Years And Years And Years

Just checked on what I wrote in this Far Place five years back on this day of days for our little household - to see if it still counts. It does. Royally so.

Other Minds

Another day wound up with an article from the Graun - this time from their Long Read series. I'm pretty sure we'll never understand how animals think but it's fascinating trying to. And morally necessary. 

Another reminder of something I need to learn a lot more about. 

Countdown

Finished the day mulling over a recent article from Simon Tisdall on the uncounted. Funny how easy it is to close an eye, possibly both, to those who don't quite count.

Counting Out Time

Technically I'm on holiday tomorrow, as in it's the first week of the June vacation for schools here. The sad reality, not unfamiliar to me at this time of year, is that I'll be ultra-busy on two fronts. The first of these: extensive rehearsing with our drama guys for As You Like It to get things moving along for our July show. The second of these: meeting a draconian deadline from the IBO for marking of one of their June papers whilst trying to help my team along in relation to the same. By the way, there are bits and pieces of other stuff to fill in the cracks, if any open.

So how can I possibly think in terms of keeping my mind alive through reading and listening to music? Well, it is possible, but requires some kind of planning - though not so much on the music front which is just a matter of banging something on in a spare ten minutes here and there. I'm thinking more of a rough plan on what to try and read over the next week. 

I've abandoned all hope of getting on with reading any kind of novel, basically keeping the three currently on my reading list ready and waiting for when the real holiday starts, and they'll be accompanying me to Europe whence we've set our sights. I've decided instead of keeping a bit of fiction ticking over to devote any and all available spare time to reading the final 100 pages of the second volume of Archie Ammons's The Complete Poems. I really need to finish this and move on, but that's likely to be helped considerably by the sheer quality of the poetry published but uncollected (until now, that is) that completes the mighty volume. Just this morning, before I applied myself to my quota of scripts for the day for IB I read a sequence of five gems in a row, and the world was a better place for it.

So something to look forward to in a week that's likely to fray me at the edges more than somewhat. 

Making Music

After a day largely spent marking (just the afternoon, but that was quite enough) it was a relief to get out to a concert in the evening.

In fact, this was the first concert of genuine live music I've attended in quite some time - the first since the pandemic hit, I think. And it seemed fitting that the music was being made by students - a reminder of how the capacity for making sweet sounds is a general one, not solely for specialists, though these kids had the talent to be special.

The essential tool for the evening was the voice, generally pretty much unadorned, this being our senior 'choir' who style themselves Vocal Accord and perform largely a cappella. So the sense of the music being very much 'made' in the moment was particularly strong, and helped enormously by the obviously deep enthusiasm of the makers. Good to see the performers feeling the music physically, and emotionally. Good to be live and alive, eh?

Not Paying The Price

Slept well last night, not cramping up at all. But still felt dog-tired all day.

Which raises the question, Why exactly are dogs singled out as being embodiments of exhaustion? It's not just me, you know. How about the Fab Four?: And I've been working like a dog.

Most dogs of my acquaintance have been pretty lazy, lucky things. Not as bad as cats though, eh?

Paying The Price

Very pleased with myself for getting to the gym this evening despite not really having the time to do so. But also paying the price in terms of unfathomable tiredness. I suspect I'll have an attack of cramp in my nether regions at some point in the early hours, but I'll just grin and bear it. Or cry and bear it. Something like that.

In The Lead

One of the more doubtful joys of leading a team of examiners when marking on-line is realising that you've forgotten to reply to a query made earlier in a busy day and suddenly remembering said query when you're about to make your way to the land of nod. But better than waking in the middle of the night and suddenly remembering, I suppose.

Fings Ain't Wot They Used To be

The thing is that I can remember a time when a thing wasn't actually a thing.

Being There

I had Peter in mind as I spun Hendrix's Band of Gypsys this morning, at a suitable volume. In the old days we had fairly similar tastes in music, but PB was more of a classic blues and rock guy with less of the sometimes pretentious eclecticism that marks my enthusiasms. He was certainly a major fanboy where Hendrix was concerned and soaked in the necessary lore - but with real insights.

I remember when he first asked me what I thought of the great guitarist and I made the requisite noises as to what a brilliant technician Jimi was, then to be confronted with a question about Hendrix's voice. I replied that I thought JH sounded fine within his limitations and was immediately put right. Peter was certain he was a great singer in the soul tradition and the whole point of his playing and singing was the feel he brought to his development of that tradition. I needed little convincing and as we soaked ourselves in JH for the next few weeks felt my ears opening in new and interesting ways.

It strikes me now that Hendrix's ability to be completely there, in the moment, in live performance was matched by a similar quality in Peter as a listener.

In Celebration

29 Syawal, 1444

An unexpectedly celebratory end to the month and to Raya. Sadly we've got the twinkling lights on for the last time in a while. Happily Boon & Mei popped round for a tea and a long natter in the afternoon, and this continued into the evening as we got invited to Yati & Nahar's and ate rather more than necessary at their place. A lovely way to complete a highly satisfactory Syawal.

But there's always a bit of darkness even in the brightest light. I was enjoying a good chat with Nadra about her English course at NTU and her thoughts on the writers she enjoyed when she told me the very sad news that my old mate Peter, who taught her at 'A' level, had died recently. She herself was still feeling the shock and grief and the news hit me pretty hard.

I've been thinking since of some of the jolly times we had together and what a source of good cheer and love of life Peter was. It helps.

At The Low End

I've been thinking a lot about bass players lately - both bass guitar and double bass. Not sure why my thoughts have been turning in this direction. I mean I've always had a thing about listening closely to bassists (and trying to play a bit myself) but I've found myself listening with a peculiar intensity to the low end of late. Possibly this was prompted by the reappearance of an interesting thread on bass players over at ProgressiveEars, to which I almost contributed but, probably wisely, decided it was too much trouble to do so.

In this case my contribution would have been to have raised the name of Peter Giles, the bassist on the second Crimso outing, In the Wake of Poseidon - and on the self-titled McDonald and Giles album (that could have been the second Crimson album had things panned out in that direction.) His name is missing from any of the excellent lists in the Bass Players thread, and understandably so. I say this simply because, as far as I know, he just upped and left the music scene circa 1972 and didn't really come back until becoming a key player in the 21st Century Schizoid Band in the first decade of this century.

The thing is that listening to his playing on the Schizoids' Pictures of a City - Live in New York recently I suddenly realised just how perfect he is as a player on all that early material. And then following that with the two earlier albums mentioned above just how perfectly he fits in with his brilliant brother Mike Giles (surely a candidate for the best rock-jazz drummer of the late 60s, early 70s!) Uncannily he both holds the material together in terms of rock solid in-the-pocket rhythm but can go wandering when the space allows. A good example is the titular Pictures of a City from the live album - and, fascinatingly, throughout the full performance following that incendiary starter you'd think that he acquired a new drummer brother in the shape of the mighty (and mightily under-rated) Ian Wallace.

Anyway, all this has left me considering whether I might just embark on a mini-sequence of posts to this Far Place of bass players who have made it to my private pantheon of greats. The problem is that there're just too many.

But one last point in relation to Peter Giles. In the bits and pieces of background stuff I've read on him - much coming from Sid Smith's toxic tome on Crimson - I've formed the impression that he was, and is, a very strong personality with a definite sense of what music-making has meant to him and that stepping away from the professional scene to an 'ordinary' life was far from necessarily a bad thing - for him. Maybe for anyone?

Setting The Bar Low

I hit upon a new approach to self improvement, around about 10.00 am, and feel obliged to share this with the world. As stated (rather pithily I reckon) in my rough notes: I'm working on reducing my level of stupidity.

In a time of feeling a wee bit stretched this strikes me as being within my limits, not to mention my abundant limitations. So, highly satisfactory, no? The only problem lies in the phrase working on since, to be honest, I'm not really working on anything except getting through each day.

A Question Of Balance

Spent the late afternoon & early evening socialising. Now very tired. But happily so.

There's a lot of emphasis in this little nation on achieving a 'work-life balance'. Nobody can actually manage this. But it's fun trying.

Something Close To Genius

Just finished the tenth in the Flashman series and finding myself knocked sideways by the outstanding final segments - essentially the whole sequence on the raid at Harper's Ferry. Exciting, funny, thought-provoking and, most of all, oddly moving. You are made to feel for the deaths of John Brown's 'pet lambs'; indeed, you are made to feel for the entirely, maddeningly, paradoxical Brown himself. Hero and madman. To blame for it all. Even for the dreadful war between North & South?

So strange that I can't recall feeling any of this when I first read the novel some twenty, possibly twenty-five years ago. For some reason I found the later chapters heavy-going then. Perhaps I'm a better reader now? Certainly slower.

Packing A Punch

I briefly mentioned having just finished Neil Gaiman's graphic novel Mr Punch yesterday and I feel some obligation to do the right thing and say a wee bit more about it today. I'm not exactly sure why I should feel obliged, but I suppose that since I get annoyed when others are airily dismissive of writing or music or art-works or films I enjoy I should really try and expand upon why I like what I like when I get the chance (not that this is likely to affect sales of the stuff in any practical way - hah!)

In truth, I'm using the wrong title (and, in a sense, the wrong writer) out of simple laziness, so I'd better clear all that up from the get-go (as they seem to say these days.) The 'real' title is: The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr Punch - A Romance and it's by Neil Gaiman, in the sense of 'written by' and Dave McKean, in the sense of 'illustrated and designed by'. Now that's all a bit of a mouthful, but having gone to the trouble of scribbling it all down it strikes me that it tells you a lot about the text. There's a LOT going on its relatively brief 90 or so pages (I'm guessing because they are not numbered) and I didn't understand a fair amount of it, but it looks so sumptuous - courtesy of Mr McKean - I can't honestly say that was a problem.

What was easy to follow was that the whole enterprise is underpinned by the very strange traditional sea-side entertainment of the kind of Punch & Judy show which I watched myself as a kid and found wildly funny, mysterious and disturbing. Obviously Gaiman feels the same way and the work is designed to have pretty much the same impact upon its readers. Fans of Gaiman's work will most likely love it, but 'ordinary' readers, if such exist, will probably think it all a bit weird and over-priced.

Fortunately my copy comes from the library at work, whence it will be returned tomorrow, so I didn't pay a penny for having a good, if puzzling, time - and I might just take it out again for another look if I find myself mulling over it again in future or having a dream about it. (Not that I dream about what I read, but if I did I can imagine dreaming about this dream-like text.)

A Bit Of A Struggle

It's been another hot day here and I've been quietly perspiring throughout, except for when I took myself off to the gym to perspire very heavily indeed. I'm now struggling to stay awake and get my final jobs for the day done whilst waiting for Noi to get back from her trek north. I'd vaguely been thinking about writing something about Gaiman's Mr Punch graphic novel, which I just finished reading, or expounding on the abilities of Peter Giles of sort-of-King-Crimson-fame-but-not-really as bass player par excellence. But I'm just not going to. At least not for today.

Right, that's it. I'm done. (And really perspiring.)

Dining Out

Just got back from a curry at Holland Village with Peter, Lea & Chris. Noi went north to Melaka yesterday for the wedding of a niece, but I have to stick around in these parts over the weekend due to the demands of work (for the IBO, in this case, rather than my direct employer.) Nice to enjoy a night out with lots of nattering & chuckles galore, but nice to get back and put my feet up.

And even nicer to get the Missus back tomorrow.

A Great Life

Discovered a very fine BBC documentary on the great Richard Thompson this week, courtesy of my YouTube feed. A Solitary Life struck me as powerfully revealing about an incredibly powerful artist.

Two aspects of it particularly hit me hard. The first was a simple statement from RT regarding his adoption of our shared faith. It speaks so much for me that I intend to use it in future if anyone asks me the perennial question: I don't think there's any conversion; I think you just realise who you are.

The second doesn't exactly relate to RT, to be honest. One of the great things about the documentary is the space it gives to Linda Thompson who is obviously an extraordinarily strong character in her own right. I'd heard of the fabled tour in support of Shoot Out the Lights when their marriage was falling apart, but to see footage of her singing the great songs of marital discord and break-up and the rawness of her pain, made me much, much more aware of the damage even the most well-intentioned of us can cause and the ugliness of emotional suffering even in its disconcerting nobility.

The programme dates back to 2003. I wonder what a version covering the last 20 years would be like?

Pure Joy

I'd forgotten just how freshly, exuberantly, great Neneh Cherry's Buffalo Stance was (and is.)

Today I gratefully remembered.

A Good Time, Guaranteed

Good to see that Richard Williams appears to be back in full flow over at thebluemoment.com. His great post on Stan Tracey's suite Under Milkwood served as a reminder that I really need to give my CD thereof a spin and that this coming Sunday would be the perfect time to do so.

By the way, if you've never opened your ears to England's greatest ever jazz pianist (Keith Tippett, notwithstanding, though a very close second) now is the time to do so. Your ears will never be quite the same again, I guarantee.

(Just thought - it should be Under Milk Wood, shouldn't it? And another thought - the title of Thomas's brilliant radio drama is the only thing about it I don't quite like.)

Enjoying Every Word

I was rushing a wee bit late yesterday when I posted on Flashman and the Angel of the Lord. So after skimming through a few pages of dialogue in search of Fraser's wonderful phonetic version of New Orleans and not being able to find it I lazily settled for what I thought I remembered. That version sounded pretty good and amused me, so I used it thinking I might just find the time to check again today and correct.

It turns out I was pleasingly pretty darned wrong - pleasing in the sense that (of course!) the real thing was much better.

So I now give you: N'awlins - which makes me stifle a chuckle even as I type it.

Enjoying Every Minute

Carved out a bit of time over the weekend to make gloriously slow progress on my on-going Flashman novel. And what's so glorious about reading Fraser's work slowly? The fact you get the chance to relish every nuance of his brilliant stylistic confections, that's what. 

I don't think I quite grasped this on my first reading of the series as it was being published. At that time I was keen to enjoy the sheer verve of the narrative and really needed to know what was going to happen next. Now I sort of know, though I've managed to forget the intricacies of plotting, of which there are many, as I usually do. Back then I found some of the dialogue a touch hard-going, especially when Fraser is 'doing' a voice. Interestingly a lot of modern-day readers find the likes of Kipling and Hardy (when he's doing his Wessex yokels) tiresome in this regard. But this is to miss the essential democratisation of the language that is going on. Rendering the accent is as much an act of homage as it is an act of demarcation from the 'standard'. And in Fraser's case huge fun is to had from his sheer enjoyment of what his characters do to the language in their enhanced mangling of it.

My favourite so far: Nawleans, in itself a kind of poetic tribute to that great city.

Not Quite So Grumpy

Okay, sorry about this, but one last thing regarding the crowning of the king back in GB, or whatever my country names itself as these days. I suppose I should make at least a small attempt to understand those who think that paying attention to the whole coronation shebang was somehow a reasonable thing to do. And since one of those holding that point of view is the inestimable Nick Cave (of 'and the Bad Seeds' fame) I've made a bit of an effort in that direction.

Now I'm a big fan of Mr Cave's wonderful Red Hand Files so reading his typically wise reflections on why he attended as part of the Australian delegation to the big show was no chore. And it makes for an interesting read. But on this one we'll have to agree to disagree since I'm right and he's wrong. I mean, I get the idea of being drawn to... the bizarre, the uncanny, the stupefyingly spectacular, the awe-inspiring, but the coronation was just pointlessly expensive and, well, pointless.

Feeling Grumpier

I wrote yesterday that I wouldn't say any more about the coronation. But I'm going to break my promise. Actually I've successfully avoided watching anything on the news to do with any of it, but I couldn't avoid the article in the Graun online about locking up protestors. Unbelievable.

Makes me half wish I were there just to get sent-down myself. Worth getting banged-up for. 

Not my King, definitely - and that's over and out and finished.

Feeling Grumpy

Despite the heading above I've been in a good mood throughout the day, helped on by the fact that my aching head of yesterday seems to have healed itself and work went flowingly - especially at the creative end of things with our drama guys in the afternoon. Also managed to share a nice cuppa with the Missus in the very early evening - always a mood enhancer. However, I'm afraid grumpiness did descend, and abruptly so, at 9.15 pm, provoked by my switching on the telly to watch a bit of news.

Gentle Reader, I'm sure you'll understand me when I tell you that being confronted by BBC World, Sky News and CNN all covering the coronation (even before the darn thing has actually happened) through live coverage (of the gushing variety) of a royal walkabout not only failed to excite me but almost brought back my aching head of the previous day. Fortunately I showed remarkable forbearance by not actually throwing an object at the offending goggle-box. I also resisted the temptation to switch over to Fox News (a statement I would have thought myself incapable of writing prior to the moment in question.)

I'm not looking forward to tomorrow when, if I'm not mistaken, though I could be since I'm trying to keep away from this nonsense, they finally put the big tiara, or whatever it is, on the head of the new monarch of my benighted nation. By the way, I henceforth intend to avoid any further reference to this business. Just to let you know.

Aches & Pains

Needed to deal with an unpleasantly aching head from the early morning. And it got worse, steadily so. Managed to keep going, but it was a close run thing.

Up Close

It's been a while since I've felt genuine involvement in a sport. Of course, I enjoy footy through the screen and sometimes almost forget the distance. But it's not like being on the terraces - or, better still, in action on the pitch. Today I found myself court-side for a game of basketball, not a game I'm that familiar with. Nevertheless I lost myself in the proceedings, entirely engrossed.

Odd, isn't it, that you can lose yourself in a game, sometimes in the sheer exuberant beauty of what's going on, in a similar way to losing yourself in the theatre? The kinship of Sport and Art is surely no accident. At the highest levels they're pretty much the same thing, I reckon.

Disconnections

Two random things from today.

We've now got twelve spots of light glowing on our Samsung television. It's distracting but occasionally enhances one's viewing.

Attended a full day workshop related to Character and Citizenship Education. Practised my active listening throughout - which served as a reminder of how incredibly difficult it is to listen to others when what they are saying is not exactly simpatico. 

Really should connect the above but am too lazy to bother to try.

Overdoing It

The restful long weekend, today being the public holiday for Labour Day, turned out to be pretty busy in a reasonably enjoyable manner. I wouldn't claim that keeping up with examination marking for IB was exactly fun, but I managed to fulfil the quotas I set for myself without over-agonising, and in-between enjoyed visitors from the Malaysian branch of the family, glad-handing at the wedding and seeing the newly-weds off from Changi Airport for their honeymoon in New Zealand.

This evening saw me rushing off to the gym after rushing back from the airport to give some feedback to a student over her extended essay. And it was at the gym, after some 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer, that I discovered I had pretty much no energy left at all. The last 10 minutes on the machine seemed to take 10 hours. But I somehow managed and got back to write this and then collapse. Sort of. Bye bye.