Finished reading Birthday Letters today. Each poem is powerful but gains even greater weight in being part of the astonishing whole. There's nothing else like it in the language. (It's odd that though my reading of the book took a couple of weeks, it felt as if I'd finished it in a couple of protracted readings. I suppose this is related to the way that the collection holds together as a single fabric.)
Still reeling from the final poem I thought I'd better put off starting Howls & Whispers until tomorrow. I'm thinking of trying to complete it in a day. I cross-referenced to Bates's biography of Hughes to make sure I'd understood where this final collection stands in relation to the Letters and their inter-relationship. Can't wait to read it.
In the course of my cross-referencing I chanced upon the paragraphs in which Bates deals with Nick's suicide. Heart-breaking. One of the odd effects of reading Birthday Letters is the way in which the children become so real.
I'm just not very good at watching stuff on the telly, and I'm not improving with age. But I managed to force myself to watch a full episode of the BBC's latest version of Maigret, featuring Rowan Atkinson, this evening whilst Noi was out at a wedding. Actually I'd watched the beginning of the episode a couple of times before but never managed to stay with the programme, despite its many merits. As I said, I've sort of lost the knack of watching tv drama.
The production values for this show were sky-high. It nails Simenon's Paris in every detail relating to period and atmosphere. And the acting was note-perfect, including Atkinson's inspector. He's wonderfully subdued and watchful, absolutely true to the character.
However, having said that, the casting, though brave, doesn't work. The first couple of times I tried to watch I couldn't quite get past the fact that this is Mr Bean / Black Adder, etc, etc and I struggled to adjust. This time I was okay with the great former comedian. I was no longer vaguely expecting a moment of mirth after each conspicuous pause; familiarity served to breed a kind of acceptance. But it couldn't alter the fact that Atkinson has the wrong face for the character. Maigret is above all ordinary, inconspicuous. The bourgeoise who effortlessly blends into the background and only holds attention through a kind of observant, intelligent solidity. They should have cast an unknown in the role, but I suppose they needed some kind of star power to sell the project. It looks so good it must have been expensive.
Above all, despite all though, the programme triumphed and its triumph is Simenon's. He remains unsurpassed in terms of conceptual brilliance and perfect story-telling. Not a bad combination, eh?
Over the weekend I read a couple of Kipling's short stories and I've found them quietly haunting me as the week has begun. The stories in question are On the City Wall and 'The City of Dreadful Night' and lie adjacent to each other in Jean Montefiore's excellent selection which has been occupying me of late. I suppose much of their impact might be ascribed to the fact that both are brilliantly written, but all the stories in the volume are, so I think there's something else involved.
I reckon that what hit me about the tales is the acute contrast between the implied harshness of City Wall, a narrative underpinned by an explicit reductive racism, and the deep compassion of Dreadful Night for the same 'natives'. It's obviously the same voice, its rhythms instantly identifiable, yet I've been wondering how the same consciousness could be responsible for both. Such is my puzzlement, I've decided to read the two tales again - and since I'm aware I missed much of the nuance of the complex former story I really owe it to RK to do so.
I doubt that I'm going to find any easy answer to my question, which is ok by me. In fact, I'm rather hoping to puzzle myself even further. I sort of enjoy a good haunting.
It's been a funny old day. Though nothing went wrong exactly, I had the odd sense that nothing was quite right. A bit like playing a role on stage and feeling that the timing of lines is a bit awkward, slightly off - but not enough for anyone to notice. Mind you, the sausage and mash and gravy & onions for dinner went a long way to making up for it all.
It's a sad fact about myself that I can be so easily complacent about the problems afflicting the world when they're not afflicting yours truly quite so directly. So far I've had a very easy time of it apropos the pandemic, and I find myself sometimes reading about the woes of others with a faint but distinct sense of personal vindication, as if to say those who haven't shown the same fortitude as myself are somehow lacking in the relevant qualities of character. Odd really since I haven't been called upon to show genuine fortitude at any point at all.
Quite unlike the case of the migrant workers in this Far Place who've been in the thick of it for almost a year now. Until today I was vaguely thinking that things must have got back to something like normal for them; indeed, I thought that their circumstances might even have improved with the move to newer, less crowded dormitories brought on by the belatedly recognised need to control the spread of infection amongst them. But reading an excellent story today on the CNA website about the general situation of the workers put me right.
These are guys who show incredible resilience and fortitude. I have much to learn from them.
Not exactly sure how I came across Carrot Revolution by Gabriella Smith as played by the Aizuri Quartet today, but I'm glad I did. Played it twice, in fact.
The great thing about making a musical discovery is the way it opens doors. Now looking for more from the quartet and the composer.
Watched a video earlier in the evening of two of my musical heroes, along with some of their noteworthy cronies, tearing it up. After a tiring day I felt something of my own energy being restored. I suppose it's akin to a variety of emotional contagion, if energy can be seen in some sense as having an emotional component.
But analysis can be placed aside here. The nature of the mechanism involved matters little compared to the enjoyable reality of the experience. A strongly recommended legal high.
In order to understand what it is to be human it seems to me that we need some awareness of the extremes of our nature. If we fail to consider what we are capable of at our very best and at our absolute worst there is a danger of settling for a fundamentally false picture of who we are.
But it's hard to maintain balance whilst negotiating those extremes. For a few minutes tonight I found myself contemplating the darker side, a place it doesn't pay to remain in too long, but where we sometimes need to stand. Must say, I look forward to spending rather more time at the other, happier, extreme soon.
Found myself with quite a bit to think about today concerning the minutiae of work. That's the problem with a welcome break, like this one for CNY: you get a bit too much time to think. Anyway, by the early afternoon I was finding it difficult to focus with one too many little thoughts whirling around my brainpan. So I decided to calm things down by bunging on Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians for a bit of guaranteed hypnotic calming.
The odd thing was that it took me a good few minutes into the piece to find the calm I was looking for. The opening segment in which Reich runs through the various keys he'll return to in more extended form later felt like an odd kind of imposition at first. It was as if I didn't want the stillness demanded by the music and sat feeling like I should be doing something. Only gradually did I make myself accept that I was doing something and that something was listening.
Mind you, once I'd been sucked in I couldn't have got out even if I wanted to. And I definitely didn't want to.
Watched a very fine version of Shakespeare's The Tempest over the CNY break. I got the DVD from my colleague Doreen. All the many virtues of the RSC are on display in the production, filmed in January 2017 in Stratford, but above all the visuals are stunning with loads of digital jiggery-pokery enhancing the performance. The funny thing is that this kind of thing in a movie doesn't exactly cut the mustard as you take it so much for granted (as in the case of Julie Taymor's film) but on stage it genuinely impresses in an appropriately magical manner.
I suppose you can judge the strength of any performance of the play based on how convincing the respective Ariel and Caliban are. In this case both are sensationally good, and their relationships with Simon Russell Beale's unusually thin-skinned Prospero lie at the emotional heart of the play. Indeed, I was surprised at just how much raw, painful emotion the cast found in the play and brought to vivid hurtful life.
Oh, and they found lots of comedy too. So it's all good.
After an early morning exchange of slushy cards Noi and I took ourselves down to West Coast Park for a bit of a walk. Observing the folks there - and a fair number of pooches - it struck me that, apart from the fact that all were wearing masks, except those running and cycling, it could have been any day at any time in the last couple of decades. The sense of business as usual, the ordinary routine, nothing special at all, was striking - and very welcome. I noticed quite a number of tents indicating people staying overnight and a few of the barbecue pits now open for action, a sign of the authorities loosening up somewhat on restrictions.
Of course, this could all go pear-shaped, as it has in a few nations who seemed to have got a handle on the pandemic. But so far the signs seem good, and if the holiday passes without any increase in the numbers of those infected it will be cause for muted, watchful, celebration. We may even be granted some form of recognisable Raya.
Ted Hughes's Tales from Ovid and Birthday Letters might appear to be very different in their concerns yet reading through his final collection I'm struck by one similarity. Quite a number of the Letters involve narratives of events involving Ted and Sylvia and the strikingly relaxed and easy manner of the story-telling reminds me of the character of the narratives in the translated Tales. It's as if TH has reached such a level of confidence that he doesn't try in any obvious sense to write 'poetically' for whole stretches of the poems. Yet even in the apparently blandest lines the language is working hard.
When reading The 59th Bear the other day I found myself marvelling at the perfection of the most casual details, the effortless mastery of throwaway lines. One example: We roamed, some at home in the marvellous abundance. / Eagles were laid on too. Just when you might think marvellous abundance is a bit of a lazy cliché, the idea that the birds are just being laid on for some kind of public performance makes you realise the work that every word is doing.
So much of what has been written about the poems in Birthday Letters seems to revolve around TH's sense of SP being doomed and the sheer intensity of their relationship. But I find much of their power lies in the evocation of the memory of the ordinary stuff of life that went on regardless of the fact that each happened to be a genius.
Mind you, I must acknowledge the frequency of lines that catch the breath and momentarily stun. Towards the end of Grand Canyon, the poem that follows The 59th Bear, I stopped at the line, Nothing is left. I never went back and you are dead. I had to overcome something suspiciously close to a sob before continuing. Yet, again, the line is so simple and unadorned.
One of the interesting aspects of capturing one's own thoughts in writing is being able to look back to what was going on in the head of a former self. Today I came across a poem I wrote some years back, in January 2003, if I'm not mistaken, after watching a school assembly celebrating the CNY of that year. (Of The Goat, I think.)
I find it difficult to connect with this former self, I must say, but find myself admiring at least one turn of phrase. Not so sure of the rest, I'm afraid. But here it is, for what it's worth:
Chinese New Year - School Celebration
Garish, vulgar, a tumbling broad clownishness.
Too red. Too yellow. Too bright. Too much
For a world already too busy.
But then to realise even their biggest gesture
Possesses a precise grace
And speaks across the stage, speaks across
Spring to new Spring, offering the miracle
Of the world's newness and promise
Of illusory prosperity for those whose
Lot will never be to prosper - these who capture
In their chaos of pinks, greens, blues, yellows, reds, golds
The promise of a world more brave, more true:
The vibrant tumbling dance of what is
ever-new.
We found ourselves in Geylang Serai this afternoon, after delivering some Chinese New Year goodies to Siew and Gebian. Lots of memories of our many years in the area, which still maintains its charm despite the proliferation there of an unfortunate number of overly-large new buildings. The tea and epok epok tasted as good as they always did, proving that the important things don't really change.
Actually, it's quite a novelty for us to be in Singapore for CNY. Must say, much as I enjoy our traditional journey north, it's a relaxing experience to stay exactly where we are.
This year Ramadhan begins around mid-April, so still a couple of months away. So it might seem odd to write something in reference to the fasting month now. But over the years I've noticed that my co-religionists often start making overt, brief references to the fast ahead around about this time. I've come to understand what I think are the reasons for this.
The fast is never quite routine. No matter how much one adjusts to the demands involved, these are real demands. And the fast is a time of enhanced intentionality. You don't meet the demands without intending to. So the mind must be prepared. A kind of looking forward to the fast is involved in referencing it at this time and an odd nostalgia relating to Ramadhans past.
It's as if an instinctive sense of something involving enhanced meaning kicks in. Something like planning but nothing quite as precise as that.
Great article in yesterday's Graun on-line by Radiohead's Colin Greenwood outlining some of the costs of Brexit in musical terms. The culturally disastrous aspects of withdrawal from the EU have rarely been addressed in any detail, yet seem to me central to an understanding of just how misguided the whole project is. Of course, we live in a world in which that which can't exactly be quantified somehow doesn't count for anything. (See what I did there?)
We can only feel the loss.
Noi and I were at the IMM building this afternoon, putting some stuff in a small storage area we rent there. Walking down one corridor in the very large shopping mall we happened upon a very long queue. The carefully observed social distancing adhered to made the queue a lot longer than it would have been in ordinary circumstances, but even so it seemed quite extreme in length. We walked the length of the corridor, and then down another long corridor, following the queue to its final destination: a small shop for the Singapore Pools. Noi knowingly informed me they were there to buy 'numbers' - a mysterious activity that seems to appeal to quite a number of those resident on the island.
I was torn between a sense of admiration for the unflinching patience of those involved, given the fact the queue hardly seemed to be moving at all, and a feeling of sharp disorientation at the level of craziness on public display.
Am making slow but rewarding progress through The Man Who Would Be King: Selected Stories of Rudyard Kipling. I'd forgotten just how demanding he is as a writer, especially in the very short stories, particularly in terms of just how elliptical he can be. You really have to read with full attention, and then some, to pick up all the nuances.
I've just finished A Wayside Comedy and need to reread it in order to 'place' every line of dialogue, and figure out who's having an affair with whom, but don't mind doing so since it's so wonderfully acidic that I'm looking forward to suffering the full, harsh impact. And, my goodness, for a popular writer of his period Kipling is extraordinarily bracing when it comes to the representation of folly and weakness.
There isn't an ounce of sympathy, as far as I can see, for the characters in his 'comedy' - just a hard, unrelenting clarity of vision, but in a curiously amoral non-judgemental manner (except for the obvious judgement that he's dealing with fools who deserve each other.) And these are the 'colonial masters'.
I sometimes wonder how much of Kipling's harshness derives from his own experience of being bullied at his first boarding school. At times he seems something of a bully himself, as a writer. Think of the distinct strain of cruelty underlying the schoolboy stories in Stalky & Co. Yet it's the imperiousness of the narrative voice that lends so many of his tales that spell-binding quality of being so perceptively, ruthlessly, knowing.
17.30
I'll be off out soon to get the second jab in the vaccination against the coronavirus. And, in case you are wondering, I'm acutely aware of my good fortune in all this.
22.45
Now pretty thoroughly immunised, I'm happy to say. The process was a lot quicker this evening than it was three weeks ago, suggesting that they're really getting into gear now. Hoping that those who are particularly vulnerable to the virus are getting the same protection; indeed, hoping it gets rolled out to all soon.
Just a thought: We create ourselves through the imitation of others.
Not bad for a busy Wednesday, eh?
(Postscript: When I wrote the above last night I vaguely thought there was some kind of insight involved. Reading this almost a day later, the thought strikes me as entirely trite. So, not so good even for a busy Wednesday, I'm afraid.)
Very good article in today's Straits Times. Kishore Mahbubani writes pithily on the need to balance an understanding of individual rights against responsibilities and how well that understanding has served those societies that have managed the spread of the coronavirus with some degree of success.
As I was reading I was thinking how obvious this all is and yet how profoundly blind some nations have become to the obvious. I suppose that semi-paradox lies at the heart of the exasperation engendered in folk like Peter, Chris, Phil and myself when we're exposed to those from our homeland who cry freedom in ways that are less than sensible.
When I got married I had to attend a series of classes on marriage in Islam. I can remember thinking how profoundly practical - and extremely useful - the lessons were. The rights and responsibilities of a Muslim husband were outlined to me with blinding, binding clarity - in bulleted points. It struck me then as one of the sanest lists I'd ever seen.
I was never good at Winter, and I don't miss it, one little bit. But I suppose I miss the idea of Winter, the poetry of the season. Here's Edmund Spenser beginning February in The Shepheardes Calendar: Ah for pittie, wil rancke Winters rage, / These bitter blasts neuer ginne tasswage? / The kene cold blowes through my beaten hyde, / All as I were through the body gryde.
That's quite enough cold for me, thanks; far too easy to imagine if you're from Manchester. (And I reckon old ES is making a lot of this up from his own imagination. His verse is so inauthentic. He actually glosses that gryde which was already archaic when he used it, admitting it's not even in Chaucer. Much used of Lidgate, he claims, saying it means 'pierced'. But that doesn't make it right - even if it sounds great.)
