Moments Of Choice

I've abandoned the great Mozart opera listen-through project from the back end of last year. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and bore reasonable fruit in terms of getting to grips with the first three on the list, but, for reasons that escape me, I just couldn't do Don Giovanni justice after making a start on the opening. Will resume some time this year - I hope. The thing is that I came to realise I was puritanically depriving myself of listening to other operas on the grounds that somehow I should be listening to Mozart. A bit crazy, no?

Anyway, today I bunged on Britten's Paul Bunyan - not exactly an opera, I know, but close, as an operetta, I suppose - and was pleasantly surprised by just how current Britten and, of course, Auden's concerns now appear. They wrote the piece around 1941, when the USA's sense of itself was in some doubt/debate and the (almost) final words of the giant lumberjack especially jumped out at me: Everyday America's destroyed and re-created, / America is what you do, / America is I and you, / America is what you choose to make it.

I suppose the same is true of any nation at any time, but in some circumstances the notion seems desperately relevant. 

Tank Empty

Hit the gym earlier and managed to exhaust myself after a 55 minute bout on the elliptical trainer. Have spent the last couple of hours trying to do what was needed for the end of the day but basically wanting to do precisely nothing - except collapse. Somehow kept going, but it was a close run thing.

Funnily enough it's a kind of happy exhaustion.

Not Exactly Normal

I managed to book a slot for Friday Prayers today, once again getting a place at the final round in the afternoon. I thought I'd adjusted to this new timing, having attended this session three times previously. However, today marked the first time attending the session from work and it seemed very strange leaving at that latish hour for the mosque. And praying in the new socially distanced circumstances felt as strange today as the first time I attended when the mosques were opened again.

I suppose the routine of attending Friday Prayers when working has become so ingrained that breaking that specific sequence is a reminder of just how much we've needed to adapt to meet the challenge of the pandemic. Thinking of how things used to be can't be avoided, and can be comforting in its way, but I can foresee a time when we'll look back on the times we are in now with a sense of nostalgia.

Still Crazy After All These Years

High spot of the day: Peter and myself in SAC doing impersonations of The Flower Pot Men from our long-ago childhoods. We thought we were hilarious, though any students over-hearing us probably assumed we'd finally gone mad. Which we had, in our own joyous fashion.

All A Bit Silly

One of the peculiarities of recent times has been the surrender of reasonably sane individuals to the world of 'management-speak' - targets, tools, outcomes, etc, etc. From what I can gather this is true of pretty much every profession everywhere in what passes for the developed world, making the situation all the more humorously tragic. I suspect that a number of the palpable idiocies of what passes as the management of football clubs grow out of this disease.(Newcastle, Chelsea, I'm looking at you.)

Today I was reading some introductory paragraphs on a 'tool' I am expected to employ in my business. For some reason I decided to pay real attention to the blather and was struck by just how nonsensical it all was. The very first sentence informed me that the activity involved was 'essential' to my development. I can assure you that not only is this not the case, but if I were to read the sentence out loud to my colleagues with a knowing smirk they would most likely start laughing at the palpable absurdity of the claim.

I might just try that tomorrow.

Loud & Proud

Lots of Zeppelin in the gym this evening, played at a suitably loud volume by Agad, Kiran's lad. Unfortunately I went at it a bit too fast in the early stages of my stint, spurred on by Black Dog and Rock & Roll. Found it difficult doing my Robert Plant impersonation whilst going full tilt on the elliptical trainer. A suitably powerfully slow live version of Since I've Been Lovin' You helped me through a taxing last five minutes, so all was well in the end.

Also enjoyed a bit of live Floyd - Money, featuring a tasty Rick Wright solo. Like being a teenager again, without the youthfulness.

Staying In Touch

We might like to believe that there are such things as shared experiences that cut across societies, but the truth is far otherwise. The pandemic serves as a particularly striking example. There are those in various nations who've enjoyed the experience of lockdown; for others it has been a nightmare. Some have prospered over the last year; others face economic catastrophe.

I can't say I've enjoyed the experience, but it hasn't been all that bad for me, and I can count some small positives. I've been lucky, so far.

So it seems all the more incumbent on me to try and understand the experiences of others in other places to keep somewhat in touch with what for so many, too many, has proved a grim reality. I read a couple of powerful articles today by and about Rachel Clarke, a palliative care doctor in the UK, whose reflections on the experience of dealing directly with covid victims have featured previously in the press. The first, extracted from book she's written, has a quiet power about it; the second, an interview, brings things up to date, reminding us of the uncertainty of it all.

Magisterial

Read the final sequence of stories in TH's Tales from Ovid at quite a lick today. Glad I did. Masterful storytelling. Never a false note. And so varied within the repetitions.

Impossible to pick a favourite. But I'll do so anyway: Arachne. Perfect in every way. Brutal yet sympathetic. The metamorphosis so simply rendered: And now she is all belly // With a dot of head. Monosyllabic magic.

Just started Birthday Letters, and the change of tone is startling. Astonishing to think that a single year separated the publication of these final books.

In The Distance

I was walking back to my desk around the middle of the day when I noticed, through the window looking out onto the path that leads to the back-gate of the school, a guy making a herculean effort to push a trolley laden with bulky black bags up the path that ascends to the gate. He was making his way, at times inch by inch, to the rubbish bins at the top. Most of the time his body was almost parallel to the ground as he pushed and I wondered if he would make it. He did, but it took quite a time. He wasn't one of our custodians, so I couldn't figure out exactly what he doing, or for whom he was doing it, but it was clear that this was tough work and I was hoping this was the only trolley he needed to deal with.

On this the anniversary of Dad's death, I'd been thinking earlier in the day of the heavy job he'd taken on at Rotunda in the last few years of his life, and watching the guy pushing the trolley those thoughts became sharper somehow, more aware of what physical exertion can cost us. I was made to wonder again what exactly had made Dad take on that job. After all, when I went to work in the factory only a year or so after he had to quit, my work, although involving some heavy lifting, wasn't anything like as punishing, and I was a healthy seventeen-year-old. Couldn't he have found a cushier number on one of the machines? I can only assume he ended up on the dirty roller for the extra money, and I don't think it paid all that much more than you got on an ordinary shift.

Another mystery I'll never solve about him. He's further away than ever. But closer in memory.

A World Elsewhere

Saw something this morning on Sky News about floods in the north of England, specifically relating to York and Manchester. In addition to waters rapidly rising, the snow was falling in one of the areas being reported on, and all this against the backdrop of the lockdown and the spread of the coronavirus.

When I was a little lad floods & the like happened in other places to other people. We lived shielded from disasters. Now I look across the world to the land of my birth from a place that feels safe and secure and worry for those I left behind.

Giving Voice

The Long Read feature in the on-line Graun is often worth devoting time to and John Colapinto's piece about the damage he did his voice in over-stretching it is particularly fascinating. I have some professional interest in the voice in relation to its use in the classroom and on the stage which added to my engagement in the article, but I think even the most casual reader would find much here to usefully reflect upon.

Actually, a peculiarity about my own voice has perplexed me for some years now, but for all its illuminatory qualities I didn't find any answers in Mr Colapinto's article. The puzzle is this: according to all the received wisdom, as I understand it, periods of silence help to rest and refresh the vocal cords. But the exact opposite is true in my case. If I'm not teaching, as is the case in vacations, I come close to losing my voice and am invariably dangerously croaky when I go back to work. It takes about four days of usage for my stronger voice to come back and the more I use it, the more flexible it becomes. I suppose I must be doing something right to get this result, but I'm not at all sure what it is.

Locking Up

One of my duties, in this case quite an easy one, involves me popping out in the late hours to lock up rooms that have been utilised for courses in the evening. It's a strangely satisfying thing to do.

It involves a curious sense of completion, of putting the full-stop at the end of the paragraph to round things off, at least for now. And I enjoy the empty loneliness of the buildings that are usually spilling over with life. Strange that something involving work should be so restful.

Deeply Nasty

Have been making slow progress in the selection of H.P Lovecraft's short stories edited by S.T. Joshi in Penguin Classics. Joshi's notes are first rate and sort of helpfully slow the reader down as one is less inclined to race through the tales when their genesis is illuminated. I've always thought of Lovecraft as a painful case of over-writing in an ineptly ornate style. Now I'm not so sure. The prose is ridiculously rich to the point of over-ripeness, but given the nature of the work there's something appropriate about this. It's difficult to pick out a sentence where one might argue that the redundancies serve absolutely no purpose.

Lovecraft's deeply unpleasant racism raises other questions, however. There's a nastiness involved which is deeply disturbing and I don't like to think what it must be like to be a reader on the receiving end of this. But in a deeply unpleasant way, the very genre in which the writer is working serves to contextualise his vile obsessions in a way that makes them 'work' somehow.

(Truth is, I'm struggling with the degree to which it can be argued that somehow this becomes acceptable, even though I think it would be disastrous to try and side-line the work on the grounds that such racism is unacceptable in our day and age.) 

Matters Medicinal

Spent part of the morning at my back doc's having my neck examined. It turns out that fair wear and tear have resulted in a slight misalignment of the cervical vertebrae. This can't be fixed, but it probably won't get much worse for a good twenty years, which will do for me. The pain in my right arm has reduced of late, so things are on the up.

Then spent part of the evening getting the first of two jabs to vaccinate me against the coronavirus. Not sure why I'm getting this priority treatment, but very happy indeed to take advantage of it, especially if it sets a good example. Mind you, the population of this Far Place is essentially sane and well-informed such that I doubt the anti-vaxxer lobby has much, if any, weight. The set-up this evening, by the way, looked very efficient which augurs well for vaccinating a whole lot of people very quickly. A good sign!

To The End

Another frazzled Friday. Stumbling to the end of the working week. Good to get there.

Painfully Interrupted

I'm a bit puzzled by all the ads you get on YouTube that break-up the various offerings there. I suppose they must work for the companies involved, but not a single one has ever been effective with regard to myself. Indeed, they actually make it even less likely that I'll buy the products on offer since I find them all so irritating. Today I was listening to a bit of live Crimso, from Mexico City in 2017, playing an incandescent Schizoid Man. GH's drum solo was interrupted by an ad, just before the segue back into the full band. I regard that as little short of a crime against humanity. I won't post a friendly link to the performance, because I see no reason to cause you a pain equal to that I suffered, Gentle Reader.

On Top

Cousin Paul's Christmas card arrived today - posted in mid-December, so the postal system has clearly been hit by the pandemic - bearing the wise and pithy observation: Corvid, Brexit and Liverpool winning the Premiership. 2021 can only get better. It struck me as wonderfully coincidental to read this on the day that Man U find themselves on top of the Premiership by a healthy 3 point margin.

Quite how this has come about is a mystery to myself and most other fans of the Mighty Reds and, frankly, I can't see it lasting. But I'm enjoying it whilst I can. I haven't yet actually been taunting the Pool fans at my place of work, but I may consider doing so if we get a result at Anfield.

Authenticity

I've grown to be more than a little dubious about the notion of authenticity in popular music, especially as linked to the idea of 'street cred'. All too often there's too much of the consciously performative involved in the work of those who'd like us to believe there's something more 'real' about them than there is for others in their field.

However, despite all the obvious contrivance involved in the video of Johnny Cash's Hurt I have no doubt at all that this is an example of the deeply real, so real it genuinely hurts to watch. I think I first saw it a year or so ago, and I happened to watch it again today. The impact had not been reduced in the slightest.

Weighty Matters

As the year gets under way I find myself over my fighting weight by more kgs than I find comfortable. I've been here before and generally have been able to put things to right with all the running around that the start of a working year demands.

But here's the thing. This time round I'm baffled as to how exactly I've put the weight on. The enforced idleness of last year's lockdown saw a slight increase certainly, and my intake of grub increased towards the end of the school year as all sorts of goodies came my way, around October. However, after that my sense of discipline kicked in and the final months of the year saw involved zero snacking. And I was hitting the gym regularly from early December onwards.

In fact, just a couple of weeks ago I was moving towards my target weight, yet suddenly seemed to pile on the kgs for no reason I can fathom. I was seriously wondering if there was something wrong with the scales. I suppose the current situation might have something to do with aging, but I can't think what. Anyway, I'll just have to keep doing the right things and avoid the biscuits and kerepok. Sadly.

Worth Waiting For

When I first heard Crimso's Islands back in 1971 I was impressed with the material on it, but a tad disappointed. I felt that full justice had not entirely been done to the compositions, especially the lovely Formentera Lady. I loved the string bass from Harry Miller in the intro and wanted a lot more of it.

Fast forward almost fifty years and I get my wish - plus loads of Keith Tippett tickling the ivories, some tasteful violin from Wilf Gibson and oodles of flute from Mel Collins which is always a good thing. The instrumental edit of the piece is gorgeous in every way and makes you wonder what other astonishing stuff lies in the DGM vaults and why they didn't put this out originally.

Getting Unstuck

As I've found so often in the past, the start of a working year has involved an abrupt cessation to my general reading. After burbling on towards the end of December regarding my relish for TH's Tales from Ovid I've only read a couple more of the tales, and not much more than that in any of the other books I've got on the go at the moment. I suppose this relates in part to the fact that on the fiction front I'm currently engaged in collections of short stories - a wide-ranging selection of Kipling's stuff in a rather handsome Penguin paperback taking its title from one of his best, The Man Who Would Be King, and a similarly handsome selection from the work of H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulu and other Weird Stories. They're both good reads, but easy to put down; a bit like boxes of really rich chocolates - easy to spin out.

I'm now endeavouring to get myself going again, and have had my head stuck in the TH Collected Poems to that effect. And I'm now off to peruse Kipling's memorably titled Dray Wara Yow Dee, which I've never read before. A bit of novelty always helps.

All In

It's been all go, and I've all gone. Tired, very, but good tired. So that's alright. And happily full.

Under Attack

I suppose anyone reading this who's aware of events in the American Capital might think the title of this post refers to that vague abstraction Democracy in the Land of the Free. And yesterday's post might also point them in that direction. But no. I have something more local, and personal in mind.

We've just been informed by the ever-reliable Devan, who looks after our garden in KL, that our frangipani tree has been attacked by a monkey, or monkeys. Judging from the photographic evidence he provided they've done quite a bit of damage, with the frangipani blossoms scattered everywhere and a few branches snapped off. It's been almost a year since we've seen the tree and it's a bit sad that it'll be much reduced when we finally get to go to our home there again. But I can't say we're completely cast down by this - after all, it'll grow gain. And I can't say I really blame the monkey, or monkeys, who perpetrated this minor atrocity. They probably had good simian reasons for what they did.

In stark contrast, the members of our species who indulged in deeply disturbing mischief in DC appear beyond reason.

(Just as a matter of interest, what I wrote yesterday was posted before the mob violence. It wasn't difficult to see it coming. Which makes it very puzzling that the forces of law or order tasked to defend the Capitol building managed to be notably absent. Hmmm.)

Strange Days

Now watching the news coming out of the US. Never dreamt I would see this kind of stuff. The Missus came up with the appropriate question: What is going on in America? My unspoken answer: I don't know.

Fully Occupied

I'd sort of forgotten just how busy work can be. Now I remember.

On a related point, one of the wisest things I've ever heard said about teaching is that teachers lose touch with the realities of the classroom as soon as they are out of them. If you say this to those in positions of authority who no longer have teaching duties they nearly always think it's intended as some kind of criticism of them. But this is not the case. It's amazing how teachers who are in the classroom every day can seem to forget the realities of the experience as soon as they are out of the door. It isn't wise to look at the job in the abstract. It's way too remorselessly concrete for that.

Towards The Light

A day featuring many points of light. Not the least a headline in The Straits Times about the remarkable increase in money given to various charities in the nation over the last year, and this despite the financial strictures faced by so many.

Many years ago I was of the opinion that human nature was essentially selfish, indeed, given to cruelty. I still think we are capable of selfishness and outright cruelty, especially when the climate of a society becomes so warped it allows of such. But I've come to believe that altruism is central to our nature, and have become more aware of the evidence to support this claim from a number of fields. I suppose that I no longer subscribe to the doctrine of original sin.

Hope I'm right. (The problem is, of course, that folly and downright stupidity are also central to our nature. I've not changed my mind on that one.)

Cooling Off

John tells me it's snowing in Manchester. Glad I'm not there. Hate the stuff.

I used to detest rain, but it's not so bad out in the tropics. We're in the rainy season, and the weather is behaving appropriately. Yesterday it rained all day - and we happily stayed in, munching fruitcake and drinking tea. Today the rain largely cleared, with a bit of drizzle now and again.

The result of all this is that temperatures have been pretty low and we haven't had to use the fan in the living room all that much. It makes a nice change, but it won't last. We're seeking to enjoy it whilst we can.

Killer, Really

There's a healthy abundance of live Van der Graaf Generator on YouTube I'm happy to say. Trawling through some of it today I came across a performance from 2005 of Killer, with Jaxon still in the band. Needless to say it's sensational, not least due to Jaxon's contribution both to the beefy riff that powers the song and a wonderfully manic solo. Hugh Banton also excels with lots of subtle variations on the keys from the original. Peter Hammill is inspiringly his emo self, and Guy Evans proves yet again to be up there with the greats, lending both incredible propulsive drive to one of the most driven of all VdGG pieces and a sense of drama.

I saw VdGG perform Killer live way back in the early 70s and I know they did it justice, but I can't recall any real detail from that concert. I have much to be thankful for in being able to so easily access the later work of the band.

Resolved, Again

Thought long and hard about a workable resolution for the year ahead. My growing distaste for mindless consumerism pushed me towards something related to the general idea of needing to practise frugality. But I couldn't quite formulate the wording until the Missus did it for me with her explanation of why we should stay in today: Let other people spend their money.

(And by the way, staying in was a great idea since were able to start on Noi's famous fruit cake for tea instead of going out somewhere, and she was also able to cook a fair number of her equally famous shepherd's pies - which we shared with our neighbours. I am now satisfyingly full after consuming a reasonable number of said pies. And I hope you are too, Gentle Reader, as the New Year kicks off.)