A Grim Fascination

My back still hasn't fully recovered from last week's strain and that's been my weak excuse for getting hardly anything worthwhile done today. In contrast, Noi was busy developing her skills in patchwork at Rohana's, so one of us was achieving something. For some reason I found myself fairly aimlessly watching various bits of debate and dialogue on YouTube in her absence and I'm afraid it was a less than profitable use of my time.

I suppose I did learn one thing though. I witnessed a good deal of outrage and outrage is a debilitating emotion, especially the variety unaccompanied by any sense of generosity, and there's a lot of it in cyberspace. Watching folks fuelled by outrage at each other is unrewarding in the extreme but unpleasantly fascinating. And I intend to stay away in future.

Thinking Aloud

The Magic Mountain is turning into a war of ideas between Settembrini and Naptha. The open philosophising of the two, with Hans Castorp and his cousin caught between them, seems an extremely clumsy way of exploring these concerns, but the ideas are so obviously alive for Mann that this reader just surrenders to the thrill of the debate. Part of the thrill is the sense that the writer is capable of investing himself in the full range of what is under view without necessarily surrendering to a single ideology. His world is complex, plural, idiosyncratic, as I hope mine is. Indeed, all our worlds.

A Question Of Limits

Over the last year or so I've found myself watching a number of videos featuring Jordan Peterson. I'd vaguely heard that he was controversial in his opinions which sort of sparked my curiosity to find out just how controversial he is. I'm pleased I did because his lectures are well worth watching. It's certainly true that some of what he says is not exactly mainstream, but there's nothing that struck me as even close to unpleasantly outrageous and a lot that showed insight into the workings of the human mind. He strikes me as a born teacher, investing his material with force and passion.

As with any good teacher there's a certain quirkiness about him and something of the obsessional, though in a generally healthy manner. But the one thing I found puzzling was his obvious animus against the universities and his charges that many departments are driven by a dangerous form of cultural Marxism. This all seemed a bit over-stated, a wee bit hysterical.

I'm beginning to change my mind though. The recent news  that staff working for his Canadian publisher protested against the publication of his new book struck me as something of an ironic validation of his concerns as to the desire of the 'woke' to extinguish academic freedoms. Maybe I'm over-stating that, but it's sadly getting easier to see where Prof Peterson's concerns come from. Thank goodness that Penguin intend to go ahead and publish.

Being There Again

Delighted to have managed to get to the masjid for Friday Prayers this afternoon. I'd booked my spot on Wednesday morning, an hour or so before wrenching the muscles in my back, and once the pain kicked in I was wondering whether I should cancel the booking to make sure I didn't waste a space someone else might have wanted to use. Up to setting off I was uncertain if I would be able to do the necessary, but decided that with the help of a chair it would be okay. After all, that's how I was managing prayers at home, and in that sense it didn't seem a big deal. I suppose it was the thought of driving there and following all the new procedures that intimidated me. That and the worry of suddenly feeling a debilitating pain and not being able to continue.

In the event, all went well and I experienced that feeling of somehow being exactly where I needed to be. Always a good place.

Floored, Again

Spent most of the day lying on the floor, easing a wrenching pain in my lower back. Not a very interesting place to be, I'm afraid, especially when it's so familiar from similar previous experiences. Hoping for recovery, but not taking it for granted.

Truly Alive

I'm listening to Mozart's El Nozze di Figaro in pieces - one act at a time. I suppose it's an odd way to take in an opera, but it seems to work for me. I'm at the halfway point and thoroughly enjoying the experience. It helps that the version I'm listening to, featuring the English Baroque Soloists conducted by John Eliot Gardiner, is so clear, vibrant and dynamic in every way. The details leap out at you.

So when the applause breaks out at the end of each act, it comes as a bit of a surprise. The sound has been so perfectly slick, so wonderfully balanced, that a novice listener like myself tends to assume it's a studio recording and the fact it isn't is a powerful reminder of the level of excellence these musicians are routinely capable of.

It's a privilege to listen.

Highly Deceptive

I'm rereading Iain McGilchrist's The Master and his Emissary very slowly indeed, to try and ensure I've grasped the nuances of his argument. Today I finished the third chapter, Language, Truth and Music and I've decided to reread it since the ideas relating to language as metaphor escaped me except in the broadest sense. Also he seems to be saying some extraordinary things about language in relation to communication; in effect, language might be better seen as an evolutionary element related more to the need for control - and possibly deception/concealment - though I'm not entirely sure McGilchrist thinks it's as simple as that.

But what an idea! It struck me that in many ways we've been seeing something related to this in action in the American presidency 2017 - 2020.

A Happy Morning

Plants make people happy! Wise words, spotted on the back of a guy's shirt this morning. Not much to argue with there. Especially when the wearer of the shirt was engaged in actually doing the necessary planting.

He was one of many workers busy making Jurong Lake Gardens a place worth spending a Monday morning in - or any day of any week, come to think of it. The Gardens were only recently opened to the public and there's still a good deal of development going on, but there's plenty to delight the eye - and other senses.

Challenges

Just spoke to John and, briefly, Maureen. They are staying safe. But John is feeling very restricted now he no longer gets out and Maureen's short term memory is as bad as Mum's was towards the end. According to John, he now thinks too much whereas in the past he rarely thought about anything but just got on with what needed to be done. At least they've got enough money coming in to keep the show on the road.

Worryingly, Cheryl's John has been made redundant, having been paid off with three months' salary. They've just moved into an expensive new house but I'm hoping they'll be able to cope given the fact they've done very well financially over the years. Thinking back to when we saw them last December, it's startling to consider the challenges they've faced this year; them and so many others.

Infected

Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain is one of those novels that has an almost physical effect upon the reader. I'm finding myself sharing something of the feverish feelings of its protagonist, Hans Castrop. Reading the sequence in which he experiences his first x-ray and gazes upon the bones in his arm was a reminder of how strange this new medical technology would have seemed in its day. The heightened sense Mann conveys of the sheer strangeness of our bodies is hypnotic in its way, but forbiddingly so. I'm finding myself being both happy to read about events in the other-worldly sanatorium but happy to get away from them. Probably that's why it's taking me forever to read.

Afterword: I was feverish enough after my last reading of Mann's novel that I managed to misspell the name of his central character above. Apologies to Herr Castorp.

Going Bananas

Confusion reigns on the diet front. I am something of a banana man, especially with regard to breakfast on days when I am working. And the same is true of Peter. So it came as something of a blow when he informed me that Mei Hoe from HR had told him that the banana was generally regarded as a forbidden fruit when it came to breakfast, and especially so on an empty stomach. Since my stomach is always empty of a weekday morning, save for the banana in question, this came as less than welcome news. He also told me that he himself had researched the matter following the words of warning and it all turned out to be true. It seemed that the high potassium content of the fruit was involved - reminding me of the time the doctors told Mum there were to be no more bananas for her since another could easily kill her due to her high potassium levels - all on account of the medication she'd been on. (But that's another story, though a pretty good one, in its way.)

I informed Noi of all this - except for the bit about Mum, which she already knew - on getting back from work today, and she was more than a little sceptical, immediately going online and finding nothing but praise for the fruit. At which point I too did a little research, and got not very far at all. There is at least one 'expert' in the field who strongly cautions against a banana breakfast, and he's got a lot of attention, but this isn't necessarily reflected across all quarters.

So, as is so often the case with regard to what is reckoned to be good for you to eat, the jury is out on this one. And since I must admit to enjoying a banana in the morning I think I'll continue to live dangerously.

Not All There

We went to the awkwardly named Fusionopolis for our afternoon cup of tea today. It's been quite some time since we've ventured there but little had changed, though there were more shop spaces vacated.

There are lots of eating & drinking places, but precious few customers. Noi conjectured that it's probably busy with office-workers during the day, and I hope it is since it's a bit depressing to think of all that space being so empty so much of the time.

Perhaps it isn't just the name that's clumsily futuristic. Maybe it's a sign of the emptiness to come. There's certainly a strong sense of the melancholic about it all, reinforced by the emptily cheerful décor. Like reaching out to someone who isn't there.

At Rest

It seems odd to be approaching the end of November and not needing to be making arrangements to be travelling somewhere in the vacation. In some ways disappointing; in another way deeply restful. Sometimes making the best of things is just a matter of enjoying whatever you've got - which is easy when you realise just how much there is of that.

Numbers

For the first time in quite a while Noi and I were looking today at the numbers of those infected with the coronavirus and the numbers of those who have died internationally. It's a strange list. I don't think anyone would have predicted such numbers back in January when the news first came out of Wuhan of people dying of a new version of the flu.

In some ways the list reflects success stories, and not just the obvious ones, like Taiwan, New Zealand and our own Far Place, but nations in Africa that at one time I feared for. But then there are the unexpected disaster areas - and the weird sense of a lack of caring that sometimes seems to accompany these.

Surely no one would have guessed at the nations topping the tables in simple, stark terms of loss of life. And none of us can grasp the enormity of suffering that accompanies those numbers.

A Disappointment

I've always thought of myself as something of a fan of the films of Stanley Kubrick. The only one that disappointed me on the big screen was The Shining, but watching it again recently has made me revise my opinion. I was too much of a fan of King's novel to surrender myself to Kubrick's radical take on the story back in the day, but distance has leant much enchantment, as I found when watching the movie on the Netflix small screen recently. Oh, and I also greatly enjoyed Full Metal Jacket which I've always thought of as an under-appreciated work.

So I thought I was going to be blown out of my seat viewing A Clockwork Orange again (on Netflix) having last seen on the big screen before Kubrick withdrew it from circulation in 1971. After all, I'd found it viscerally exciting as a teenager in a number of ways, a bit disturbingly so, to be honest.  And here's the odd thing: watching again in 2020 I found it dated and draggy beyond belief. I thought it would at least look good, but found it visually overblown - almost pantomimic. And that's the word I would apply to the acting. Other than the brilliant Malcolm McDowell, everyone else seems to be mugging in that strange style adopted for English sit-coms of the 60s/70s. I suppose this is where the 'dark humour' critics refer to is supposed to lie, but this time it just didn't work for me.

Though Wendy Carlos's brilliant synthesiser pieces remain exempt from criticism.

Good Fun

Hugely enjoyed listening to Mozart's Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail over the weekend. For some reason I found it a lot easier to follow the opera in terms of its libretto this time around. I think the first time I listened through I was taken aback by just how much of the spoken material had been cut in John Elliot Gardener's Archiv version, which meant I struggled to make sense of J.D. McClatchy's verse translation. This time it was easy to keep tabs on the story, making guesses as to what was likely to be cut by reading in advance and figuring out what had to be retained to make sense of the plot.

And what a silly plot it is, though enough to enable Mozart to write some lusciously engaging music, and, possibly more important, some genuinely funny stuff. All the music for Osmin is wonderful - and what a marvellous scoundrel he is. I suppose I should be expressing some concerns about the stereotyping involved, especially as it affects my own faith, but I just can't be bothered. A scoundrel is a scoundrel and if he happens to get great music like this it seems petty to complain. And anyway Mozart scores big time in the tolerance stakes through his depiction of the Pasha Selim.

I must say, much as I can appreciate just how good Idomeneo is, and the qualities Wolfgang Amadeus brought to the table in opera seria, I'm very glad he got to the comic stuff eventually (especially when I've got Le Nozze di Figaro coming up for my next listen-through.)

Testing Times

Just completed an on-line course on cyber security. Not exactly something I wanted to do, but being given no choice I buckled down to it and somehow passed the test at the end. Fortunately they allowed for unlimited repeats on the answers. So it seems I'm not quite a hopeless case regardless of how hopeless I actually am.

Keeping It To Oneself

I'm not sure I enjoyed reading the lacerating take-down of my nation's Prime Minister in the New Statesman. It's not that I like the guy - it's hard to understand how anyone could like such a transparently venal character - but I confess to having found him mildly entertaining in his appearances in Have I Got News For You a few years back, and it's difficult not to feel something for anyone who gets shredded in the press in this fashion. The very fact that his venality is on display for all to see is painful in its way: I certainly wouldn't like my own paraded in public.

And that's what lies for me at the heart of the mystery with regards to the odd way in which some people actively pursue fame and its trappings, as in the case of the unfortunate PM. Isn't it obvious that becoming the centre of attention entails that the full range of one's faults are going to be eventually revealed to all and sundry? I briefly entertained the thought of what a biography of myself might read like the other day, and the horror of contemplating any kind of account of myself as a teenager, or twenty-something, transfixed me with horror (and things went downhill after that!)

I suppose in our fantasies of fame we vaguely imagine we can exercise some control over our image rights, somehow cutting out all the compromising, clumsy, messy, ugly stuff. But the only way we'll ever hide all that is by staying resolutely beneath the radar.

Something Final

For various reasons I've been thinking lately about the ways in which music seems to embody meaning. And then, quite fortuitously, I played the final Ninth Symphony of Sir Malcolm Arnold this evening. I've been struggling with this work for a while now, being aware that it has its detractors and it's not difficult to see their point. For example, here's Edward Gregson on the piece, taken from an otherwise highly appreciative account of the symphonies as a whole: In Arnold's case I fear the mind was not in control of the material and the result is a fractured musical syntax, devoid of any real meaning or substance.

There is something very simple - too simple - about the music, in stark contrast to the accomplished fireworks of just about everything else he produced. Yet, I think I got the point this evening. I felt the exhaustion of the piece, especially that of the final fourth movement. The mind is in control of the material, but too weary to be concerned about doing much else than mourning its own defeated condition. This is the music of wreckage - but leading to that gentle, almost affirmatory final D major, an acceptance of the wreck of a life, the blame, and what somehow survived it.

Creating Something

I'm now deep in Ted Hughes's River poems and drowning in the wonder of them. Even in the one or two poems I've struggled to come to terms with, the language has been super-charged with fluid brilliance. Put simply, it's easy to pick out killer lines.

And when a poem works in its entirety the result is extraordinarily powerful, akin to the casting of a deep, dark spell. Case in point: Creation of Fishes. In some ways this is TH at his simplest - I checked just now if it had featured in one of the books for younger readers, but it hadn't. And to my surprise it didn't feature in the version of River contained in Three Books. So something that knocked me sideways was later omitted by the poet, presumably because he didn't think it was up to snuff. (Or perhaps he thought of it as a poem for kids and, therefore, out of place in this very adult collection.)

I'll just quote three lines as an illustration of what sends shivers down my spine. These lines are developing the storyline, detailing what the Sun does having been fooled by the Moon into drowning his intolerably beautiful children: The raving Sun fished up his loveliest daughter / To set her again beside him, in heaven, / But she spasmed and stiffened, in a torture of colours.

If I ever managed to write anything as good as that, especially the final phrase, I'd consider myself genuinely creative, even if I never wrote anything else.

A Matter Of Priorities

Nice to meet up with Yati & Nahar and Mei & Boon this evening - the first time we've all six been together since the lockdown. Sadly the occasion was the wake for Mei's mum who passed away yesterday; hence we were allowed to meet as up to thirty mourners are allowed at one time. A reminder, if I needed one, of what counts in this life.

Still Learning

I thought I knew a fair amount about the history of popular music, including jazz and the blues. Then three days ago I watched and listened to Sister Rosetta Tharpe for the first time. I'd vaguely heard of her but what a privilege it was to finally listen to someone this amazingly good. Now sitting at the back of the class, for the slow learners, but happily so knowing there's more of this to come: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOrhjgt-_Qc.

On The Mountain

I've got four books on the go at the moment and I'm happy to say I'm thoroughly enjoying all four. And I'm reading all at a very slow pace indeed, which I think is adding to the enjoyment. I suppose I'm savouring them all.

One of them is the Collected Poems of Ted Hughes, which has been occupying me for some months now. I've just started on River, which at the time of publication struck me as a bit of a disappointment, I suppose because the original book, like Remains of Elmet, featured an interplay of text and image and the images didn't work for me at all. In the Collected there are no images, of course, and I think River gains by that. Having said that, I was struck by the mixed quality of the opening few poems. The Morning before Christmas struck me as Hughes on something close to concrete top form; Flesh of Light, I struggled with, not quite tuning in Hughes in mythopoeic mode (I think, I really didn't get it, I'm afraid).

Then there's Iain McGilchrist's The Master and his Emissary, regarding which the whole point was to reread at a pace that guaranteed I followed the fine detail of the argument. I'm happy to say it's working, such that material I thought was a bit tricky the first time round turns out to be obvious - and even more convincing. It's a bit like reading a murder mystery for the second time where the biggest puzzle is how you didn't figure out the killer right away the first time round.

The third tome under slow scrutiny is a handsome compendium from Thames and Hudson entitled The World of Islam. It's got lots of fascinating illustrations and features a number of essays from various experts - but of a fairly 'orientalist' persuasion, being edited by Bernard Lewis. It's been on my shelves for a few years and I've frequently dipped into its pages, but never tried to read more than a few pages of an essay at a time. I think I know why. The style resembles that of an encyclopaedia, never really seeking to excite the reader, but strong on basic information. In some ways this is the right time for me to carry out a sequential reading since I know enough to feel that I'm benefitting from the gaps in my understanding being filled in as opposed to learning about the world under view from scratch.

And, finally, the latest thing on the fiction front is a classic I've had in view for some years and never got round to: Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm highly deficient in German lit and the only Mann I've read is Death in Venice (as a teenager) and Buddenbrooks. I thought both were brilliant, so it's a bit of a surprise I've never got beyond them. Also the status of The Magic Mountain as a modernist classic, with all that that implies in terms of its relation to the work of Joyce and Proust, adds to the puzzling aspect of the gap - though simple laziness probably suffices as an explanation. Anyway, I'm sixty pages or so into Castrop's arrival at Davos and completely bewildered as to where any of this is going, though relishing the detail of every paragraph. An excellent sign.

In The Detail

In a world so astonishingly various, so complex, so incorrigibly, contradictorily plural, how can we ever be sure of the simple truth of anything? It's useful to acknowledge that often, possibly always, we cannot.

But what we can do is attempt doing justice to all that detail, indeed, welcome engaging with it. Which is a pretty good way to evaluate what is likely to be misinformation. By definition fake news is lazy and recognising lazy thinking is not difficult at all.

Making History

The thing about the present is how quickly it becomes the past and how very unstable it is. I remember being vaguely concerned about the counting of votes in Florida in the Bush-Gore face-off, but not with any sense that fundamental democratic values were at stake. How far-off all that seems now, and how strangely innocent - even though politics never is, and never was.

Painful Symmetry

I've been struggling to deal with high levels of discomfort in my right arm - the upper portion - for quite a while now. Marking, both the on-line variety and the pen-in-hand version, isn't easy. But it can be done, which is a small mercy. And it doesn't seem to make things worse - though not assisting in any kind of recovery either. Unfortunately early today, around eleven o'clock, a muscle in my left side, situated around the hip, decided it was time to remind me of its existence by generating a level of discomfort equal, if not greater, than that in my right arm. I felt oddly balanced in terms of the aching diagonal my body seemed to be rotating around for the rest of the day.

The great temptation at times like this is to wallow in self-pity and look at life, the universe and everything in a thoroughly jaundiced way, and I've allowed myself a reasonably deep wallow or two in the course of the day. But the more sensible option, as we all know, is to just get on with things and seek to do what needs to be done, enjoying the small triumph of getting through it all. I'm trying to do that now. Not sure I'm completely succeeding, of course, but I think I'm avoiding accessing the worst of myself, at least for now.

Getting Off

I'm having one of those, Please stop the world, I'd rather like to get off now, days. I suppose having no option but to keep on going is helpful. In its bleak way.

In The Shallows

Surprised myself today when reading about the verdict on the Johnny Depp libel case and realising that somehow or other I know a bit about the background. Celebrity news is not my thing, but I suppose it was the fact this celebrity was suing the Sun sort of interested me since I presumed there was a fair chance the publication had misrepresented the celebrity in question, based on their past record.

In the event no one seems to have come out of this one with their reputation enhanced - though it's fair to say the newspaper in question must have had a reasonable case for running the story they did. Other than that, the emptiness and extravagant waste inherent in the lives of those involved is depressingly striking. I know that sounds judgemental and holier-than-thou, but it looks like straightforward fact to me. The notion that an intelligent and talented guy in his late fifties clings to the notion of the romantic outlaw in relation to imbibing various illicit substances boggles the mind. I mean, you think he might have figured it out by now.

In Depth

Finished the first item on my great Mozart Opera listen-through project for the end of the year today. I'm afraid it took me a full three weeks to carve out the time for genuinely close listening to Idomeneo, but somehow the opera cohered for me over that time. The second and third acts are wonderfully constructed such that even someone with my tin ears can appreciate the glorious, almost seamless, flow of sound from one item to another.

I've been reading the relevant chapter in David Cairns's Mozart and his Operas as I've been going along and today enjoyed his blow-by-blow of the musical delights on offer with which he concludes his account. However, I'm afraid my powers of recall of the actual music were not up to the detail he provides which has caused me to wonder whether to now give the whole thing another spin, this time with Cairns's account in hand rather than following the libretto. I've got a feeling that doing so would prove illuminating, but perhaps in the kind of strenuous fashion I might not quite be up to.

Part of the fascination of Mozart lies in the way that the delicious surface of the music, its obvious delight-in-itself-as-gorgeous-sound, turns out to be just an introduction to its deeper delights.

Hard Times

It's not difficult even at a distance of halfway round the world to get a sense of just how unwelcome the latest lockdown in the UK will prove to be. And if a lockdown doesn't get close to one hundred percent support it's difficult to see it having the desired effect. I can understand why the schools are being kept open, but that exception alone puts the whole thing in doubt. It must be strange to find yourself in a situation when something close to a new way of going about things is demanded but there's nothing in the way of a commonality of desire to achieve what needs to be done.

The degree to which people in this Far Place buy-in to the various measures taken to control the pandemic is striking, but that's been hugely helped by the success (so far) of those measures and the underlying logic of the approach. I don't like having to wear a mask all the time but I absolutely don't mind having to do so because the purpose of doing so is entirely clear. I notice little in the way of Covid-fatigue on these shores, despite the extreme challenges some are facing, possibly because of a feeling that we're winning.

That sense of success may ultimately prove to have been illusory, of course, but just still being in the game at this stage is a boost. It feels good to be able to think that one's efforts, minor as they are, to do the right thing are helping get results.