Paying The Price

It was around the middle of July, at the start of the one week mid-term vacation, that I last went to see my back doc. He's moved his premises to a spot around the Serangoon Road area, just across from the Mustapha Centre. After the appointment the Missus and I went for a cuppa just outside the centre. It felt good to be amongst the crowd again with the shops in the area beginning to pick-up business after the lockdown - this being some seven weeks after schools had opened again.

The signs then were good, since it didn't look like too many places had needed to close down. So it was saddening today to read of the lay-offs at the Mustapha Centre itself. Most of all, the lay-offs of their staff from overseas who'll have their work passes rescinded, I assume, and have to go back to their countries. I'm guessing it won't be easy for them, to put it mildly, though the resilience of folks struggling at the bottom of the ladder can be astonishing.

I know of quite a few people who've not found themselves terribly troubled by the unusual circumstances we've all found ourselves in this year. Indeed, I'd count myself as one of them - with a very keen awareness of the luck involved in that. But it's deeply worrying to consider the likelihood that such people are a minority and others have been paying, and may well come to pay, a devastating price as a result of those circumstances.

Keeping Focused

I'm going through one of those periods in which I find myself deeply interested in whatever crosses my path, especially in relation to various writers and musicians, and greedily want to read (or reread) everything and listen to everything. The state has a slightly manic quality about it, and very enjoyable it is.

Today, for example, in fairly rapid succession I felt a compulsion to read Dickens's David Copperfield again (and it's not even a novel I have a particular fondness for within the oeuvre); get hold of all the Faulkner novels in the Library of America editions and read the ones I haven't read - about two-thirds of the total; and reread Robertson Davies's Salterton Trilogy, mainly for the sake of the first novel therein which is about a staging of The Tempest. To be honest, I've got a feeling if I pondered hard enough I'll be able to recall a number of other minor compulsions felt on the literary front in the course of the day, but it's a bit tiring to even think of going there.

So the challenge is to just get on with the reading I've got going in the here and now without being unduly distracted - but since it's all gripping stuff that isn't proving too much of a problem at all. (One thing that's been in my mind, though, since I was triggered over the Faulkner: what was it Jack Connoly, my beloved 'A' level Lit teacher, had against the novelist? I mean, he utterly detested him for some reason. I'm pretty sure he called him sordid and disgusting - yet Jack hadn't he slightest problem with any other of the moderns and was something of a Beckett fanatic. Go figure, as they say.)

Being There

I held off from reading Philip Pullman's The Book of Dust, Volume One: La Belle Sauvage until I got hold of a smaller size of paperback than the rather large one originally published. I was confident of a great read and successfully steered clear of the reviews, fearing spoilers. So, having acquired a paperback edition that suits my odd preferences, I'm now just over halfway through, gloriously without a clue as to where the story is going and very content indeed to be led in that direction.

I'm struck by how in the moments of narrative rest Pullman, like all great writers for children, draws the reader into a richly comforting world despite the menace at its edges. You somehow want to be there with Malcolm (and baby Lyra).

More Than Crafty

I have some sympathy with Leonard Cohen fans (since I am of that ilk) who feel that he was more deserving of the Nobel Lit Prize than Dylan. And the same goes for Joni Mitchell (again, as a fan myself.) Funnily enough in my interview in the last century for university admission I held firm to my belief, at that time, that LC could be held the superior wordsmith in a comparison with JM, the interviewer being of the contrary opinion. I still think that is the case, but I also think the comparison is pointless, both being superlative artists we should simply celebrate, both being expert in their craft.

As is the Bobster - but he is something more, going beyond craft - when on top form. It's worth noting that Dylan has himself talked of how the way his songs have so often come as gifts has sometimes deserted him. Case in point, the wonderful Street Legal. The album is a sort of special favourite of mine, but I'm conscious of a sense of something forced about the lyrics, as if Dylan is consciously writing like Dylan writes - a slight clunkiness haunts almost every song.

Rough and Rowdy Ways is soaked in giftedness: the songs are coming from somewhere else, somewhere beyond. Much of the excited commentary on the lyrics of various tracks as they came out understandably focused on the jaw-dropping zingers. It's difficult not to draw attention to the perfection of I sing songs of love / I sing songs of betrayal (from False Prophet.) And then, of course, you notice what has preceded those lines: I search the world over / For the Holy Grail, and you realise that the slightly clichéd reference to the Grail quest is revivified by the False Prophet context and the brilliant Grail / betrayal rhyme, a startling yoking of opposites that the voice forces to echo each other.

But then you get to realising that beyond the obvious 'moments' pretty much every line of the song adds richly to the whole, sometimes not so much in the content as in the peerless delivery. This was brought home to me a day or two ago when I was listening to the song whilst following the lyrics from an on-line source. I laughed aloud on the line: When your smile meets my smile something's got to give, not just for the engaging wryness of the statement, but because of the pause punched in on got to ... give. The line itself 'gives' as it is sung.

As I say, beyond craft. (And I'm guessing that when he's back on the road, (God willing) Dylan will find a new way to deliver the line if we're blessed enough for him to include False Prophet in the set (or a set.) 

At A Glance

Happened to have a quick glance in my journals to see what I was up to on this date twenty years ago, and came across this: Brainlessly busy at work at the moment.

Not much changes, eh?

Monarch Of All I Survey

It's that time of year when I'm told I'm obliged to complete a number of surveys which are seeking to capture my feedback. Often they do so by couching statements in an odd kind of jargon that means little or nothing to me and then giving me the 'choice' of the options Strongly Agree; Agree; Neither Agree nor Disagree; Disagree; Strongly Disagree. I look in vain for the options: I Have No Idea What You Are Talking About or I Don't Care About The Statement Enough To Offer A Reasonable Response; but these sensible options somehow never appear. And the funny thing is that you have to fill in something before the system will let you move on.

Usually the surveys end with something to the effect that whoever has forced me to reply is interested in my feedback. Odd that, since they've gone to so much trouble to devise ways of never knowing what I really think.

Beyond Words

I gave a bit of a nod here to Dylan's Rough and Rowdy Ways a week or so ago, partly as a way of psyching myself to try and communicate at some point what an overwhelming experience the album has proved to be for me. When Murder Most Foul, I Contain Multitudes and False Prophet appeared out of nowhere during lockdown I was, like the rest of Dylandom, stunned by the quality and variety of what the great man was putting out. I held back from listening to the other songs from the album that became available on-line once the whole set had been released, deciding I'd wait for the physical CDs for almost superstitious reasons. I had the oddest feeling that I was going to listen to a stone cold, bone fide, top level Dylan album - in every way equal to Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, Blood on the Tracks, Desire - the pinnacle stuff. (Just as a matter of interest, I'm very close to including 'Love and Theft' and Tempest in that list, and am now convinced that Dylan's 'final period' equals the 60s.)

That feeling about Rowdy Ways turned out to be eerily prophetic. I know I'm a hopeless fanboy, but the extraordinary consistency of the 2 CD set has convinced me. Talk about no filler!

Which leaves me with the problem of having so much to say that I can't say enough, and feeling guilty at not being able to do justice to the gift of these songs. I can't solve this problem, so I'll sidestep it by saying just a little now, and hoping more will emerge later. And the little I'll say is this: the time he spent recording all those Sinatra classics, the great American songbook albums, apart from providing some wonderful listening, has done something to Dylan's voice. It's got warmer, more tuneful, more ready to seek out and enjoy melody. He's never sounded so utterly relaxed, so mellow; so when he hits you with the Apocalypse it's a double-whammy.

Enough for now.

Not Getting It Wrong

The eagle-eyed reader may have spotted the lack of the apostrophe in my reference yesterday to St Elizabeths Hospital and understandably thought, the old chap posting this has powerfully blundered in omitting the possessive apostrophe where it is obviously necessary. Trust me when I tell you that it hurt to type the name in the way I did, but Congress is, or rather was, to blame. In officially re-naming the hospital in 1916 from the Government Hospital for the Insane they inexplicably left out the apostrophe, as a very interesting Wikipedia article on the place makes clear.

Actually I was following Moody's punctuation when I wrote the name thus, assuming that a top-level academic of his ilk would have known what he was doing. Indeed, I wondered if there might be some 'explicable' reason for the omission of which I was unaware when I did so. Now I'm wondering how all the linguistic pedants in the US who had dealings with the hospital managed to put up with it. After all, I am a bit of linguistic anarchist at the deep bottom of things and my linguistic fascism is a pretty shallow phenomenon, these days being something in the way of a pose necessary to keep the day-job going, and even I was irritated.

Yes, leaving it out hurt a bit, and I've got to confess that when I realise I've made an error with the use of the apostrophe in this Far Place I do spit blood to some small degree and I'll go and make the correction.

Getting It Wrong

Everything I knew about the trial of Ezra Pound for treason and his incarceration in St Elizabeths Hospital for the Insane was wrong. Not that I knew a lot. But I thought I knew that Pound had definitely committed treason, had gone more than a bit crazy in the war years, and had been declared insane in very dubious fashion in order to protect him from execution by understandably sympathetic friends.

I'm now reading Moody's account of all that took place, a very detailed one indeed, and now I think I know the following: Pound had by no means definitely committed treason, and those who were tasked to prosecute him knew that and had reached the conclusion he would walk out as a free man from any real trial; he showed a number of very understandable signs of stress, but nothing close to what might generally be thought of as insanity, and the majority of the doctors who dealt with him knew that perfectly well; his defence may have thought they were helping him, but were complicit in an appalling injustice in locking him away for twelve years.

Having got it so badly wrong for years I'm loathe to accept Moody's conclusions without deep consideration but, my goodness, he's convincing in his thoroughness and general intelligence of analysis. And in his empathy for a difficult subject, an empathy that is by no means all-forgiving, by the way. He calls Pound out for his anti-Semitism in no uncertain terms and makes his readers well aware of the sometimes egregious extent of the poet's political naivety in regard to what Hitler and the Nazis were up to.

One thing, by the way, that I got wrong and that I can offer some defence for. I genuinely thought I'd heard tapes of Pound's broadcasts with EP raving in dreadful fascistic fashion - as bad as Lord Haw Haw, I always thought. But Moody is very convincing on the fact that the general content of the broadcasts was by no means so dreadful and the sense of Pound raving can be connected to the poor sound quality of the broadcasts and subsequent recordings and his ill-informed choice of a hectoring tone which he assumed would somehow cut through to his listeners (of whom there were very few.)

Business As Usual

Noi got back yesterday from the clinical trial she was involved in, and we've settled back into our usual happy routine. She reckons four days was just about the right length for her stay. Towards the end of the final day she was beginning to feel more than a little uncomfortable with some of the ways in which they'd got her wired up and felt she had given more than enough blood, thank you. They kept sucking my blood, she vividly and, if you think about it, accurately related. She's got a few pin-pricks on her arms to contend with as a result.

Today we've celebrated our return to normality with a spectacularly lazy day, not bothering to step outside the door. A little bit of lock-down nostalgia in its way.

A Particular Poem

I've always thought of Ted Hughes as an indisputably great poet just based on those poems that are so self-evidently wonderful in their perfection that there's no point in discussion. One example will suffice: Hawk Roosting. Now who's going to argue with that? In truth, he's not always at that level - what poet could be - but it's remarkable just how often across his career he does get there, which is one of the reasons why I was wondering whether a reading of the Collected would lead to my discovery of even more moments of total, mesmerising magic.

It has, and in one case in the least likely place. I thought I was reasonably aware of the special joys of Season Songs as a sequence since I've always thought of it as a bit of a favourite. So how did I come to miss A Cranefly in September? Fortunately I didn't miss it earlier this week and it hypnotised me. I found myself as enmeshed in the poem as the poor cranefly is in the grass-mesh. I say 'poor', but TH deals with her so coolly, so objectively that there isn't a trace of sentimentality in the poem, yet the inevitable fate of the creature becomes deeply, deeply touching as she bravely struggles in her tinily embattled way.

At the heart of the magic worked by the poet here seems to me to be an act of attention being paid. I suspect that the ability to pay such attention, something that perhaps we all of us have even if we rarely practice the art, can lead us to riches when we use it, such acts plugging us in to what matters. We're incredibly lucky, of course, that along with the gift of paying such attention TH had the words to embody that attention in.

Particularities

It's the particularities of losses that illustrate the magnitude of a tragedy. An excellent example: Sirin Kale's moving article on a single, painful loss. Difficult to read in its evocation of pain, but necessary.

Sort Of Reassured

Just phoned Maureen to wish her a happy birthday from Noi and myself. It turns out that our card for her hasn't arrived yet. Back in May the one we sent for John arrived about two weeks after the big day, suggesting that the postal services were struggling to cope with the various lock-downs going on back then. We posted Maureen's card in good time (as we did with the card back in May) so it looks like the service has slowed down somewhat generally, but we're hoping the card will get through soon. Maureen herself sounded okay, but a bit out of it, not entirely present, and not terribly concerned about talking for too long.

John was his usual loquacious self, suggesting that all's reasonably well back at Gee Cross, but he gave me a bit of a jolt when he told me that Louise had been affected by Covid-19 and had been isolated for some 10 days. She was asymptomatic and is fine now. It seems she picked up the virus at the care home she sometimes works at. Actually, I thought she wasn't working there any longer, based on a previous conversation with John, but he must have been a bit muddled - or maybe it was me. The odd and strangely reassuring thing is that he seemed to have no awareness that this might spell trouble for himself and Maureen. When I asked him about his own contact with his daughter he didn't pick up at all on the fact I was a bit concerned and brushed the question aside with typical insouciance. His main concern was how much it would cost for them to relay their drive and install a ramp. As I say, reassuring in an odd sort of fashion.

Coping, Only Just

It didn't occur to either Noi or myself that the usual procedures for visiting wives involved in clinical trials would be suspended due to the pandemic. How dumb can you get?! - Us, that is, not the suspension, which makes perfect sense. So we're now officially separated until Friday, which feels like a long time since we didn't mentally prepare for it.

I think the bananas and cheese and scones might just see me through, but it'll be a close run thing.

Coping, Somehow

A couple of hours ago I dropped Noi off into the capable hands of the medics, rushing to do so. But there's not the slightest thing to worry about. How so? Well, this has nothing to do with actual illness. She's been keen to participate in trials for various medicines for some time now, partly as a public service, and partly as an interesting experience. (And a little bit for the cash, I suppose.) So she signed up for this particular trial a while back and took a few tests to ensure she was in good health for it. (Nothing to do with the virus dominating the news, by the way.)

She'll be with them until Friday, having signed in today, the rush being the result of a miscommunication over checking-in which meant we ended up going later than expected. But all's well.

Except, I suppose, for the daunting fact that I'll need to fend for myself for a few days. But don't fret: I have bananas and I have cheese. (Oh, and loads of home-baked scones, whose siren call I am hearing now. Bye!)

Going To Extremes

I've been trying to get hold of Van der Graaf's 1978 live album Vital on CD for quite some time. One attempt, more than a year back failed as it was reported as unavailable at amazon.com and I just didn't have the energy to try and track it down, despite my curiosity about it. That curiosity was based partly on the fact it was one of those albums that completely passed me by when it was originally released, I guess because I was too focused on professional survival to pay much attention to the world of contemporary music, but based mainly on my awareness of just how highly rated it was in some quarters, whilst being seen as distinctly iffy in others. Its iffiness seemed related to how 'raw' it sounded to some ears - that in itself constituting a major point of attraction for myself.

Not to be deterred, fascination undiminished, I included the disks in my most recent order, only to receive everything else on my list (the crowning glory of which being Dylan's Rough & Rowdy Ways, of which I'll have something to say at a later date) but to find myself left in limbo with regard to Vital. And then it arrived, on its own, late last week.

On the back of the handsome CD booklet there's an image of the original advertisement for the live set from 1978 (when it was priced at 4 pound, seventy-five pence, which I reckon I would have found a tad expensive back then.) The main copy reads: FROM THE MOST EXTREME LIVE BAND IN THE WORLD THE MOST EXTREME LIVE ALBUM. Gentle Reader, trust me when I tell you that for once the advertisers spoke the truth.

On my first play-through I was stunned, and delighted, at the ferocity of it all. Actually, I'd wondered whether the questionable reputation of the album was based on a poor quality of recording - a bit like the infamously wonderful Earthbound of King Crimson -  but in broad terms it's more than acceptable, despite the problem they had with the failure of one channel to record Jaxon's contributions to proceedings such that the reeds and flute needed to be inserted from what had bled into other channels being enhanced. No, as advertised, it was the blistering, take no prisoners attitude of the musicians that had served to alienate some listeners. 

The astonishing version of Pioneers over C sort of sums it all up. The studio version is a splendid piece, veering nicely between the theatrical and melodic as VdGG so often did on the early albums. The version on Vital just tears everything up with glorious contrasts between soft yearning and punk rage. At his most extreme Pete Hammill makes punk admirers like John Lydon sound mild and restrained.

This is not the sort of music one can play with the ladies around. (Dreadfully sexist, I know, but I'm keeping it real.) Yes, vital stuff. (Dreadful pun, I know, but I thought I'd take some chances myself in this final paragraph.)

A Class Act

Managed to catch A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood just now, with Tom Hanks in top form, embodying the sweetness and savvyness of Mr Rogers. I wondered if the filmmakers might indulge themselves in some Spielbergian sentimentality (which, let's face it, the subject gives plenty of excuses for) but admirable restraint was the order of the day. Proceedings were kept low-key and the film worked wonderfully as a result.

Proof, if one needs it, that goodness and decency are way more interesting than their dreary opposites.

At A Distance

The numbers related to the spread of Covid-19 on these shores seem to be pointing in the right direction. That's no surprise, I suppose, given the sensible range of measures adopted to deal with the pandemic. But I must say, observing the lack of any kind of social distancing in supermarkets here is a salutary reminder of just how unnatural a concept it is. I'm pretty sure people are not deliberately flouting the rules in any way, and you can see the spacing being reasonably observed in the check-out queues. But when it comes to how folk behave in the aisles, it's apparent that the notion that it isn't wise to crowd into your neighbours' immediate space fails to register. It looks to me that the imperative to shop takes over from any other mental mode.  

Funnily enough, it's actually fairly easy to maintain the necessary gaps with a modicum of patience. I know that because I find myself walking around as if in one of the exercises I've sometimes used in drama workshops, in which the whole point is to keep moving reasonably quickly in a crowded space whilst maintaining a distance. Awareness of space is an extremely useful faculty to possess when you're on a stage, and it can be developed. But, of course, that's not going to happen in the day-to-day business of life being lived off-stage, as it were.

And maybe the inherent confidence that all will be well such behaviour seems to signal is no bad thing.

Coming Together

I see myself as having always been a reasonably open-minded chap in political terms. In my late teenage years I deliberately exposed myself to commentary from all sides of the spectrum, reading newspapers reflecting the political left, centre and right (in British terms) and for years purchased The New Statesman and The Spectator every Friday. (I always thought The Spectator a better read even though the other mag was more reflective of the ideas for which I tended to have greater sympathy.) Indeed, at university I reached the conclusion I couldn't join any political party as there was invariably something about their programmes with which I disagreed and I realised I could never tow the party-line, whatever it was. 

But nowadays I find I have arrived at one absolute certainty: a political philosophy founded entirely on the notion of the sovereignty of the individual, if pushed to an extreme (I'm looking at you, Ayn Rand), will inevitably end in tears; in contrast, a political philosophy founded on a sensible respect for the value of community might just further the well-being of society (meaning the 'society' Mrs Thatcher claimed didn't really exist, but which does if you happen to have a modicum of common sense - or have ever realised you just can't do it on your own.)

I came across a story in the news about some librarians in Australia today which both confirmed that certainty and reminded me of the wonder of public libraries in general as some of the most precious of genuinely shared public spaces.

On Time

Strange thing, time. So languid when it's in excess. So unforgiving when matters decide to be urgent. Like today. As if someone decided to run the film at double-speed.

A Bit Of A Dope

Now here's a thing. Moody argues that Pound wasn't really a fascist (or Fascist) despite his sympathies for Mussolini and Il Duce's undoubtedly Fascist state. And I'm beginning to think he's right, not out of any special pleading for a misunderstood genius kind of nonsense, but because he marshals the facts, plenty of them, with clarity and understanding. He also makes it compellingly clear that Pound, despite his numerous denials - obviously sincere - to the contrary, can reasonably be accused of anti-Semitism despite his friendships with a number of Jews. And he further makes clear that Pound for all his blistering intelligence could be incredibly dopey about the screamingly obvious (e.g., that A. Hitler was a thoroughly nasty piece of work. (Pound, astonishingly compared him to a saint (I kid you not!) as late as 1945.))

So you can be brilliant and an idiot. As well as dense and an idiot. I've known that all along, but it's fascinating to see it in action.

Who will watch the watchmen, eh?

Things Left Out

Now reading the Season Songs segment of the TH Collected. Several poems in here that I love. Odd sense of something like nostalgia reading them again. (Wonder what happened to my copy of the collection. I had it in hardback, but it's gone now. Possibly Tony took it. Good. I like to think of him reading it.)

But I'm realising that despite my closeness to a number of the poems, there are bits that are unfamiliar. To my embarrassment I think I've never read the extended sequences, Spring Nature Notes and Autumn Nature Notes. Was I too lazy to deal with them when other 'easier' material was so readily at hand (or to eye)? I suppose that's the advantage of the sequential reading I've undertaken of quite bulky Collecteds in recent years - and even of slim volumes. You can't duck anything if it doesn't quite tickle your fancy.

Both of the sequences are superb, by the way. Vintage Hughes.

Help Needed

Just back from Woodlands after a jolly evening with Fuad, Rozita, Fifi and Fafa in the course of which Noi and I made quite a number of demands IT-wise on our older niece. On my part these were related to a new laptop I bought to try and make life easier for downloading music (and other stuff, but mainly that, to be honest.) The needs of the Missus were a little more pressing, relating to attempts to renew her passport on-line, which appears now to be the only way her nation allows it to be done. With huge cunning they've made the process extraordinarily difficult to accomplish. I officially gave up yesterday evening, and it managed to baffle the far more savvy Fifi this evening. She'll try again tomorrow morning, she says, when her brain is no longer exploding.

The problem now relates to trying to submit a photo for the passport that meets the remarkably complex demands of the website. Each submission so far has been rejected with no explanation given. One might even wonder if someone has deliberately made things as difficult as possible.

Isn't bureaucracy a wonderful thing?

Making A Start

Generally I can recall with some accuracy my first encounters with writers and musicians who have become particular favourites. I know, for example, that I had never really read Dickens until after finishing studying Lit at university. In fact, I put off reading my first novel by the Inimitable until after I graduated, sensing that an 'academic' reading would blight the experience. I think I was right to do so. (It was Bleak House, and I found it astonishing.) Indeed, I remember that my subsequent love of Dickens added considerably to my scepticism concerning academia.

But the strange thing is that despite all my efforts I just cannot remember beginning to read Ted Hughes. It's as if I've always known his work, yet that is obviously not the case. I'm pretty sure that, as in the case of Dickens, I hadn't read any Hughes at all up to leaving university. Yet by my second year of teaching I'm sure I was already an addict. His little book based on his radio talks for children Poetry in the Making had become something of a holy book for me, and I can remember the deep impact of certain chapters, but I don't know if that came before reading the stuff more obviously for adults or before. I've got a feeling that Crow was my first encounter, yet I'm clueless as to how that stood in relation to the very early poems - so many of which were anthologised in books used in schools.

I'm guessing that I became acquainted with a lot of Hughes all at once and became 'expert' quickly enough to convince Tony of the value of the poet by the time of the publication of Remains of Elmet (in 1979.) It was Tony who bought the volume and, for some reason, I didn't. Probably because we sort of shared Hughes between us. He had my copy of Wodwo for ages, I do know.

None of this really matters, I suppose. The important thing was getting hooked. But it does seem odd to have forgotten how it all started.

Somewhat Tiresome

Just got started on Ezra Pound: Poet - A Portrait of the Man & his Work; Volume III, The Tragic Years 1939 - 1972. (It's not exactly a pithy title, is it?) Enjoyed Volume II of A. David Moody's biography, and I'm fascinated by the whole business of Pound's arrest and subsequent events - a number of which I'm not at all clear on - so what took me so long to get started?

I suppose my hesitation was caused partly by the sheer intensity of Pound's work and general concerns. Quite honestly, I don't think I would have enjoyed being in his company for too long. (In contrast, I suspect spending time with James Joyce wouldn't have been at all taxing, especially after a few drinks.) But above all, I must confess I get extremely irritated over the deliberate misspellings in Pound's letters and their general tone of forced humour. Just read this from Pound regarding his discovery of the radio as a medium for ideas, and it jarred: what drammer or teeyatur wuz, radio is...

Must say, I admire Moody for wading through the pages of this that exist even more than I do for his wonderfully balanced account of EP's deranged politics (which the biographer manages to make sound almost rational.)

Princely

For reasons that are a bit too complicated to explain, I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon watching a series of videos related to various songs by Prince. And this was genuine work. I wasn't bunking off in any way. Like I said, it's tricky to explain, but you'll just have to take my word for it. As I pointed out to the Missus later on, I was getting paid for two of the happiest hours of my life. Nice work if you can get it.

The Right Stuff

Was chatting to Peter the other day, over the cup that cheers, about matters political in the good old US of A, with a specific focus on the up-coming election (which, to be honest, we're both obsessive about) and who might be selected as Joe Biden's running mate. We'd ranged over a few possibilities (actually all black and female, since we both reckon that's important in terms of getting the Democratic vote out) when two things struck me: 1) how easy it was to think of names and 2) how impressive the field was. I mentioned this to Pete pointing out that in our long-ago youths it would have been difficult to think of any black woman in America - indeed, probably any woman - as having the kind of resume that would have served to impress us. I further noted that if Condoleezza Rice stood for the Republicans in future she'd get my vote (assuming I had one, which I don't, and assuming the Dems put up a bit of an idiot) and I was hard -pressed to think of any other Republican who might. (Colin Powell, I suppose.)

Isn't it great to live in an era when we can witness how much a society stands to gain from at least attempting to move towards fairness in matters of race and gender? And isn't it depressing to witness how carelessly that might all be thrown away?

Spellbound

I'm not exactly sympathetic to Ted Hughes when he's at his most mythological, much preferring the concrete stuff (Crow excepted - though I think he's often pretty concrete there.) So having arrived at Prometheus on his Crag in the great read-through of the mighty Collected I wasn't expecting to enjoy the sequence. It also left me cold when I first read it in Moortown on the initial publication of that very mixed bag, in contrast to my utter gleeful absorption in the actual Moortown sequence. And the fact I was reading the Prometheus poems late at night when feeling extremely tired also did not augur well.

In the event, stretching over three days for the 21 rather short poems, I was completely beguiled by the sequence. Harsh, cold, remote and quite brilliant. Not sure why I found myself so receptive this time round, but not interested in questioning the magic involved. Now going to reread to repeat the spell.

No Excuse

We're still unable to use the gym here. Although gyms in general are no longer forbidden territory, the powers-that-be in this neck of the woods are reluctant to open ours up. A pity, really, since for purely selfish reasons I'm feeling the lack of it.

I should be out pounding the streets, I suppose, but my doc forbids actual running and brisk walking somehow just doesn't do it for me - though that might be just a way of making excuses. In truth, I'm ultra-busy (yet again) at this point in time; but, in another truth, that's really no excuse.

Anyway, with another long weekend coming (for National Day, hooray) you should see me doing the necessary any time soon. Not a pretty sight, I know, but there's really no need to look.

Idle Thoughts

15.44

Popped across to work earlier to prepare for the week ahead and got quite a few things done. 

Now enjoying a satisfyingly idle few moments and trying to think. But I'm afraid I'm not achieving much in the way of coherence. Four disconnected strands of thought wrapping me round at this moment: Monitoring an aching back, having suffered a sharp spasm in my lower back a couple of hours back - but the discomfort seems to be fading; Wondering if my tendency to uncritical fandom - re Dylan, Crimson, Joyce, Blake - is something to worry about, or something to celebrate, something useful in its odd way; Pondering as to whether I really should choose the burger option when we go out to dinner tonight with Hakim & family to celebrate the birthdays of the two girls; Considering the possibility that Jeff Buckley may really have been channelling angels in his astonishing voice (whilst listening to him in live performance whilst writing this.)

Decided he was. Possibly why he was taken so soon. So untimely. Have no easy answers for the other questions.

22.10

Decided, wisely, on the burger. (Oddly enough typed widely instead of wisely just now. Maybe I should have stuck to that?)

The Lost World

I completely misread the opening of August from John Clare's The Shepherd's Calendar just now, thinking it was describing some kind of early nineteenth century lockdown: Doors are shut up as on a winters day / And not a child about then lies at play / The dust that winnows neath the breezes feet / Is all that stirs about the silent street / Fancy might think that desert spreading fear / Has whisperd terrors into quiets ear /  Or plundering armys past the place had come / And drove the lost inhabitants from home.

Not to worry. The lost inhabitants are not lodged indoors, indeed they're not lost at all, but it turns out they're all in the fields. And, boy, are they busy. The rural idyll turns out to be anything but idyllic, in terms of the hard graft undergone. Even by the nippers: The ruddy child nursed in the lap of care / In toils rude ways to do its little share / Beside its mother poddles oer the land / Sun burnt and stooping with a weary hand / Picking its tiney glean of corn or wheat / While crackling stubbles wound its legs and feet.

The precision of those last two lines serve as a reminder that Clare knew exactly what those fields were about.

I'm always conflicted reading him. Part of me imagining myself in his England; the other part fervently happy not to have ever been there - except in imagination.