More Plans

We're off to Maison KL next Tuesday, which means we're now figuring out what exactly we need to do whilst we're in residence. It strikes me that I'm quite good at making plans. But not always effective in carrying them through. Mind you, having said that, somehow The Missus and I contrive to keep the place in something like running order, which isn't easy when you consider just how much there usually is in need of repair.

I think it would be reasonable to claim that most of the things I needed to do before setting off north have been done, with one glaring exception that I'm managing not to do by posting to this Far Place when I should be doing it. Oh hum. You'd think I'd have learnt my lesson by now considering my advanced and advancing years. But I somehow haven't.

Plenty Going On

We quite enjoy watching The Morning Show on Apple TV and got to the end of the first season yesterday. Lots going on, all of it suitably dramatic. But we got lost trying to follow the first episode of Season 2 this evening. Is this what life is like for the rich & successful? Makes me more thankful than ever for the uneventfulness that marks our passage through the world.

In Surplus

Even when I wrote that's that towards the end of yesterday's post I was half aware that that wasn't really that at all. I'd failed to mention anything about my most recent purchase from Kinokuniya, that being Conrad's novel Victory, one of the bigger gaps in my reading. And I really should have said something about the biggest gap of all: Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. So embarrassing not to have read the major work by one of my favourite novelists, and I can't honestly explain the gap, except to say I've perused so many of the key sections in excerpts it's as if I know the book already. I very nearly purchased a copy along with the Conrad but then hesitated over which translation to go with. And I've still not really settled that question despite having looked at quite a bit of the debate about current translations on-line. My plan is to buy a copy from the Kinokuniya at KLCC once we've settled into the house, and I've made inroads into the Douglass autobiography and Victory, which I'm starting on this evening.

Plus I was seriously wondering about picking up a recent Stephen King novel from the library at work when I suddenly realised that I had on my desk a brand new copy of Achebe's Things Fall Apart which I'm supposed to be teaching in the first term next year. It struck me that the King was likely to prove surplus to requirements in our time in KL given the pile I'd built up.

The thing is that I want to read all these titles at once. It's a kind of greed, I suppose. At some point I failed to develop an adult sense of self-control with regard to my reading. And it's not getting better with time.

Seeking Direction

Am trying to get my reading in some kind of order. I'm approaching the end of Video Night in Kathmandu with just the segments on Thailand and Japan to read. There's much to admire in Iyer's essays, but a certain sameness in terms of the humour of the innocent abroad. And, to be honest, I'm finding the material on the sex trade in Bangkok just a bit depressing. Surely there's more to the city than that.

I suppose that accounts for my picking up the LOA collection of Douglass's Autobiographies ahead of completing the travel book. I'll be reading the third final Life and Times when we travel to KL and have decided not to skip the opening chapters on Douglass as a slave despite the fact that much of the material from My Bondage and My Freedom is repeated verbatim. The power and integrity of the work deserve further close reading. In fact, in reading the two opening chapters I was struck by how moving I found the child's separation from his grandmother, something I'd not managed to feel before for some reason.

Sadly I've been struggling to find the same engagement in Henry Vaughan's religious poetry which I'm admiring from a distance. Some great lines here & there, and general enchantment in the music of the verse, especially through its metrical variety, but the emphasis on the worthlessness of worldly existence gets a bit much. I just don't buy into it, I'm afraid, though I'm pretty sure it's not just posturing in the poet's case.

But I do buy into Jazz: A History of America's Music which I'm enjoying in an extremely leisurely fashion - and have been for quite some time now as very occasional reading, usually just at the weekend. Lovely book; great pictures. But too heavy to take up to Malaysia with us.

And on top of all that, my read-through of Finnegans Wake continues sturdily apace. I don't understand any of it. But in my head it sounds great.

So that's that. A bit of a mess, all told.

Getting Destructive

Got on with discarding lots of the unnecessary today in line with my New Year's resolution. The supererogatory material in question occupied my laptop which now feels lighter. Metaphorically. Strange how few of the documents consigned to oblivion genuinely related to the core business of what goes in my classroom.

Still plenty left to shovel away, though, in the days ahead. A veritable mountain. Happily metaphorical in nature. Not quite real somehow. 

Personal Best

Took myself happily by surprise at this evening's session at the gym. Posted my best ever numbers on the elliptical trainer. Just a month ago I was convinced no further improvement was possible and I'm delighted to prove myself wrong. (Having said all that, the improvement is by a single digit. But I'll take the smallest of victories, thanks!)

Bothered

I don't recall feeling in any way genuinely upset when first reading Pico Iyer's Video Night in Kathmandu back in the day. The ways of life of ordinary people in the Far East seemed comically exotic to me, but perhaps I missed out then on reading the essay on his experiences in The Philippines. In this segment, at the mid-point of the work as a whole, the writer openly states how troubled he is by the poverty he encounters in Manila, and it would take the hardest of hearts not to respond to the struggles of those who scrape not so much a living as an existence at the bottom.

Reading it I couldn't help but wonder whether the young people he encountered back then survived into reasonable middle-age. It's frightening that one has to raise the question, but so easy to imagine them simply failing to cope with the extremes they deal with on a daily basis. I don't know much at all about life in that part of the world but am vaguely hopeful that the passing decades have brought some improvement. The problem is that I know full well I might be wrong in that assumption.

All Sound And Fury

Normally I have no problem watching the kind of entertainment show that Noi sometimes tunes into. The singing competitions can have a kind of gentle charm that makes for easy viewing that doesn't take itself too seriously. But tonight's episode of Gegar Vaganza has crossed a line in terms of sheer shoutiness. It seems fueled by a weird neediness, as if some fundamental desperation to impose on the viewer can't admit of contradiction.

Strangely modern in its way.

All Clear

Highlight of the day: an uneventful visit to my back doc. No pain, no problem. Did not expect this at my advanced age. I suspect that my regular trips to the gym over the last few years have paid dividends, even if each features struggle rather than fulfilment. Worth keeping this in mind the next time I wonder why I'm punishing myself on the elliptical trainer.

Second Childhood

Now reading The Red Sea Sharks - a Tintin adventure, that I received as a gift from Fafa. Loved Herge's books as a kid. And love them just as much now. Indeed, if anything I'm more appreciative of them, recognising the brilliance of the artwork. Every panel involves a treat of some kind and the more complex are jaw-dropping in their detail.

Feeling tempted to buy a lot more in the very handsome Egmont editions. But will manfully resist my inner child. For now, at least.

All In The Timing

Came quite close to making a mistake regarding the timing of an important meeting in which I'm involved tomorrow morning. I'd noted the timing in my diary quite a while ago and was confident that I could afford an extra half an hour in bed and had planned accordingly. Fortunately I happened to decide on purging the emails lingering in my inbox, and discovered a recent one with a significantly earlier starting time for the meeting in question. So I won't embarrass myself on the final day of term after all.

This kind of confusion rarely if ever featured in my work in the first half of my career. Why not? Well, meeting times and locations were solidly fixed since our modes of communication were limited. As a result, sudden switches were generally out of the question since predictability was uppermost in our minds in terms of making sure it all worked. But these days last minute messaging regarding unexpected changes sometimes seems the default mode for organisations. Life has become interestingly unpredictable and, I suppose, more stressful for those who care about such things.

Happily, I'm now beyond embarrassment; though broadly speaking I'd prefer to be where I'm supposed to be on the grounds that it makes life just that bit easier.

Vanishing Worlds

Some years ago I was given a copy of Pico Iyer's book of travel essays Video Night in Kathmandu. First published in 1988, the year of my arrival in this Far Place, it was quite a fashionable read at the time and I'd already read a couple of the essays when it was given to me. I vaguely recall dipping into the different pieces based on the level of interest I had at the time with regard to the various locations involved, but at this distance in time I don't recall reading the work cover to cover, in sequence.

So it occurred to me that I might as well rectify that omission and see what I make of Iyer's work now we're well into the twenty-first century. And having now read (or, rather, re-read) the first piece on Bali I find myself quite startled by just how dated the writing seems. What was in its small way quite cutting-edge just four decades ago strikes me now as being positively old-fashioned in an almost humorous way. I find it quite a stretch to try and remember just how deeply fashionable Johnny Rambo was in his day and it seems extraordinary that the slightly ridiculous Sly Stallone was seen as something of an idol in the real meaning of the word in these parts.

In fact I realise that the Bali I remember visiting, in the 1990s, was already considerably more developed than the island visited by Iyer in the middle 80s. He laments the loss of an enchantment he experienced in his initial encounters with the place; I think back to my own enchantment with a world that, according to the writer, had already lost its magic.

I suspect our sense of enchantment with special places comes from within and that any world can be magical and is always fallen.

Restless

My weariness amazed me on two occasions today. Once in the morning; and again in the afternoon. And it's doing so again now. Not an unpleasant feeling if rest is imminent. But debilitating when there's lots to do. The bitter fruit of age, I'm afraid.

Connecting

Sometimes the simplicities of rhythm & rhyme are all you need. Carol Rumens's excellent choice for the current Poem of the Week is a telling example. Whilst reading I think that this is the world I really belong to. At other times I'm just happy to pop my head in and sample a better time & place. At least, that is, in imagination.

Not Connecting

Still processing yesterday's concert. The level of the musicianship from the SSO was stellar. Wonderful choral work in the Haydn mass and a soprano to die for in the final movement of Mahler 4. Yet somehow I didn't connect, beyond recognising the quality involved. 

And in a very different context I found something similar in my reading of Thoreau's Cape Cod. Much as I recognised the craft of the writing it didn't work for me beyond isolated snatches of appreciation.

Maybe I'm in a dry season. Encountering good things at the wrong time. Patience & perseverance are the order of the day. Let's face it. They are all any of us have got when things just don't work.

Limitations

Back from big helpings of Haydn and Mahler. Wonderful to be exposed to such excellence. But paradoxically made acutely aware of my very real limitations in relation to such heights of achievement.

Together

As I write this, Noi is flying in from Doha. I'll be setting off to the airport in a few minutes and we should be reunited in a couple of hours from now. Life will then settle back into its predictable routines.

And all will be very well, thank you.

Changing The Game

Attended a briefing-cum-lecture-cum-workshop related to AI in the school this morning. Found much to admire in the efforts of colleagues doing their best to find ways of integrating those tools-cum-platforms related to this into what goes on in classrooms. But also was keenly aware that the possibilities attendant upon the new technology are so spectacular in their range that the best efforts teachers make are likely to prove inadequate to the exigencies of the Brave New World that lies ahead.

Of course, I can afford to be complacent about all this, being at the fag-end of my career. So I'm looking on with a sort of stupefied curiosity, cheerfully hoping for the best, but darkly fearing the worst. 

Indeed, I fear that a significant dollop of the worst is already with us, but we're ill-equipped to recognise such.

Even More Grumbling

I'm just being extremely petty here. But I'm missing the SAC at work and I'm not entirely convinced that the place was in genuine need of refurbishment. I like areas with a run-down quality about them as spaces to hang loose in. And I can't think of anywhere in which to ease my rigid bits during the day at the moment. Mind you, things are essentially relaxed in these final weeks of the school year, hence the admission of pettiness.

I suppose there is something genuinely significant about all this, though. A recognition of the importance of trivialities in the workplace, and how deeply reliant we are on the familiar.

More Grumbling

My sore feet performed well enough today, wrapped in decent Umbro socks for protection, taking me to Star Vista in the middle of the day to do a bit of shopping to replenish supplies ahead of Noi's impending return on Friday. So nothing to complain about there. And the shopping centre itself was pleasant enough. They've put up one of those incongruously huge Christmas trees around their main entrance, but otherwise the decorations for the approaching season are reasonably restrained. And since I've got used to the tree being rolled out every November it wasn't too much of a shock to the system.

But the Christmas music in the Cold Storage supermarket was a step too far. It's 11 November, as the date above this post will confirm. It isn't the time to be musing on what Santa will bring, as one lyrically limited tune enjoined. Funnily enough I didn't recognise a single one of the songs played, which all sounded like something you might have heard in the USA of the 1960s. None of them worked in the November tropics. 

It's the incongruity of it all that's doing my head in. (A colloquialism expressing an incisive degree of personal distress, for those unfamiliar with the term.)

The Basics

It's been quite some time since I've had a good moan here about bodily aches & pains. That's largely because I've been very lucky for a few months now in terms of avoiding the unpleasant results of decrepitude as manifested in particularly nasty aspects of the above. But there is a lingering exception to all this positivity which won't go away, and its a bit embarrassing to record it here because it is so low & petty.

The fact is that my feet remain uncomfortably sore on a daily basis and that some effort is required to pretend this isn't so - a genuine walking through the pain. I suppose this is all down to a lifetime's wear & tear (and having oddly shaped feet which are overly wide) and the only remedy, since there is no remedy, is to grin and bear it.

But, frankly, ouch and oh and ouch again.

Looking Back

It would be remiss of me not to say anything about the morning I spent at the Peranakan Museum last Friday. The carefully curated exhibition rooms offer a deeply nostalgic glance over the shoulder at a vanishing world. Hearteningly that world represents the positive aspects of inter-cultural exchange in the region, something in the way of an ideal. And pitching this for students at the level of Stella Kon's appealing play Emily of Emerald Hill makes for an experience that the average visitor will find easily 'relatable', as people like to say these days. (Never thought I'd use the expression in writing, but I'm keenly aware of the need to move with the times.)

One fascinating aspect of the social world on display was the degree to which it expressed itself in what one might reasonably characterise as creatively artistic ways. Female fashions especially seemed to have an unusual weight, as did music and interior decoration in general. Appearances were kept up and meant something.

Funnily enough I experienced something akin to an attack of nostalgia myself in the course of the morning - actually two quite separate onsets thereof. The first came as I approached Armenian Street, on which the museum is situated, from the Bras Basah MRT station. I'd walked through the SMU campus and was crossing the road leading to the tunnel for traffic that avoids the campus when I realised I could no longer picture the old National Library building which had been situated there and in which I'd spent a number of happy hours in my earliest years in this Far Place. The 'new' tourist area around the museum building had been superimposed on an old workaday world pretty much erased from memory. 

And the second came as I remembered the first musical I'd been involved in directing, back in 1989 for the school I worked in then. The powers-that-be had already decided to put on Flower Drum Song, wrenching it from its American setting, beautifully delineated by Rogers & Hammerstein, and transplanting it to the Peranakan community inhabiting the East Coast of the island. We ended up borrowing a lot of furniture for the show and getting help from various luminaries associated with that fading world. I'd enjoyed it then, but hadn't really invested myself too deeply in the cultural aspects of our version of the show. Something of an opportunity missed.

All our worlds fade eventually, of course. So best to enjoy them whilst they're around.

That's Entertainment

Was surprised at just how entertaining I found yesterday's concert with the SSO. Proceedings began with a short 5 minute overture from a late 19C comic opera by some chap called von Reznicek. Pure fluff, tunefully so. I found myself tapping my feet, and wouldn't have minded a few minutes longer. In fact I suspected that I wouldn't have minded sitting through the whole show had it been on the agenda for the evening. And even though the Saint-Sains symphony that comprised the second half of the programme is thought of as a serious piece, again I heard it as something close to aural cheesecake - a sort of happy luxury of sound to listen to. Loved the bits with the organ, by the way. Its sound added a gauzy depth and almost cinematic gravitas just when it felt needed.

But it was Sir Stephen Hough's own piano concerto that definitely provided just what the listener who's in the mood for a bit of impossible glamour required. I came across a version on YouTube today and it confirmed what I thought at first hearing. This is meant as pure entertainment, surely, but entertainment of genuine worth.

Interesting that the composer's own programme notes are so well written. Music of real intelligence as well as feeling.

Not bad for just $21.00 eh? (I claimed the discount for senior citizens.)

Resisting Temptation

Fruitfully busy day involving two trips into the centre of the city - one in the morning to a museum; one in the evening to the concert hall. A bit late in the day to try and summarise each of those experiences, so I'll need to make time for that on the morrow.

But just one thing for now. I managed to spend a few minutes at Bras Basah Complex in the course of the day in a rather nifty second hand bookstore there (pretty much the only viable one left, I think.) And it was there I chanced upon a full box set of King's Dark Tower series for a mere $138.00. I surprised myself by deciding (somewhat indecisively in truth) not to purchase. And not only that, I'm fairly sure I'm not going to retrace my steps tomorrow to hand over the shekels. 

The reason? I'm not entirely sure, but I've got the oddest feeling that gazing at the whole series on my shelves will be overwhelming and I'll regret the fact it's there and now MUST be read.

Uprooted

Enjoyed my second buffet meal at Swensen's in as many months this afternoon. As I was engaged in some deep and rewarding munching one of my table companions inquired of me whether I missed English food. The answer came easily: not in the slightest. And thinking about it further this evening it suddenly occurred to me that I'd rate my memories of the lingering smell of boiled cabbage as positively traumatic. The ability of the British to get the very worst out of vegetables in preparing them for the dining table is surely unparalleled in world history.

What I do miss, occasionally, about my homeland is the spoken language. Specifically the way people speak in the area of Manchester that I'd identify as my home in the deepest, most abiding sense. But the extent to which I miss it only strikes me in a powerful sense when I'm there to hear it.

It makes me feel rooted, for want of a better word. Which is odd for someone who has chosen a life of happy exile.

Not So Routine

It's a funny time of year for me. In many ways I find myself released from the routines with which I am so familiar. No timetable to follow, for example. Yet I can't help but hanker after those certainties as I think of the final days of the week and work out the logistics of how to make their various pieces fit together. Something as simple as figuring out where to attend Friday Prayers, simple as it will be, feels burdensome at this time of the evening.

I'm pretty good at going with the flow once I'm in the water. It's taking the plunge that's irksome.

At Ease

I first heard Saint Saens's Organ Symphony, more accurately his Symphony No 3 in C minor, in the early 1980s, when I started regularly attending 'classical' concerts in Sheffield City Hall, featuring the Halle Orchestra. I'm guessing this was in 1984, when this particular experience of live music was something fresh for me. I say this as I recall the piece making quite an impact on me simply because of the sonorities involved with the inclusion of the mighty organ. And also because I couldn't come to terms with the idea of said organ being used so sparingly in the symphony, despite its title.

I'm due to listen to it live again this Friday evening at the Esplanade Concert Hall, and have been endeavouring to be rather better prepared this time round than I was in my callow youth. In those days you couldn't just magic up great music from Apple Music or YouTube as you can in this century, so I had my excuses back then for my massive lack of familiarity with the standard repertoire. But I've taken advantage of said magic this week to have a couple of listens, up close through ear-phones, one of these just being completed. And my verdict is that this is very engaging stuff.

In fact, I'm beginning to wonder if my heart, or ears rather, really align with the French composers of the late 19th century as opposed to their German, or Russian, counterparts. I wouldn't call Saint Saens light or fluffy exactly, but he's a whole lot more restrained than the chaps from further east and there's a lot to be said for music that manages to have real weight yet somehow stays easy on the ear.

Not So Comfortable

Have drawn up a reading list of sorts, to give me some much needed direction & discipline up to the end of the year. This involves going back to the Thoreau and Douglas LOA editions I recently broke away from. I'm now accompanying David Henry to Cape Cod, the last of the four full length works in the volume devoted to his writings on the Maine wilderness. It's reckoned to be the bleakest of his works, which suits my mood. Sometimes you need to embrace discomfort, even if it's only through the pages of a book.

High Energy

When I first read Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test some decades ago I thought of it as a self-indulgent, repetitively sloppy piece of writing. Meretriciously clever enough to capture something of the spirit of 'hippy-culture' circa 1964, of which I knew next to nothing. I know a little bit more of that culture now from other sources, and I know enough about what it takes to create a world through words to appreciate that I was completely wrong about Wolfe as a writer.

His book is painstakingly crafted and, I suspect, very carefully researched. I can't be entirely certain of the latter but the signs are there. The shifting points of view can be traced to individual participants in the on-going saga of the Merry Pranksters when Wolfe is not around and, when he is, everything rings true regarding his limited participation in and understanding of the culture Kesey and his companions were consciously building. (Not one to last, I may add.) As for the style, once the reader is accustomed to the various devices adopted to re-create the mental atmosphere or subjective reality of it I suppose it starts to look lazy since the acid-head perspective on the world doesn't really change in its broad outlines. But the nuanced detail does shift and there are changes in tone and the geography of events which, reading the text closely as I don't think I did way back when, are substantial. 

What is astonishing about Wolfe's book is the sheer energy it manifests, almost over-poweringly at times. As a reader you have to bring a similar level of energy to reading closely. It's temptingly easy to skip the lists, obsessive as they are, but to do so means you are on the surface of this world and can never get inside the minds of the young people Wolfe tries to open for us. And being open & non-judgmental is something he's supremely good at. Does he admire Kesey? Does he despise him? Does he think he's deluded? Genuinely illuminated?

Was Wolfe right to build his narrative around his fellow writer? I think time has vindicated that decision. And the narrative, for there is one, is beautifully shaped, I've come to realise. 

Final point, or, rather, pointed question: Why are American writers so good at energy?

At The End Of The Day

Decided to draw a close to proceedings on this first day of the month by spinning Haydn's Te Deum in C major, as performed by Trevor Pinnock and his merry band of men & women of the English Concert and Choir. As with pretty much anything by Papa Haydn (and Trevor Pinnock et al) this was a jolly good idea.

Interesting historical footnote: Admiral Lord Nelson would probably have got to hear the Te Deum on the occasion of his meeting with the great musician. Pretty wonderful to think of the two heroes (in their own fashions) sharing notes in the Eszterhaza Palace. By all accounts they got on well together.