On The Bright Side

Arm and shoulders and back aching from several hours of marking, which I've just finished. Oddly enough it hasn't been such a bad day, but it's ended on a bit of a sour, not to say sore, note - though I'll be eating soon, so things can't be quite so bad. Healing's on its way.

Feasting

Noi spent the day at a Sweet & Savoury Soft Bread Class, taught by some international chef chappie from Taiwan. She came back this evening with a number of the products of her labour which I have been sampling since with distinct relish. My favourite so far: the ham & onion toast. Seriously wonderful, but so is everything else.

Not a bad way to end the working week, eh?

Theory And Practice

Gwenda has just announced her pregnancy to Wulfric, and the foundations have been laid for Merthin's bridge. As for Caris, I have no idea why she's making life so difficult for Merthin. And don't get me going on Ralph who's shaping up as a major Ken Follett villain despite the signs earlier in World Without End that he isn't fundamentally such a bad chap.

Why do we get so caught up in the purely imagined lives of characters who don't exist, except in the pages of imaginative fictions? As far as I can tell, this is the kind of question that bothers literary theorists. Frankly, whilst I find it mildly interesting, deep down it doesn't concern me all that much. What bothers me is finding out what happens to Gwenda and Wulfric and Merthin and Caris and Ralph, plus a load of other folk who live in the non-existent but astonishingly real Kingsbridge.

So that's enough for now. I'm off for a bit of a read before bedtime.

Mood Music

There are times when only the songs of Leonard Cohen can fill the space. Today, in the late afternoon, was one such time. I filled it with four off Ten New Songs, and it felt necessary, and I'm glad I did.

The funny thing is LC is the only musician of the singer-songwriter variety I admire that this applies to. Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Richard Thompson, Elvis Costello, Neil Young: any time. But not Leonard. I have to be in the mood, and I don't mean depressed or sour or dark or melancholy. Today I was perfectly happy on getting back from work but, for reasons I can't quite grasp, it had to be Mr Cohen serenading me as I relaxed.

I was thinking of this just now when it further occurred to me that Songs of Love and Hate was a very special album for me when I got hold of it as a fifteen-year-old (I think.) I didn't own that many albums and forced myself to love every one I spent my hard-earned money on. To be honest LC's third album was way too sophisticated for me but I managed to grow into it, I suppose. For example, I knew Avalanche was a great song pretty much on first hearing, but I didn't know why; and I understood it somehow, without knowing what it meant.

In fact, I still don't. But who needs to wrestle a meaning from, Well, I stepped into an avalanche / It covered up my soul ? I've been in that avalanche even if the song remains above and beyond this particular sleeper.

A Rhetorical Question

If you can't lick the plate after finishing your bangers & mash & gravy & onions, then when can you lick the plate? That's what I'd like to know.

Testing Times

Life has a way of not getting easier, which is no bad thing. At least when you're struggling you know that you're very much in the here and now and alive to the struggle.

And, yes, it's been one of those days.

Not Exactly Routine

It's been an odd sort of Sunday. Noi had a baking class to attend up in Woodlands and, since we'd made an arrangement to have dinner with Boon & Mei up there, it was decided that I would spend the day at Fuad & Rozita's so Noi didn't have to drive back to pick me up after her class. I had quite a bit of marking to do and set out my stall on the dining table in their place wondering whether I'd be able to stuck in to the work involved in this foreign environment.

To my surprise I managed the pile of scripts almost effortlessly, with breaks for the necessary teh tarik and to watch the first half of the United game - oh, and to watch bits and pieces of a BBC Attenborough doc. Also managed a quick lunch out with Fuad & Rozita at the Al Ameen food place that we later went to with Boon & Mei. 

It's the first time in a long time that marking has felt not exactly effortless, but not really effort-full, if you see what I mean. Mind you, it's a relief to get back home and prepare for the usual routine on the morrow. It doesn't pay to have too much excitement in one's life.

Stoned

Spent the early part of the day marking exam scripts and listening to the Stones - albums from the seventies: Sticky Fingers, It's Only Rock and Roll, Some Girls. (All at reasonable volume since the Missus went out.) Decided I preferred the listening to the marking, but no great surprise in that.

Also decided that Some Girls is a work of pure genius, the equal of anything the British Bad Boys managed in the sixties, something I didn't quite grasp when I first listened to it in 1978.

No Direction Home

Found myself this afternoon in a talk entitled 'Navigating a Complex World'. Coped by pretty much switching off. I'm quite happy not knowing where I'm going. With luck I'll arrive somewhere, somehow.

A Sense Of Wonder

I've now experimented with playing two albums by Stevie Wonder at a couple of sessions in the gym and the results have been, as expected, excellent in all respects. One slightly unexpected aspect of the experience though has been the fact that I've found myself listening to songs I've known inside out for some five decades with new ears simply as a result of being on the elliptical trainer as they've been blasting out. I've always thought of Fulfillingness First Finale as pretty much a perfect album and that was amply confirmed by hearing it in the gym. It's so warm, so rich. And then tonight I gave a spin to the earlier, more raw and earthy Music of my Mind and just fell totally in love with everything on it precisely because it lacks the sheen of the later album. Those drums! So richly, drivingly, messy.

And that voice! Or, rather, voices since Stevie so often multi-tracked himself - and still sounded completely spontaneous. I've no idea how he did it, but I'm so glad he did.

Just Beginning

Before embarking on Lowell's Life Studies this evening, from the chunky Collected Poems, I would have claimed I knew the 1959 book really well. So it was salutary, to say the least, to glance ahead over the collection and realise I've never actually read the prose segment, 91 Revere Street that comprises Part Two, and I'm not so hot on the poems addressed to various other writers in Part Three. Fortunately I genuinely recognised the poems from Part Four (the section actually itself entitled Life Studies) knowing them all very well, and the opening poems of Part One were pretty familiar, so I was not entirely deluding myself.

But now I realise what a mistake it is to think of the book as entirely confessional, Lowell with his jacket and tie off, the wonderful baroque manner of the early poems cast aside. That happens, but gradually, and the opening poem, Beyond the Alps, sort of predicts it, being pretty baroque in itself and sometimes obscure in the old manner. Take the final couplet as an example: Now Paris, our black classic, breaking up / like killer kings on an Etruscan cup. I mean, I love it and think I know why the French capital is black here, and have quite a good idea what an Etruscan cup is, but I still wonder if I'm missing something important out of sheer ignorance.

Having said that, it's the treatment of the Catholic stuff that's suddenly a lot more immediate than the impressive meanderings in The Mills of the Kavanaughs. The brilliant image of the Holy Virgin, risen - at one miraculous stroke, / angel-winged, gorgeous as a jungle bird! is lovely and funny at the same time. Let's face it, the dogma of Mary's bodily assumption, as RL puts it in the useful brief prose intro to the poem, was not exactly the One, Holy, Roman and Catholic Church's best moment of the twentieth century and it's nailed with humour, sympathy and (something there's precious little of in early Lowell) simple humanity.

Gosh, I'm looking forward to the rest of the book!

Keeping Quiet

Reading my own deeply wise words, almost twelve years to the day, regarding bragging rights I am struck by how soon the whirligig of time brings in its revenges. And that's enough about the not-so-Mighty Reds start to the season.

It can only get better. Surely.

Contrasts

I was determined to make some progress in my own reading over the weekend, despite the marking piling up, and I'm happy to say that I've moved forward in Ken Follett's World Without End - easily done, hooked as I am at the straightforward levels of plot and sympathetic characters - and my Collected Lowell - much tougher since I'd been stalled at the opening of the longish Mills of the Kavanaughs and just couldn't get into it.

Now I come to think of it, it would be tricky to think of two writers presenting a greater contrast: Follett the supreme popularist, striving for an easy transparency of style such that nothing stands between the reader and the tale well told, yet also genuinely informative about the world of medieval England; Lowell the supreme patrician, creating gloriously obscure baroque structures that seem to go beyond the limited notion of simple meaning to enact thumpingly expressive experiences of the ineffable somewhere and seemingly all times in New England. (Sorry about the exaggerations, but getting through his second major book entails being temporarily infected by his style.)

The funny thing is, they go so well together. Breaking off from one to read a poem or a chapter by the other is curiously refreshing. And a lot better than marking.

Wise Words

Until today I never realised that the word 'dreck' has Yiddish origins. Now I do, courtesy of a particularly fine opinion piece by Michael Rosen about the value of writing. I could never quite figure out as a young teacher in the late 1970s how it was that his poetry somehow worked with all kids, but it did. And I suspect his remedy for 'the bothers' will work for lots of very ordinary people, kids included.

I intend to try it for myself - as an specific addition to my discovery in middle-age that writing stuff down - any stuff, any time, any how - is good for the soul.

On Being Alive

This time last year I wasn't exactly fully alive. Being in an intensive care unit was, of course, wonderfully useful in terms of practical survival, and accounts for my being around to write this in 2023, but it's not a place I'd recommend anyone spending time in. And this is more especially the case when you're there in a comatose state such that your mind is somewhere else entirely, and that somewhere is an entirely unpleasant place to be. Or not be, if you see what I mean.

Being back in this world has served as a reminder of what a fundamentally wonderful place it is, if you're lucky enough, as I am, to lead a more than comfortable life - and one made particularly splendid by treats like curry puffs & teh tarik with The Missus at a near-by hawker centre, as we enjoyed yesterday.

It's a lesson I've been more than happy to learn, even if it came the hard way.

Ghosts

When we were in Rome last June I was surprised to hear something by Springsteen played in one of the Metro stations. I suppose The Boss is still fashionable enough in Italy to warrant such attention - and the Italians generally have great taste in music. Actually, it took me a moment to identify exactly what was playing. It was Ghosts from the recent Letter to You, and waiting for our train I suddenly realised what a great, great song it is.

A word of explanation here. I got hold of the album some time back along with the most recent albums from Elvis Costello and a whole stack of Radiohead and, in all honesty, I wasn't entirely enamoured with it initially. I already knew from a couple of reviews I'd chanced upon that it was a return to the classic E Street Band sound, but early listening had me thinking the classic sound was a bit tired (especially after the wonders of Western Stars.) For some obscure reason even the best tracks, like Ghosts, didn't quite do it for me. But just before Rome I was beginning to change my mind and, as noted above, public exposure to it pounding in the cavernous space of the Metro provided the illumination I needed.

Since then the song has become a special one for me, helping me deal with my own ghosts. But here's the thing. In Springsteen's brilliant lyric his ghosts can be heard rather than seen. When my ghosts come in dreams I see them with absolute clarity. But they are always silent. That's how I know they are dead, aside from the obvious fact that in real life they are dead. (What an odd sentence, but I have to let it stand because that's the way it is.) The silence is not accusatory in any sense; it's simply the way of things. And it is always sad.

Part of the brilliance of the song is the way it becomes a celebration of being alive, and rightly so. I wish my dreams had something of that quality, but they leave me with a mystifying sense of emptiness. Perhaps this is all a lesson related to the need to listen harder to all sorts of voices? Especially those of the dead.

A Good Time

All times are good, I suppose, but the best time is 10.30 pm. On a good day it means the shedding of burdens as one considers crawling to one's bed. And even on a bad day the night has arrived and, with it, all sounds become extra vivid, even as the solid world is fading.

Music While You Work Out

Made the belated discovery that I could play some suitably loud music from my phone whilst in the gym using a small speaker that I was given during the pandemic by our school's Parent Support Group, thus easing the acute boredom of the elliptical trainer. Have now tried this for three sessions, looking for music to fit the occasion. Results so far: Richard Thompson's Sweet Warrior, though a fine and varied album, doesn't work at all - too interesting; Lyndon Kwesi Johnson's Independent Intravension seems a bit slow but has a lot going for it in terms of maintaining a steady, in-the-pocket, rhythm which can be attuned to; Muse's The Second Law is too operatic and self-consciously over-the-top when restraint is the order of the day for maintaining discipline as one tortures oneself.

I'm intending to play some Stevie Wonder next time out. Something to definitely look forward to.

Staying On Message

Enjoying the final day of the vacation, which has been extended on account of the presidential election of a week or so ago. In view of my impending return to work, I thought I'd post the sweetly inspirational image above, which I randomly stole off a whiteboard a couple of weeks back. To be honest, I doubt my week will be a great one (they rarely are) but I'll happily settle for 'acceptable'.

A Good Start

For some time now I've been intending to treat myself to reading Ken Follett's World Without End, the central novel in the trilogy focused on the cathedral at Kingsbridge which began with his brilliant The Pillars of the Earth. It was a little earlier than this time last year that I read the final novel, A Column of Fire, ending in the reign of James I. That was a good read, though lacking something of the almost mythic power of Pillars, and I deliberately tried to immediately 'forget' all the references to the story of the town as it developed in the fourteenth century knowing that one day I'd immerse myself in those events.

Anyway, I picked up a handsome paperback edition of the 'middle' novel from the library the other week and embarked on my reading yesterday. I'm now around 150 pages in and it's a blast! Follett is good at many things and offers many rewards, but above all it's his command of 'events' that impresses. He knows how the world works and used to work and convinces even the most supremely impractical reader (i.e., myself) that they too can understand the ways things get done and got done, and have some grasp of the people that did them.

Signs Of Life

Now temporarily resident at Mak's house in Melaka. Just got back from dinner at Aziz & Wati's place, with four giggling nieces in tow, to what seems to be a super-noisy karaoke session back at the ranch with a super-abundance of nieces & nephews of all shapes and sizes. On the one hand, it's good that the place is alive again; on the other hand, you can have too much of a good thing. I have beat a sensible retreat to a bedroom and left Noi to deal with the crowd and its happy abundance of just about everything.

Magic

Not sure why it took me four days to read Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun. Thought I'd finish it in a couple of days when I started. It's not a particularly long novel and hardly demanding in terms of the style, though you have to do a bit of work fathoming the contours of the world created through Klara's clear yet limited narrative. But I'm glad I took my time. From the opening paragraphs, with our Artificial Friend narrating from the store in which she is for sale, I had an odd feeling that Ishiguro was going to painfully tug upon this reader's heartstrings. And that proved to be the case.

I'm not sure how he does it. I suppose it's the restraint that helps cast such a potent spell. But I was entirely knocked out of orbit by Klara's tale. 

Cleaning Up

Not sure why vacuuming books and magazines and other sundry bits and pieces helps me feel like I'm in control of things. But it does. So I do it, partly for that reason, but mainly because it's a sensible thing to do. All the rushing around we were doing in the June vacation meant I didn't have time to clean all the shelves in Hall and it bothered me - not intensely, really quite mildly, but I felt the lack.

And I've managed to put that right since last Friday, on and off, completing the whole exercise by doing the business here at Maison KL today. (Though I did manage to do some cleaning here in late June, which meant today's exercise didn't need to be quite as intense as those back in our usual Far Place.)

Another interesting side-effect of all the cleaning is the sense of nostalgia it instils in me as I mentally review each item combined with some vague sense of re-visiting the books that are crying out for my company. But that involves a modicum of plain old-fashioned guilt, I'm afraid. There may be world enough but I'm not so sure about time. Though nobody ever is, eh?

Back On The Road Again

Motored up to Maison KL in the early afternoon, making reasonable time. When Noi drove up last Friday afternoon with Rohana and various chums they got stuck in a four-hour jam at Tuas. In happy contrast we sailed through today.

In the interests of full disclosure the music for the journey was as follows: various Malay delights on Warna, the Singapore radio station, up to Machap where reception, as always, shut down; Bowie's Hours, late-period and a bit bland, but I bought it cheap on a pirated CD ages ago and any Bowie counts as good Bowie when motoring; the sound-track to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly by the Maestro himself, Ennio Morricone, which just gets more spectacularly inventive and completely out there the more I listen to it; and Daniel Lanois's Arcadia, which soothed me through the evening rush hour traffic in KL on arrival at the metropolis.

Just ate two excellent prata with egg at the Craven Restaurant on the hill (or should it be pratas?) and replaced five light bulbs and had a shave and all is very well indeed with the world.

Not Entirely Sure

Got a bit of fiction out of the library at work a couple of weeks back, thinking I might get a chance for light reading over the September break. Picked up something by Dean Koontz since I was still in the mood for a bit of horror after finishing The Stand and I've wondered for years about the quality of his work without ever dipping my toes in the water. (Dreadful metaphor, but I hope you see what I mean.) I suppose I've always thought of him as a poor man's Stephen King - and I'm sure I'm not coining any kind of phrase there but just re-cycling a tedious cliché - and I decided that just wasn't fair given I'd never read a thing by him.

Well, now I have, the novel in question being What the Night Knows. And I'd say it was an entertaining read, being reasonably gripping, if a bit predictable once I'd picked up on the evil- spirit-cum-serial-killer that can transfer from one person to another, and even lurk in houses. If I'm not mistaken there was a Denzel Washington movie a couple of decades back based on the same conceit, except for the houses bit.

The thing is though that I can't decide if Mr Koontz is a talented writer, as opposed to a cut-price King, and I should go on to read a few more or whether he's not really up to scratch and to be avoided (In my case) as likely to become tiresome. He's certainly not a low-brow version of the Horrormeister. If anything, he has distinct literary pretensions mixed in with occasionally genuinely good moments - indeed, sometimes pages that are really well put together. He's very good at points on the sensibilities of the three children of the central family in the novel. But the kids do get a bit much at times, a bit overly precocious. And the family are a bit too complacently uniquely special.

I might just give another novel a go, but I'm not exactly in a hurry to do so.

Fully Accomplished

Just a bit more about yesterday's La Sonnambula, which is still (happily) on my mind. I think what most took me by surprise about the show, other than the fact that I effortlessly got into the whole idiom involved, was just how well it all fitted together. And I don't just mean the music, although at every level, individual voices, the orchestral playing, the blending of the ensemble, the wit and verve and tunefulness of it all, it just worked - as in casting a spell. No, I'm going further than that: the whole theatrical experience radiated enchantment. The characters lived in terms of big, heartfelt effusion, but also in tiny gestures, including little touches here & there from the chorus, which I didn't expect at all. It was the opposite of wooden - supple, if you like. A genuine world was created on stage & it looked like the players felt something of the spell in terms of the certainty of their performances, like every movement was really meant.

The set was sort of simple but, again, supple, with the changes of scene made with a kind of melodic fluidity. And the blocking was beautiful - so many striking stage pictures, again with an underlying wit and charm.

I'm a bit in awe of the level of talent involved, but struck much more by the generosity of what was on offer. Not so much, look at me and what I can do, but join us in a celebration of what can be achieved when it all comes together.

Finally Getting It

My tastes in music are, I'm proud to say, pretty wide-ranging (at least, I hope they are) but they've never stretched quite as far as a genuine appreciation of bel canto opera in the Italian tradition, especially early nineteenth century stuff. Until today.

This afternoon I found myself in the audience for Bellini's La Sonnambula as performed by a Singaporean company calling themselves the Opera People. I'd never heard of them before one of my students, Ines, a very talented singer, told me she was involved in the production as a member of the chorus. I sort of felt obliged to attend I suppose, but I was also intrigued as to what the show might be like and vaguely suspected I might just enjoy the experience if I listened hard and worked hard to abandon my seemingly innate prejudice against lady sopranos of the prima donna variety.

In the event I didn't have to work hard at all. Just hearing the orchestral players warming up behind the set (well more of a band really than an orchestra in terms of actual numbers) was enough to excite me. The acoustic sounded particularly rich and it was easy to differentiate the players and focus on detail and these guys were obviously on top of the material. And as soon as it all kicked off I was struck by just how good it all sounded, and I'm talking very, very good indeed: crisp, tuneful, often bouncing along and harmonically gorgeous in an obvious but nonetheless deeply satisfying manner. I didn't recognise a single melody but felt entirely at home with the music as if I'd been listening to this kind of thing all my life on a daily basis.

I suppose everything being live and up close and personal, as it were, had something to do with it, but I was just completely swept away by it all. I'll break off here since I've officially run out of superlatives, but this is something I'll have to come back to, and soon.

Great Expectations

Spent an hour or so just now reading, or, in most cases, re-reading the various cards & messages sent to me for this year's Teachers' Day. It's a tradition in our household, by the way, that Noi gets to read most of them first, usually having some definite things to say. She seems to think that there are a few cards I should show to management so I can claim more money so I have to explain that it doesn't quite work like that. Plus there's an element of kindly exaggeration in it all so one needs to keep a sense of proportion. Mind you, I don't think anyone described my lessons as 'awesome' this year so that's one less misplaced encomium to worry over.

Funnily enough whilst I can cheerfully say I feel something like 95% delight in reading the more than generous messages, I do set aside 5% for a sense of concern - this in the sense of a renewed grasp of just how many distinct individuals one deals with as a teacher and what one owes to each of these in terms of a genuine concern for their uniqueness. Of course, there are lots of cliches to read, though even these have a strikingly honest quality, but there are also lots of distinctly fresh takes on one's qualities as a teacher and how students genuinely feel in lessons. It's just a little overwhelming to recognise how each learner represents a universe of apprehension in himself or herself.

Simply to discover why a student elected to bake a certain kind of biscuit as a gift or how another finds it difficult to speak up in class and needs the cushion of a reasonable space to develop their thoughts is a reminder of why the job is in some ways so easy and in more ways so difficult.

By the way, I felt constrained to include the picture of the big card from my class above since the Missus insisted on both photographing it and then editing the photo to look nice. I'm not sure exactly why she did so, but it's nice to include something visual to recall the pleasures of the day by. (And I have grave doubts I said all the things attributed to me on the card, just in case you're wondering.)

Wearied Out

Officially bone weary. A session at the gym and cleaning up the books & stuff in our bedroom have got me to a good place to be in, given I can just happily crash out any time now. 

Noi went up to KL with some friends for the weekend this afternoon, but left behind a ton of stuff to feast on including her patented oxtail soup. With bread to dip in it. Two epic bowlfuls have added considerably to my state of happy lassitude.