taken over by the small monkeys, with Klaus Kinski the last man standing in the wreckage of his dreams hit me harder today than it did when I first saw it. I think years back I vaguely wondered what Herzog meant by breaking off the story at that point; now I don't bother to think at all, knowing that as with most of the film we're in territory way beyond the rational.

After Such Knowledge?

By the time of the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King I had some awareness of the terrible injustice of slavery in America and its protracted aftermath, through the Civil Rights movement. I was twelve in 1968 and I'm guessing now that consciousness of such matters had come to me in the two years prior to that, since I can't remember my younger self reacting in a particularly visceral manner to any story of injustice prior to this - though, of course, there would have been plenty. I was thinking of this today in relation to the current growth in our collective consciousness in relation to racial injustice in the U.S. (and elsewhere) - though I should qualify that by noting that this more particularly appertains to a growth of such consciousness outside the black community.

It's telling how the spate of video evidence of police brutality towards black people in the U.S. over the past few years, and especially the last two or so, has helped foster an understanding that such brutality has been and is more routine than those distant from it, like myself, ever really were able to accept. I don't mean I ever doubted the reality in any deep way, but the lived reality sort of remained beyond comprehension somehow. And still does, I suppose, since this is not a threat that I've ever faced or had to deal with.

This came home to me with special force yesterday when I was reading a piece on Open Culture relating to the great Miles Davis being beaten by the cops in New York at the time of the recording of Kind of Blue. I don't think I'd come across the particular story before, but I had some awareness that Miles had had his fair share of run-ins with the boys in blue, as had probably every black jazz musician of note in that era. Despite knowing this, and feeling an appropriate sense of anger at the gross injustice involved in all this, somehow I'd never felt quite as outraged as I did reading of this assault. I'm guessing that it's my recent sort of enhanced knowledge of what really takes place all too often on the streets that led to this intensity of feeling. And it gave me that bit more understanding of what drives so many on the streets to protest.

Forbidden Fruit, And Rightly So

My heart went out to those poor Bavarian post office workers recently assailed by the odour of the King of Fruits, so-called. Methinks a world-wide ban is in order. But the Missus, of course, wouldn't agree. And nor would most of the population of this Far Place.

People are strange.

Really Scared

I've arrived at Wodwo on my read-through of the Hughes's Collected and I'm finding myself reminded of just how deeply troubling, disturbing, unsettling so many of the poems in the book felt when I first read them and remain so today. More so, I think. In youth I had youth to protect me from them and the surreal puzzling quality so many possessed helped provide some distance.

They still puzzle - the weaker ones beyond the redemption of meaning - but the fully achieved pieces now seem to have a power I somehow didn't grasp when younger. Possibly a good thing that I didn't back then. I read Ghost Crabs over the weekend, and again today. Once upon a time I found it fascinating, but essentially saw it as little more than a kind of uncannily animated dream. Now it actually frightens me.

I suppose I used to wonder what the titular crabs represented. Now I know they are real: They are the powers of this world. / We are their bacteria, / Dying their lives and living their deaths.

As Usual

Just bade farewell to the one and only set of visitors we will see in the post-Raya period, tomorrow being the final day of the month of Syawal and the sort of 'official' end to such proceedings. And how good it was to see Fuad, Rozita, Fifi and Fafa live, as it were, after three months of necessary disconnection. It's nice to think that such reunions will have been taking place all over this Far Place this weekend, and are likely to continue to do so for the days immediately ahead of us.

I'm fortunate in being able to deal with solitude better than most, indeed, to have a marked capacity for enjoying it. I'm not one of Streisand's People Who Need People, so not one of the luckiest in the world in that respect, but there's a lot to be said for the virtues of connectedness and I'm happy to celebrate them.

Highly Receptive

Very busy work-wise at present, which feels more than reasonable given the current circumstances in which we find ourselves. Happy to be able to make a tiny contribution to trying to keep the wheels on the wagon as the world negotiates a steep downhill ride. And also happy that I'm not by any means impossibly busy and am finding moments here and there to raise my head above the water. (Sorry for the appalling mixed metaphors, but I sort of enjoying mangling my own images.)

One of the positive features of my current state is a welcome and familiar sense of being highly receptive to music, poetry, art in general in those moments of relative freedom, as if the limitations of attention I can afford them make them all the more precious. And along with this comes that curious feeling that the universe is conspiring to draw my attention to exactly the kind of music, poetry, art that I'll find deeply rewarding without my really trying too hard to seek it out.

Today, for example, I discovered that Werner Herzog's film Aguirre, Wrath of God is freely available in its English language version (I think dubbed, but I'm vaguely aware that how Herzog rendered the language of his early masterpiece with an international cast might just be a tad more complicated than I think) on Youtube. I just watched the opening sequence and I my mind was as totally blown as it was when I first saw the film on telly. (Not sure how old I was. A teenager? Late night showing on BBC2, I think.) In fact, I've only ever seen it through complete once, and I'm now planning with huge excitement to make that twice. Yowza!

And this is from someone who isn't really into movies all that much in general terms.

Familiarity Breeds Content

Just back from dining on roti prata and enjoying a cuppa at one of the eateries on Clementi Road. There's nothing exactly new about this; we've been there many times before and the food tasted much the same. But tonight marked the first night of the easing of the lockdown here and, in that sense, we were enjoying a new-found and very welcome freedom.

I suppose I might be expected to say something along the lines of having come to see simple dining out in a new light as something to greatly appreciate - but I've always thought of it that way, so I'll just say it remains as familiarly special and rather wonderful in its own way as it ever was.

Look Back In Sadness

Not entirely sure what took my thinking in this direction, but I've been mulling over what I know of the history of the United States in relation to the indigenous peoples of the continent of North America. Realised I just don't know enough and must find out more. As a weak stop-gap measure I found myself listening to a podcast I downloaded quite some time ago from the venerable In Our Time series, featuring a discussion of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The focus is on the appalling General Custer, but there's enough about the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors involved to afford the listener some sense of what they were fighting for and how unbearably grim their situation was.

As a little lad I used to play a kind of war-game based on the battle. I remember getting the set one Christmas, and the fun we had with it. Now I feel sad about that.

Playing A Blinder

The Graun's Editorial got it absolutely right. I'm feeling massively proud right now of a young man from my native City now United in a great cause. Also evidence of something I've always known: young working-class men, despite the poor press they receive in certain publications, almost invariably possess more integrity, resilience and sense than those politicians who make little secret of looking down on them.

Down To Earth

Bloomsday

Normally I'm on holiday on this most auspicious of all literary days and, thus, reading a few pages of the greatest novel in the English Language (and possibly any other) of the twentieth century comes naturally. Today I've settled for listening to a bit of an audiobook version of Joyce's masterpiece which I downloaded (for free!) some three years or so ago.

I selected the opening of the Eumaeus episode, its sense of languid exhaustion suiting my mood. I recall more than one commentary on the novel not rating the chapter highly at all, usually complaining about the orotund, clichéd nature of the writing. In contrast, it's one of my favourite segments, precisely because of the humour of all those clichés. And because after the fireworks of Circe and all the Nighttown business we come crashing down to earth, enabling terrestrials like myself to make sense of what's going on.

Bloom himself is at his most touchingly humane (and touchingly tiresome), particularly in relation to his protective friendliness to Stephen. At that level this is simple stuff, and all the more powerful for that.

A Complete Fruitcake

Referring to someone as a 'complete fruitcake' where I come from is not to be undertaken lightly. It is by no means a term of approbation. Which is a bit puzzling considering how deeply wonderful a fine fruitcake actually is. Over the weekend the Missus made it her business to produce the perfect fruitcake, based on a new recipe and slight change of technique. Gentle Reader, let me assure you she succeeded - a fact which is all the more remarkable when you consider the previous version was already perfect. Is it possible to go beyond perfection? Alas, not in our sadly fallen, sublunary world. But can you double perfection? Oh yes, and I have the evidence to prove it. (Or, rather, had it, as both fruitcakes have a way of quickly disappearing.)

Not Such A Drag

Haven't had much time to read lately, but found enough in which to finish Rasselas. There's a lot to be said for short novels when you're time-starved, though I'm not sure you can classify Rasselas as such. More like a cleverly stitched-together sequence of brilliantly insightful essays that would otherwise have gone into The Rambler under another name.

Funny that Johnson couldn't recognise a genuine novel for what it was when he read one. I'm thinking of his casual dismissal of Tristram Shandy in which, for all Sterne's playful experimentation, the characters live. Does anyone really believe in Rasselas & Imlac et al? It'd be nice to praise the good Doctor for creating female characters of real intelligence, except that Nekayah and Pekuah are just the male characters in drag.

So is Rasselas worth reading, and what makes it so? Yes it is. And it's the ideas that do it, and the wonderful expression of them.

Quality

I can't remember when it was I read Alan Bennett's The Madness of George III, but I do know that much as I enjoyed it and recognised how well-fashioned it was as a play, I could not entirely figure out how it was supposed to work on stage. I remember longing to see it in the theatre and making the assumption that that might never happen. So what a delight it was today to get to see it onstage at the Nottingham Playhouse courtesy of the National Theatre's streaming of their productions on Youtube.

I was right, by the way. It's a brilliant piece of theatre: funny, moving, thought-provoking. I don't know why it is, but it's easy to forget what a wonderful writer Bennett is. But how powerfully one is reminded of that fact when watching anything by him.

In Days Of Yore

Thought I'd have a quick look back in my journal to what we were up to on 12 June, 2005, in the days before the pandemic, when June was still a school vacation. This is what I found there:

We are going to have visitors this afternoon, from Melaka. That part of the tribe that has not been staying with us is due to arrive. I think Noi enjoys being busy with them all. It makes for a happy house.

The kids are now out with Auntie Ida who has taken them to see the movie Madagascar after a big breakfast. Tomorrow we’re off to Kuantan for a couple of nights so we need to prepare for that. This means buying a new camera as old reliable has just gone kaput.

A sort of mini-Paradise Lost in its way. Good times, eh? Looking forward to their return.

On All-Fours

I was thinking yesterday of posting something vaguely celebratory about the fact that my post for 10 June was number 4,444 from this Far Place. Then it struck me that the number 4 is not exactly auspicious in Chinese numerology (being nearly homophonous to the word for 'death' in Cantonese - and possibly other dialects) and I might just be tempting fate drawing attention to that oddly elegantly repetitive number. The risk, I assume, is somewhat reduced today, so I'll tentatively mention the fact and hope to sleep easy tonight.

(Funnily enough, my telephone number at work ends 444, and has occasionally given rise to comment from colleagues savvy in this aspect of Chinese culture. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing.)

Wising Up

Decided to re-read Sam Johnson's Rasselas having no other fiction to hand that I felt up to. Just reached Imlac's bracing observation: Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed. Blimey! They didn't mince their words back in the eighteenth century, did they?

I reckon there's a case to be made for Johnson's novel (if that's what his wonderful History of the Abyssinian Prince is) as one of the earliest self help books. Possibly the wisest. And knocked off in a week to pay his mum's medical bills. Blimey! again.

An Unexpected Bonus

I was chatting with a colleague earlier in the evening who was, understandably, finding our current circumstances a bit of a trial. It sounds like rather weak advice to try and count whatever blessings we can (which is all I had to offer her, I'm afraid), but it works for me, probably because I'm lucky to have so many. Case in point: the unexpected richness of material being posted on-line precisely because of the various lockdowns on-going around the globe. (The streaming of Coriolanus I mentioned the other day being one of them.)

Among the quirkier stuff available, I'm finding the Sunday Lockdown vignettes posted by Toyah Wilcox and Robert Fripp are definitely adding spice to my little life. The one themed around Women Dancing to King Crimson is a work of genius, as well as a piquant comment on one of life's essential truths.

Cheering Up

The articles towards the back end of the edition of the Mekong Review that I'm now reading are considerably more cheerful than the excellent yet righteously depressing material in the first two-thirds of the publication. This has resulted in a distinct speeding-up of the pace of my reading.

I'm now embarked on a piece by Marc de Faoite on the joys of eating roti canai and, let's face it, there are few subjects that are more cheerful than that - though it has provoked a little bit of painful nostalgia for the days when we could just pop out to an eatery to indulge. Never mind, soon, we hope. This came after a lovely account by Jennifer Lindsay of the neighbourhood in which she lives in Yogyakarta, or more specifically her RT, standing for Rukun Tetangga, the equivalent of our Taman in KL. It's all about the ways in which the people living in her area get along and work together to make it a better place. When you look at relations on that scale somehow feeling hopeful for the future doesn't seem quite so foolish after all.

Outstanding

Carved out the time today to watch the National Theatre's production of Coriolanus, the one with Tom Hiddleston in the title role, streaming on Youtube. Glad I did. Mr Hiddleston is excellent, as is every member of the ensemble. Excellent speaking of the verse - which is the only way you're ever going to get this most rhetorical of the tragedies (which is saying something) to work. This production worked at every level, gripping me to the extraordinarily bloody conclusion.

I know it's the general opinion that Coriolanus is easy to respect but hard to like as a play, but I love it and always have. (Bit worried about what that says about my character.)

Newly Acquaintanced

I thought I was extremely well-acquainted with pretty much all of Ted Hughes's poetry written prior to 1970, having read, more than once, all the adult collections - The Hawk in the Rain, Lupercal, Wodwo and Crow - and those for children. (Loved Meet My Folks!) (Still do!) So it's been a bit of a surprise and a complete delight to discover, on making my way through the satisfyingly chunky Collected Poems, that there are lots of poems from the period that didn't make it into those books, and many of these strike me as top quality Hughes. (Mind you, I love even the stuff where TH is obviously having a bit of a bad day, so I suppose it's all good to me. Bit like Dylan.)

I've just read three in a row written in the Wodwo period and published in periodicals at the time and loved all of them. And it's a sort of bonus that they are so different from each other. The three in question are: The Last Migration (animal fable - bit Crow-like, bit like stuff from What is the Truth?, but mostly like itself) , The Burning of the Brothel (raucous ballad, treasury of half rhymes & galumphing rhythms) and To W H Auden (published on Wystan's sixtieth birthday - bit stately, bit Audenesque.) And to think that TH didn't even bother to get Faber and Faber to ensure they reached the widest possible audience!

ROTFL

I've mentioned a couple of times over the years in posts to this Far Place that as a kid I was prone to uncontrollable fits of giggles, and in my early years of teaching seeing the funny side of something on occasions when high seriousness was required was distinctly problematic on more than a few occasions.

Sadly the problem largely solved itself over time and life became calmer but drabber. However, I've noticed a curious thing, possibly related to me approaching second childishness and mere oblivion. A few times now this year I've had fits of giggles, fortunately in contexts where attempts at control weren't necessary. Indeed, one occurred this evening in relation to the ever-reliable cartoons over at Existential Comics. Normally they elicit satisfied chuckles, but a recent one related to the fine British school of Analytic Philosophy inspired a lot more than that.

Must admit, my sense of humour is pretty weird.

Making Adjustments

One of the ways in which I try to cope with what my work demands of me is to consciously develop routines to give structure to my days, such that stuff that needs to be remembered - often quite trivial in some ways, but still necessary - is rendered easy to remember because the routines make it almost automatic. So it's fascinating, and challenging, to find myself living through a period in which predictable routines are falling by the wayside and adjustments to new circumstances have become the order of the day. One result of this is a distinct sense of time slowing down, since the 'taken-for-grantedness' of each day can no longer be taken for granted, if you see what I mean.

There's an enormous comic potential in all this, as the chances of me doing something daft are considerably raised now I'm no longer in anything close to control. Today I managed to walk the wrong way out of a classroom, one with which I'm drearily familiar, and become so disoriented that I completely lost the room I needed to go to and, for a brief moment, wondered if it had been demolished without my knowledge. It took over a minute of stumbling around to find out where I was in a place that I've been familiar with for some thirteen years . Following that, once back at my desk I came close to attempting to drink some tea through the mask I was wearing. Oh dear.

(I suppose I should be wondering if this kind of thing might be related to a descent into senility, but I reassure myself with the thought that I've always been capable of epic daftness given the right circumstances, even as a callow youth. But it's too embarrassing to think of past mishaps so I'm not going to go there.)

Encountering Perfection.

I apologise for this, Gentle Reader, but I need to let you know that this evening I ate a plateful of nasi lemak as patented and prepared by the Missus. It's a sad truth that this would have been better by a long way than anything you treated yourself to today. In broad terms I disapprove of the way that some users of social media promote images of their 'perfect' lives creating unrealistic expectations in others, but when one has encountered genuine perfection it's hard to hold back. Just saying.

Something New

Needed to do a bit of teaching today behind one of those protective face shields. A new and uncomfortable experience. Felt very odd, but I suppose I'll get used to it.

Not complaining though. Thinking of the frontline health-workers throughout the world who wear loads of this protective gear (assuming it's available to them) throughout long, tough, potentially dangerous, shifts. My appreciation for their work was enormous before today. Now it's positively stratospheric.

Something Fresh

Got so overwhelmed by the depressing stuff in the Mekong Review that I decided to break off for a couple of days and find something else, something vaguely entertaining to read. Realised I'd got hold somehow of a copy of a novel by Louis Sacher entitled Holes that had won the Newbery Award (a kids' lit award) some years back and thought I'd give it a go. Very glad indeed I did. Funny and completely unpredictable. I had no idea where the story was going and was more than happy to follow where it led. Felt like cheering at the end.

It reminded me of the great discovery I made when I first started teaching: the best children's books make most novels for adults look pretty shabby.