Days Like This

Eid al Adha, 1441

One of those days that fell into place, sort of perfect in itself.

Prayers at home in the morning, followed by a play-through of the first CD from Rough and Rowdy Ways, referencing the lyrics on-line. Transported.

Then visits from Fuad & Rozita & Fafa & Fifi in the afternoon and Boon & Mei in the evening, feasting on mutton biryani & other delights conjured by the Missus, slurping teh tarik and nattering about just about everything under the sun.

And now the tired late evening with a couple of cats howling outside and nowhere to go but to bed.

Like I said, perfection.

A Bit Of A Test

Noi and I observed the fast ahead of Eid al Adha today; in fact, Noi also fasted yesterday. She made no fuss about it all, of course, while I battled through the afternoon nursing a splitting headache whilst falling asleep at the same time. I was not a pretty sight but, fortunately, I was able to get away from work reasonably early to keep it all private.

I didn't quite expect the day to feel as rigorous as it has done, but in its way it's been a tellingly useful experience. If nothing else it functioned as a reminder of the extremes other folks face on a daily basis without whining about it. I must confess, I whined quite a bit, but for the most part just to myself.

On The Heights

Saddened by the death of Peter Green, of Fleetwood Mac fame, surely one of the most tasteful of a generation of gifted British guitarists. But much as I admire so many of those classics he knocked off with the early Mac, thinking back to that phase of my life I realised there was one moment watching him on the telly, on Top of the Pops of all programmes, that sort of defined for my (very) younger self what it meant to be cool in a way that was deeply exciting. It was his laconic performance of Oh Well, and the throwaway line, I can't sing, I ain't pretty and my legs are thin. I both identified with PG at that moment and aspired to be exactly like him.

Funnily enough, I connect that with three other appearances on TOTP of the period that widened my impossibly narrow horizons. In no particular order of merit they were: Deep Purple doing Black Night, Black Sabbath doing Paranoid and, above all (I lied about the order of merit thing), Paul Rogers and Free telling me I was Alright Now.

What a strange kid I was.

The Price You Pay

I don't mind running around a bit at work. I get paid for it, and I suppose it helps keep me reasonably fit. But these days I know I'll pay a price for uncomfortable busyness and its a steep one.

I'm referring to the almost inevitable bouts of cramp I suffer at night following such days. These are generally painful, and I mean very. Last night was marked by three such bouts, affecting both legs at various hours. Fortunately I was so weary that I only awoke long enough to deal with the pain and immediately dropped back to sleep again. I'm hoping for similar weariness tonight as I can already feel the muscles in my nether regions readying themselves to remind me of just how taut they can decide to make themselves.

It's sort of comical, the way in which a body can decide to protest against the use one makes of it, but it's a dark kind of humour. Not exactly laugh-out-loud material.

Not So Lethargic

After a couple of days last week moved lazily in something suspiciously close to slow motion, today has compensated on the grand scale in its briskness. It's been non-stop and still hasn't stopped. A useful reminder of life's demands, though threatening at points to be a bit too useful in that direction.

Kind Of Impressive

Over the years I've learnt to be wary of those times when I feel pleased with myself over something. It's so easy to fall into the trap of complacency and misread the world, and I'm very prone to that. I loved being praised as a child and recognise ways in which that wasn't at all healthy, and ways in which aspects of that child persist in me.

I try now to reserve any sense of self-regard for those occasions when I've managed to keep going on something at a time when I was thoroughly miserable and somehow got through in the end. My first year of teaching is the best example. I sucked big-time at the job but survived through sheer bloody-mindedness, and I'm sort of impressed with that younger version of myself despite all his many flaws.

And this weekend, I felt incredibly lethargic and out of it, yet managed to get two cleaning jobs done that I really, really, really didn't want to bother with at all. Not in the slightest. It's a bit sad, I suppose, that it takes something so utterly mundane to impress me about myself, but that's the way of it.

Back To Life

Spent some happy minutes munching on kaya toast and slurping tea at our favourite Ya Kun outlet this afternoon. It's good to see Clementi Mall come back to life after those recent days of walking along largely deserted corridors. As far as I can see none of the businesses there have had to shut down, and now they appear to be thriving.

Mind you, it obviously isn't easy just on the simple logistics front. The young ladies who staff Ya Kun normally look busy simply preparing the excellent grub they dish out, and now they have to deal with watching the queue, clearing and cleaning tables and seating customers in their very limited space - whilst reminding everyone to keep their social distancing. It looked frantic, I can tell you, yet they were managing the situation with lots of diplomatic grace. I hope they get paid well for their efforts - they certainly deserve every penny.

Lighting Up Again

We turned on the fairy-lights this evening, ahead of Hari Raya Haji. The Haj this year will be a very limited affair in terms of numbers, but it's good to know that it will take place. There will be many there in spirit.

And all who have had the good fortune to have accomplished the rites remain pilgrims no matter where they may be, no matter how far from the still centre of this turning world.

Sleepyhead

It's a good thing that I haven't needed to go into work this week. I've been feeling drowsy in the extreme and finding it easier to nod off than ever - which is quite something for a man who has never had problems entering the Land of Nod. I suppose this might have something to do with being generally worn down in recent weeks by the shifting demands of work, but I'm doubtful that this is a sufficient explanation. Indeed, I can't honestly say that I've felt genuinely stretched in recent weeks.
 
A more likely explanation is that the drowsiness is medicinal in origin. I went to see my back doc last Saturday for a routine check, but this happened to coincide with a bout of stiffness in the muscles on my left side. The doc prescribed tablets I've taken before, but upped the dosage. I'm now thinking I might be suffering the side effects.

To be honest, being on the verge of falling asleep for much of the day is not a completely unpleasant state to be in. But almost a week of it is quite enough, thank you.

A Sense Of Loss

Heard this evening that Chris has lost his father to the coronavirus. It's sad to think his dad was most likely alone at the end, given the precautions taken in hospitals. One of the many cruel aspects of Covid-19. Though I hope I'm wrong about that.

The realisation of the grief that the living must suffer over every loss makes those terrible numbers of the dead world-wide all the more disturbing. I suppose we need to recognise our ability to distance ourselves from the reality of the suffering involved as an odd kind of blessing. But we also need to connect, as an essential part of our recognition that we are all in this together.

So Personal

Got close-up and personal with Malcolm Arnold's Symphony No. 7 this morning, through the excellent ear-phones bought by the Missus. It doesn't make for happy listening. Everything about it suggests it was written from a place of distress. When it isn't mournfully despairing it sounds frenetically despairing. Even the sudden interpolations of popular forms - the rag-time material in the first movement, the Irish march in the third - sound desperate somehow.

Therefore, it's disturbing to learn that each of the three movements was dedicated by the composer to one of his three children, and it adds to that sense of disturbance to discover that the son associated with the second movement was autistic. What must it have felt like to be one of the dedicatees and know that this was how your father saw you? (The music is so vividly expressive you can't help but see what it paints.)

Into Darkness

Now reading the Crow sequences in the Collected Poems of TH. I didn't realise that the poems extended beyond Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow, the book from 1970 that I must have read dozens of times; so many that it almost fell apart. I've got a feeling that Tony may have got hold of it and decided it was for him. Which in many ways it was.

I'm trying to figure out how it was I got hold of a tape of Hughes reading the sequence. I think I taped it off something. Must have played the tape dozens of times as well. Now I can't read the poems without hearing the voice of their creator, which is wonderful - but limiting in a sense.

I suppose the younger me was attracted by the dark honesty of the collection, and the savage humour. It resonates even now with the older me. And I'm struck even now by the deliberate ugliness of so much of the language. That alone seemed to me to expand the possibilities of what might be done in poetry, and still does.

Worrying

Just rang John to check if he and Maureen are okay. He had plenty to complain about, so that was business as usual. It seems the lockdown in the UK has eased considerably for them and life is returning to some sort of normality. I didn't want to push the fact that both of them must be at some considerable risk from the virus, given their morbidities (as I think the current jargon has it.) I don't think they have much if any awareness of this.

I suppose I'd better do the worrying for them.

On The Whole

Finished Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior today. I now realise that when I briefly wrote about it a week ago I hadn't grasped the extent to which it was important to place each chapter in relation to the whole. What I thought was a rather draggy second chapter, White Tigers, makes a lot more sense when you've finished the novel, or memoir, or whatever it is, and can see where Kingston will take its concerns.

Indeed, I'd say that the final two chapters quite brilliantly extend the earlier material whilst being highly readable in themselves. Considering just how fragmented the narrative is, I felt a very distinct sense of the unity of the text when I reached its conclusion, which is quite an achievement.

Something New

The last few days have been unreasonably and unexpectedly busy at work. But the next few days offer a respite I'm happy to say. The unexpectedness is, in part, related to trying to deal with a radically altered shape to the school year. In its own way this is interesting, so there's a kind of novelty about the situation which takes the edge off the negative aspects somehow.

It's a measure of just how busy I've been that when the new Dylan album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, arrived yesterday in its CD form from those good people at amazon.com I didn't actually play it immediately. Astonishing. Of course, I was familiar with three of the brilliant tracks from it already, but I'd manfully held back from other songs appearing on-line since ordering the CDs, so not playing it was, as I say, little short of astonishing. (Don't worry, I put the omission right this evening, and will happily repeat that when my head hits the pillow later to its eminently soothing sounds.)

What I did play from my order yesterday was the gorgeous become desert by John Luther Adams. The sort of ambient qualities of the piece meant I could play it as background whilst working without feeling dreadfully torn, something that wasn't going to happen with Dylan. Indeed, it strikes me that playing any Dylan as background is almost impossible: he drags you in; you feel the newness of the words anew each time, even when they're old; there's always another nuance of the playing, the phrasing, the whole feel, to catch.

Misanthropos

There are a few people I love, and quite a number I really like; but on the whole I prefer trees.

The Right Thing

Someone was telling me today of how wearing the mask has caused rashes at the back of his ears. He was wondering if I had experienced the same problem, which luckily I haven't. It was easy to imagine just how deeply uncomfortable it must be for him. By the end of the weekend the rashes have largely eased, but then with work on Monday they flare up again. Arrgghh.

But here's the thing. I was being told this without the slightest sense of the person involved complaining about having to wear a mask. It was entirely understood that since it's the right thing to do, it must be done. Indeed, I don't think I've heard a single person here, young or old, complain in that sense. I suspect that when the pandemic is all over (and let's hope it is, one day) that even if it were to be found that the wearing of the masks hadn't been as efficacious a measure as it now has every appearance of being, people here wouldn't feel terribly aggrieved. As far as we can tell it's just the right thing to do for the good of everyone, and that's it. I suppose that's what's so deeply puzzling about the fact that it does seem to be an issue in some places elsewhere.

And the fact that front-line medical workers all over the world have to wear layers of protective gear throughout their shifts is a potent reminder that even if we think we have something to moan about, we haven't. Not in the slightest.

Good Judgement

Of all Sam Johnson's works surely An Account of the Life of Mr Richard Savage is the strangest, the most sympathetic, and the one that confirms the genius of the great man. The subject would seem to be so outside of the bracing conservatism of Johnson that you'd expect little else but condemnation in relation to Savage's wasting of money, of talent, of the goodwill of his friends. Yet Johnson manages to see beyond that to the most unlikely qualities and genuinely brings them to life without any sense of sentimentality at all and without losing his judgement.

And what a fine judgement that is. Who else could have written: The reigning error of his life was that he mistook the love for the practice of virtue, and was indeed not so much a good man as the friend of goodness? Isn't that so obviously devastatingly honest and true (even without us knowing the man it's written about)? And doesn't it apply to so many of us?

We live in an age that is wary of being overly judgemental, and rightly so. But sometimes judgement is needed. Let's hope ours is as rich as that of Dr Johnson, and let's hope we find ourselves judged as fairly.

As Per Normal

We popped out to one of the eateries on Clementi Road just now for our dinner, and very jolly it was. Life is slowly returning to normal, but it's very much the new normal. To be honest, I rather like it. The old normal tended to be a little too frenetic for me, enjoyable as it was. There's a lot to be said for slowing down.

Talking Politics

I've been privileged to witness a number of elections here over the years. The same party keeps winning, but funnily enough the elections somehow always manage to generate a lot of interest - enough last night to keep Noi up, watching as the results came in. It just shows what a poor political pundit I would make that I assumed it would be a shoo-in for the ruling party and only realised things might be a lot closer in the final couple of days, which turned out to be the case. The Guardian managed quite a neat summary of it alI today, but somehow didn't quite capture the richness of the situation, I felt. By the way, I didn't stay up, in the event, but that was due to advanced age rather than lack of interest.

There's a curious lack of any obvious political philosophy that prevails here with regard to all the parties. The usual terminology of left and right somehow doesn't apply, which makes any discussion of politics in the broad sense in the classroom quite tricky, something that also applies to trying to explain hierarchies of class as they appertain in Britain and the United States. The place seems curiously post-political. I suppose the concern is with what might be termed governance, and who is likely to be best at it. Considering the mess that the two western nations I previously mentioned are in in terms of that very quality I reckon such a concern is by no means a bad thing.

By the by, this election seems to be particularly memorable for Noi with regard to Fafa and Fifi voting for the first time. Indeed, she positively interrogated Fafa regarding the matter. Fifi, for some reason, seems to think I'm a communist, heavily influenced by Uncle John telling her so, I suppose - and also by some of my more incendiary pronouncements. Must say, I find her perception, off the mark as it may be, curiously satisfying. Baffling the young is always entertaining in its way.

Heavy Going

I've been reading Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior in fits and starts for well over a week. Whilst I can recognise at least some of its qualities, for some reason I'm just not held, not really involved. Possibly things will pick up when I get to the second half.

I'll certainly do it at least some justice by getting to the end. But I suspect I'll be glad to put it behind me.

Going With The Flow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I got to thinking about water just now. Glad I did. Lovely stuff. Especially in abundance.

Just Great

An astonishing picture at Open Culture today. It turns out that Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone were schoolmates in Primary School back in 1937. What are the odds? (Similar to those of John & Paul meeting up and Paulie joining John's band back in Liverpool, I reckon.)

And Open Culture feature a nice tribute piece to the departed Maestro, though like nearly all that have been appearing in the last couple of days I don't think they quite grasp the scale of what he accomplished. (Not sure why music from The Godfather features in the Open Culture piece, though.) It's been refreshing to witness the fact that Morricone's genius is now so widely acknowledged - especially given just how long it took the Academy to recognise it and actually give him an Oscar - but it's rare the tributes have covered the extraordinarily experimental music he wrote in the early days for all those Italian movies. Some of it is so much of the avant-garde it makes Stockhausen sound conservative - and, of course, it always worked in whatever film it was intended for.

I reckon the greatest composer of film music by a country mile, and the greatest aural imagination ever.

No Takers

There wasn't much that was elegant about Sam Johnson's near contemporary, the madman William Blake: Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy...

It doesn't get much more bitterly inelegant than that. Nor much truer.

A Bit Of Elegance

After reading Rasselas a while back it struck me as a good scheme to keep my Oxford Authors compendium of various works by the Great Cham at hand for dipping into when I needed the balance of an elegant sentence or two or three to right my own - balance, not sentences. Following this scheme in a relaxed fashion I've just finished the abridgement of A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland in that selection and I must say it served its purpose. Whatever magisterial judgement Sam Johnson is passing on whatever aspect of life has happened to catch his eye, you can be sure it will sound great and, somehow, that's enough.

But it would be a mistake to assume that sounding great is what Doc Johnson means by 'elegance'. The word obviously has resonances for him that we've lost something of over the centuries. Here he is on his Journey in Aberdeen reflecting on the learning of Boethius: The first race of scholars, in the fifteenth century, and some time after, were, for the most part, learning to speak, rather than to think, and were therefore more studious of elegance than of truth. Whilst Johnson's elegance is seen as distinct from truth, it has the heft to, at least in some sense, weigh against it in some kind of balance. And does so for more than a century in relation to a kind of scholarship for which Johnson has some respect. 

Anyway, it seems we could do with a bit of elegance here and now, and more than a bit of Johnsonian wisdom.

The Present

 

What do you get for the man who's got pretty much everything he really wants? That's the problem the Missus faces every year around the time of my birthday yet she always manages to find something I didn't know I wanted but which it turns out I needed. This year has been no exception - indeed, a particular triumph in this regard.

My birthday took place a few months back, of course, at the time of the lockdown going into operation. Noi mentioned to me then that she intended to get some ear-phones for me, some posh ones with what I think is referred to as 'bluetooth'. The idea sounded okay, but I wasn't exactly raving with excitement. Fast forward to yesterday, and now we're a bit freer to move around she pops out and purchases what she had in mind, presenting to me the earphones in the afternoon.

It turns out I had to charge them first (who knew?) so I didn't actually don them until today, when I discovered what I'd been missing in terms of clarity of sound and glorious mobility. The symphonies of Malcolm Arnold have never sounded better - as you can tell from the pictorial evidence above, in which I am listening to the eminently depressing 7th Symphony and reacting as you might expect me to.

In contrast, the pic below suggests something of the delight I feel as the proud possessor of the more than splendid earphones in question:

A Bit Of A Treat

I treated myself to no fewer than three pieces for tv by Alan Bennett today, two from the 4DVD set of Bennett at the BBC and a Talking Heads monologue off Youtube, featuring Bennett himself. In the course of wallowing in the brilliance of the writing it struck me that it really wouldn't be stretching it to claim him as Britain's greatest dramatist, yet one tends to think of his work as just being great because it is Alan Bennett, as if we've been gifted an extraordinary talent that somehow lies outside of normal run of the mill drama/literature.

Not all of the three pieces actually counted as lit, I suppose. The documentary he made featuring the big art gallery in Leeds, Portrait or Bust, which I watched for the first time today, seems to me the best thing I've ever seen about appreciation of the arts in general, and certainly the funniest. The strange thing is that the quite ordinary folk filmed going round the gallery manage to talk exactly like characters in the plays.

Problems

Needed to deal with a couple of niggling problems today, one of which was entirely of my own making. Then later in the day met an old friend dealing with a major and painful problem of health which is very likely related to stress resulting from an equally major problem in his current circumstances. This both put my very minor concerns into sensible perspective and served as a reminder of how useful such little upsets are in providing a further reminder of our essential, inevitable, vulnerabilities.

Overwhelmed

I feel guilty for saying this, but it's the truth, so here goes: the lockdown (wherever it is, taking different forms as it does internationally) has brought with it absolute treasures in terms of fabulous stuff appearing on-line that probably wouldn't have got there otherwise. Has that made the misfortunes and downright suffering of so many worthwhile? No. Absolutely not. But it's a small truth in a huge picture of many truths jostling against each other for attention.

And when that small truth manifests in the form of the great Richard Thompson performing Facebook concerts from the comfort of his home it looms large in the consciousness of RT fanboys like myself. Funnily enough though, I haven't managed to watch one all the way through yet. Will be putting that right soon, you can bet. But I have managed to watch bits of all of them, and today's bit served as a reminder of the astonishing range of his catalogue.

He begins Facebook Live Concert #3 with a lovely version of Sam Jones, a song I've never heard him do outside of the album version. I'd sort of forgotten the existence of the song to be honest. It's ages since I've played you? me? us? the album it appears on (on disc 2, the acoustic nude CD.) And when I heard this earlier today (goofing off for 10 minutes ahead of doing a bit of teaching) it suddenly brought back to me just good you? me? us? actually is. And here's the strange thing: I seem to be one of the few people (RT fans included) who think so. Generally it got reasonably appreciative but low-key almost tepid reviews when it came out. Which means my feeling for it as a master-work - a feeling that has grown over time, rather than diminishing, and grew a little more today - is probably wrong in some way, which is deeply puzzling given my pretty much perfect taste in these matters.

That's the thing about genius. It overwhelms. Even the supposedly minor stuff can become major, if you allow it.

On Fire

Can great poetry emerge from the righteous anger felt in relation to dreadful social injustice, from the most current of current affairs? Yes, I'm sure it can and I have the latest pick from Carol Rumens's unfailingly thought-provoking Poem of the Week to prove it. Incendiary Art: Ferguson 2014 seems to me to fulfil EP's great dictum of poetry as News that stays News, and it's difficult to imagine any reader disagreeing.