Listing

Just got to the end of a long to-do list for the day. Now thinking of what will need to be on the list for tomorrow. There's some small joy in crossing the items off. I just wish the joy was a bit bigger.

Yet Another Bloody Emperor

Found an outlet of sorts for my anger at stuff in the news through music today. It's always good to get up close and personal with VdGG, and listening to Peter Hammill's excoriating Every Bloody Emperor was happily therapeutic. Some wonderfully acid lyrics from the master of genuine angst: 

Yes and every bloody emperor's got his hands up history's skirt / As he poses for posterity over the fresh dug dirt. / Yes and every bloody emperor with his sickly rictus grin / Talks his way out of nearly everything but the lie within / Because every bloody emperor thinks his right to rule divine / So he'll go spinning and spinning and spinning into his own decline.

Also I found playing Dimitri Shostakovich's 10th Symphony in the car this morning a useful way of entering into the jittery anxieties of those threatened by the idiot emperor in a vaguely cathartic manner.

I was driving, as it happens, to the Botanic Gardens for a morning walk with Boon and Mei and the Missus - possibly the best therapy of all.

Torn

Gripped by events in Eastern Europe and wishing I wasn't. Feeling something close to despair, which is pointless as that does nobody any good. It would be nice to wake from the nightmare of history, but in the meantime we can only seek to stumble helpfully in the darkness.

Changing Times

Not sure what made me think of this, but it just occurred to me that I never ate pizza until I went to university. The first one I had, courtesy of my mate Steve Cannon, made me feel queasy it tasted so rich. I reckon it was only in my final year that I actually got used to them.

The world massively changed in 1974 - 1975, but only I noticed.  

A Tiny Bit Wiser

Just finished Ian Fleming's Casino Royale. Gosh, he was a strange writer. I think I gained some understanding of the popular appeal of the novel from the central sections. Once Bond is chasing the villain and then finds himself being savagely tortured by the bad guys the narrative builds real momentum. The violence is genuinely gripping and extremely disturbing in terms of the full-on sado-masochism of it all, and I can see a dark power at work here. There's some surprisingly expressive writing in those segments.

But once the number one bad guy is almost casually eliminated Fleming turns to what on one level is just trashy romance, replete with tin-eared dialogue. Plot seems to disappear for pages, even though it's obvious that the girl Bond has fallen for double-crossed him. And that naivety is entirely out of character for the hard-bitten, sceptical agent, except that he doesn't have any consistent character as far as I can make out. I mean, the intensely intelligent and clear-headed gambler of the game that dominates the first third of the text sort of vanishes the moment he's won and decides to behave in supremely dumb fashion. Oh, and the description of the game, which goes on for pages, is not exactly compelling, except for experts at baccarat. 

I suppose Bond is just Fleming in ill-fitting fictional disguise, and the weirdness of the writer translates into an odd power for those who like this sort of thing. I kept thinking that a good editor would have cut at least half the text and insisted it be reshaped - but then it sold gazillions in the strange shape it has - so what do I know?

A Confession

Cleaning up the desktop on my laptop helps me feel more in control of things.

(Earlier today I jotted a list of 10 sad things about myself in response to someone praising something they thought I'd done really well. It's a useful way to stay grounded. The item above came in tenth place, so you can imagine how embarrassing the other 9 are. In fact, you'll have to imagine them as I've got no intention of opening up any further on this stuff.)

No Joking

Finished watching Joker on Netflix yesterday afternoon. Found much to admire about the film. The acting was uniformly excellent. Joaquin Phoenix was sensationally good as Arthur in the titular role and De Niro fascinating in what could easily have been a throwaway performance as the oily talk-show host. The script was intelligent, dealing with its dark themes with a genuine respect, and the movie was beautifully shot with a kind of low budget aesthetic that was very appealing. So why didn't I enjoy it at all? ( - which accounts for the fact that it took me over two weeks to bring myself to watch the whole.) Perhaps I wasn't intended to?

No Wiser

Not exactly sure why I'm reading the first of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, Casino Royale, but I am. For some reason the library at work features quite a number of the series and I picked this one, which I never read as a teenager, at the same time I took out the Stephen King novel that wonderfully occupied me until I finished it yesterday.

I can't say I'm gripped by Fleming's debut fiction but there is a sort of fascination in trying to figure out why a lot of other readers were fascinated by it circa 1953. The sense of sophistication is wafer thin, but I suppose it beguiled his readership in those early post-war years. Even as a younger reader I could never figure out why it was that talented writers like Kingsley Amis were fans of the series and I'm certainly no wiser now.

Nay-saying

Lots of articles have been appearing just lately on James Joyce, especially with regard to Ulysses, this being the centenary of the greatest novel in English (and possibly any language) of the twentieth century. I'm certainly not complaining, though suffering mild irritation over the fact that my actual copy of the novel, which I feel inspired to re-re-re-read is on the shelves of Maison KL and so remains out of touch.

A particularly useful piece for those needing some kind of introduction to the works of the great man appeared in today's Graun online. Entitled Where to start with James Joyce it lives up to its billing with some enthusiastically common sense recommendations, and the comments BTL also prove quite illuminating, though, as usual, there are plenty of nay-sayers as to Ulysses as a readable text (and, of course, Finnegans Wake) and to Joyce as a writer of any stature at all.

It's a fascinating mystery to me as to why this kind of commentator should even bother - but they always do. I mean, why go to the trouble of announcing you find Joyce unreadable? What possible benefit is there in that for anyone reading the comment, except to make those who belong to the fraternity of non-readers-of-Ulysses feel better about their failure? And why are these people reading an article about the pleasures of reading Joyce? Funnily enough, you can guarantee finding the same kind of comments under any on-line article relating to the genius of Bob Dylan.

I must say, when I was at university I regarded Finnegans Wake as unreadable - because I couldn't get beyond the first page - and felt that Joyce had gone in the wrong direction after 1922. But I didn't go around telling the world this and attempting to stymie anyone's attempt to attend the Wake, partly because I suspected there might well be some kind of deficiency in myself as a reader. And now my position on Joyce's final work has changed. I still haven't read it, but I have a vague plan to make an attempt come retirement and I'm keenly aware from hearing the text performed that I might well enjoy the effort as long as I accept I'm not very likely to really get to grips with a novel that's surely intended to escape the reader who tries to pin it down.

I wonder if that's what fuels the annoyance of the nay-sayers, since annoyance does seem to characterise their offerings, or, rather, lack of offering anything remotely constructive? A feeling that what I can't grasp must be rendered as unavailable to all?

Catching Up

Shared a cuppa this evening with old friends and colleagues from the school I taught at from 2004 - 2006. The memories came flooding back. Here's an odd thing: this is the school at which I spent the least number of years in any I taught at and it's the school of which I have the most vivid and warm memories. Noi often says those were the years in which I worked the longest hours and had the most stories to tell.

Unputdownable

I really haven't got time to read, which makes it all the more remarkable that I'm reading Stephen King's The Institute in every spare (or unspare, I suppose) moment I've got. But, in truth, it's not all that remarkable since this is what happens when I'm hooked and if anyone can assuredly hook me it's Mr King. And millions of other readers, I suppose, so it's not just a personal thing. How does he do it? I suppose I could figure out some ingredients of the fictional spell in a vaguely analytical manner, but I can't be bothered as I just want to get on with reading and being under the spell. So, bye everyone, I'm off for a few minutes spellbound reading.

Good For A Laugh

The kind soul who passed Tibor Fischer's The Thought Gang to me compared it to A Clockwork Orange. I can see the basis of the comparison in that the sociopathic nature of Eddie Coffin, its philosopher-narrator, holds the novel together as does Alex in Burgess's tale. But Eddie is a genuinely likable and amusing sociopath, which gives the work a flavour all of its own. I find myself thinking of P.G. Wodehouse as its most obvious progenitor, odd as that may sound. Its farcical qualities match those of the great Master of Farce in the English novel, and, like Wodehouse, Fischer is good for a laugh out loud on every page. To be honest, as I reached the final pages of the story I got a bit worried it might turn serious, and I suppose it did, but in an entirely comical manner. Not so sunny as Wodehouse, but certainly brightened the darkness.

Just Talking

It's been quite a time since I've had anything in the way of a relaxed, extended chat with my sister, so talking to Maureen over the phone on Sunday was a bit of an occasion for me. It looks like the recent extended bout of rehab may turn out to be a very welcome turning point. She sounded like her old self, except older, oddly reminding me of Auntie Norah. I suppose it's so long since we've really talked I'd not been aware of something of a downward shift of pitch in her voice. Mind you, she was also nursing a cold so that may account for it.

John was also sounding a lot brighter than in recent conversations, lifted, I think, by having company again. It looks like there's a chance that they may carve out some genuinely happy times between them in the months - maybe years - ahead. That's not something I thought of as a possibility up to the end of last year. It's against the odds, I suppose, but it'll be all the sweeter for that.

Acting Naturally

I'd contrived to three-quarters forget that my favourite amongst Chaucer's early poems is set on the equivalent of this day several centuries ago: For this was on Seynt Valentynes Day, / Whan every foul cometh there to chese his make, / Of every kynde that men thynke may, And that so huge a noyse gan they make / that erthe, and eyr, and every lake / So ful was that unethe was there space / For me to stonde, so ful was al the place. Fortunately, I somehow remembered over the last weekend that Chaucer's happily baffled narrator got to witness the noisy Parlement of Foules at this time of year and duly read the poem ahead of today to get myself in the right frame of mind for enjoying and half-understanding what Nature, the vicaire of the almighty Lord has to teach us of our own nature and how we, like our feathered friends, are priked with pleasaunce, and fortunately so.

I don't think we've increased in understanding of the place of love and desire in human experience since Chaucer's time, but we're lucky to have the great poet to consult on such matters, if we but remember he's there. (And there's an excellent reading of the poem on YouTube to facilitate such consultation.)

And, of course, we're supremely lucky to have Nature working her magic upon us, even in age, such that a simple exchanging of cards on this day can mean so very much.

Differences

Spent a highly enjoyable couple of hours at the wedding of Ahman, the youngest son of our ex-neighbours from the mansion. Apart from the excellent food and company I was fascinated to find out more about the background of Encik Potam, husband of Noraini and father of the groom. He was sitting at our table for most the two hours chatting away to a guy who was obviously a very old friend and it was the friend who filled us in at some length on their shared background as members of the Batak people from Lake Toba in North Sumatra.

I was struck particularly by the fact that the two friends were nominally of different faiths, the friend being a Protestant, yet this obviously meant little if anything to them. Indeed, the Christian friend noted that church and mosque were next to each other in their town and he had spent many nights sleeping in the mosque.

The memories weren't all happy ones, though. One reference to the need to acquire Muslim names in the period of Confrontasi (in 1966, the friend specified) hinted at a sometimes unaccommodating darkness that needed negotiating. But in our present all looked well and I was struck, as I am so often in this Far Place, by the relentless, glorious plurality of the world. 

Upon Waking

Hot milo (2 in 1, calcium plus); OldTown White Coffee (3 in 1 - guaranteed caffeine & sugar rush); Elvis Costello & The Imposters - Look Now; Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool; progress on King's The Institute and Fischer's The Thought Gang.

More than enough; more than plenty. 

Everybody Hurts

A sudden, minor revelation yesterday. A colleague who'd seemed unusually insistent on maintaining safe-distancing measures demanded we build-in ART-testing for students in an event we were planning since she would be occupying the same space as them when it was likely that they would be unmasked and she was concerned about going back to her elderly mother who is in fragile health and infecting her. Her sense of something close to panic was clear and entirely understandable. Imagine having to deal with that dreadful possibility on a daily basis. What had seemed like unusual and slightly obsessive insistence turned out to be common sense and a wholly natural, praiseworthy, protectiveness.

A useful reminder of the plight of the fragile at this time, and the dilemma attendant upon the necessary transition to an acceptance of what I've heard termed 'endemicity'. People are going to get hurt. We can only hope that the number is reduced to the lowest possible - and try to ensure we don't turn a blind eye to the pain involved. 

Torn

Now reading two novels at the same time. This is a foolish thing to do and not recommended. My mistake was to glance at the opening of Stephen King's The Institute on taking it out of the library. Instantly hooked, of course. But I was already at the midpoint of Tibor Fischer's somewhat more cerebral, but highly entertaining The Thought Gang. So now I keep jumping from one to the other because I sort of can't put either down, if you see what I mean.

A dilemma, indeed. But quite a nice one in its way. And now I need to break off and get back to reading both at once.

No Problem

The early part of my evening, or, rather, the late afternoon (the time in question being around 5.15 pm) was slightly blighted by a problem with the laptop I use for work. It was very difficult to get it to boot up (if that's the right term?) and once I got to the desktop nothing happened no matter what I clicked on. I assumed there was something seriously amiss and found myself figuring out how I might cope without the thing given what I needed to get done tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. In fact, the problem turned out not to be a problem with the computer itself but with a malfunctioning mouse, which was hardly a real problem at all, so all worries and difficulties had been resolved by 6.20.

However, the sad result of this non-event was that I couldn't give the curry puffs and pot of tea provided by the Missus at that appropriate hour the one hundred percent attention they warranted. Mind you, I did manage a reasonable ninety percent and managed to enjoy them, so all was not lost.

There is no moral to this tale, other than the obvious one that most of our first world problems are not problems at all and a failure to pay full attention to what really counts in this life is just stupidity. (By the way, in case you're confused, I'm implying that the tea and munchies count for a lot more than not being able to function effectively at work for a day or two or three.) 

Bad News

Sky News's recent reports from Afghanistan have not made for easy viewing. So when the newscaster for this evening announced another report from Alex Crawford relating to an impending humanitarian disaster I was prepared for some difficult viewing. To say that the report was painful to watch is an understatement.

It's difficult to see what good might come out of this kind of reporting, except for the absolute necessity of letting the world know about the suffering of so many of the Afghan people.

Dozing

Having taxed myself with nothing in the slightest bit onerous in the course of the day I managed a ferociously deep doze around 4.05 pm. The funny thing was that the urge to nap came unstoppably upon me despite my not in the slightest deserving to do so. This might account for the relative brevity of the experience. By 4.50 pm I was up and doing the afternoon prayer and feeling right as rain.

Funnily enough, this is the first nap on a working day that I've experienced for quite some time. Not sure what got me out of the habit, but I'm happy to get back into it.

Keeping It Real - 2

Although the jargon employed at work is maddening in the way of most silly jargon, small joys occasionally pop up in the general desolation. In the last staff meeting of 2021 I was quite taken by a reference to 'mixed reality' in lessons, and the phrase has since popped up more than once in meetings related to the use of IT in the classroom. As far as I can make out the phrase in question is an attempt to acknowledge the odd status in ontological terms of the representations of real experience we get through computer screens.

I have a feeling that for some of my colleagues such representations are even better than the real thing, and who am I to disabuse them? (Must admit, though, seeing live footage of some bands in concert makes me feel like I was there despite my certain knowledge that nothing can substitute for the sheer visceral ooompphhh of live music.)

Making Connections

Read Jean Tay's play Boom over the last couple of days and enjoyed it very much. It's constructed in a sequence of often very short scenes, no fewer than twenty in each of the two acts, and initially I thought the scenes functioned as only very loosely connected vignettes. However, I gradually became aware of the crafty ways in which apparently disconnected characters and ideas were woven together and how the play held together as more than a series of entertaining sketches. Must say, though, that I didn't mind the initial disconnectedness at all since the strong thematic connection evoked through the notion of property development and the sense of what constituted a real home held the material together despite the seeming lack of plot.

Indeed, I'm not convinced that the story that gradually emerged really worked for me, though I'd want to reserve judgment on this until I experience the play on stage. I had an uneasy sense of elements of the melodramatic taking shape, especially in the playing out of the tragic history of the central character's family. But, who knows, in performance the material may have the necessary wallop.

What did work for me was Ms Tay's control of the language of the play, which varied wonderfully between the convincingly colloquial and genuinely poetic, and the abundant sardonic humour of the piece. It was easy to see/hear how this would work with an audience. I found myself wondering whether a staging by my drama guys might work, though I'd be loathe to have to excise some of the edgier language given our context - though it's good to see this aspect of the work didn't stop it being selected as an 'O' and 'N' Level Lit text on these shores.

Depth

So much great music to listen to. Recently stumbled upon Jonny Greenwood's piece for solo violin and strings Horror Vacui as performed at the Proms in 2019 and realised I just don't know enough about the orchestral music he writes. This is stunning. Must have amazing to listen to live. Struck by the physicality of the sound - the sense of something occupying three dimensions, even through cheap ear buds.

Looking Ahead

Today is the first day of the month of Rejab in the Islamic calendar. By tradition, and simple good sense, a time to think ahead to the holy month of Ramadhan, which lies two lunar months hence. So that's what I've been doing today, amongst other things.

As usual the thought of fasting for a full thirty days brings with it a sense of trepidation; and as usual the thought of fasting in Ramadhan engenders a kind of excitement. In my very senior years I'm finding the balance tipping the way of excitement, but the trepidation remains very useful in terms of getting myself mentally geared up for what is, at one level, a test. (At another, deeper, level it's a blessing - but that's always a discovery to be made, not a cliché to be assumed.)

A Bit Much

I've decided, now I've finished the book, that I was a bit harsh in my comments about Meira Chand's A Different Sky the other day. I was writing as if the models for her work were the great panoramic European novels of the 19th century. Actually, she's writing for what was once termed a middlebrow audience, and doing that really well. Once you've accepted that she's providing readers with what they want, a well-told tale with lots of historical insight, but nothing too destabilising, then A Different Sky is entirely successful. Indeed, her readiness to look at the intensely dark side of wilful cruelty and dreadful suffering in the war years is audacious in its way.

The problem is that by its very nature this kind of historical saga/romance is always undone by the weight of its ambition when subjecting the genre to the highest scrutiny. There is no way the writer can pull off the sheer range of characters necessarily involved without resorting to types, unless we're dealing with a writer at the level of Hilary Mantel (or Tolstoy!), and that's a big ask, as they say these days. And the conventionally middlebrow writer is more than likely going to create types that fall neatly into a safe reading of history in which the outcomes of which we are aware guide the confusions of the past. Mind you, it's very much to Ms Chand's credit that she conveys something more rawly real than simply a general sense of the injustices of colonialism. And there are moments in her novel when the messy uncertainty of history takes over from a comfortable narrative of post-colonial success.

Just The Beginning

A minor celebration this evening for Fafa's birthday, though the big bash is yet to come. Much laughter with the family. A nice way to get February on its way.