Discord

Sandwiched awkwardly(?) potently(?) stridently(?) between two soothing, tuneful masterpieces, Vaughn Williams's 4th Symphony sticks out like a sore thumb that's been particularly badly bandaged. Dissonant (but see below.) Angular. Not specially memorable. Nobody's favourite, least of all mine.

But I found myself thoroughly engrossed in it this morning as part of the great VW symphonic play-through. In truth this is not dissonant music in the sort of Schoenberg/Berg, and all those johnnies, tradition. No Germanic neuroticism here. Just the usual English gumption mixed with lashings of angry energy dropping off into sometimes a kind of disappointed plangency.

I get the feeling that VW was holding himself in on this one - that energy being somehow contained, which in itself adds a kind of tension. It's a very edgy piece. There's no sense of a programme here, unlike the first three symphonies. So the music develops simply as music, according to its own logic, without the sudden almost wilful accumulation of melodic ideas in the earlier pieces.

The scherzo is more than a bit Job-ish, with hints of Satan dancing around and about, but nothing else sounds obviously like something you've heard elsewhere.

Michael Kennedy in some notes on the symphony refers to VW's towering rages, as reflected in the music. I found that an interesting phrase. What makes anger towering as opposed to petty if not infantile? Can anger be big? generous? sort of impersonal? liberating? For too many of us anger is something small and skulking and sullen and scowling.

Whatever happened to wrath?

Backache

I surprised myself today by managing the Friday Prayer at the mosque. This had seemed most unlikely at 6.40 am when I found it almost impossible to bend forward during the prayer due to a ferocious ache in my lower back. Said ache had been gathering painful momentum all yesterday so it was not exactly unexpected. Of course it's perfectly okay to pray at the mosque even if you can't physically manage the prayer. There are always a lot of guys, usually the elderly, seated throughout, but I somehow don't fancy being put into that position.

Anyway, having thoroughly dosed myself with extra strength panadol in the course of the morning I felt a bit more up to things when the time arrived and duly attended without, I think, causing any major damage to the affected region. Now all I need to do is negotiate the perils of a staff dinner and I'm home free for the weekend.

It's surprising how even mild pain can colour one's view of the world. It seemed a bleak unforgiving kind of place this morning, but now appears almost cheerful.

Downtime

Deepavali holiday here in Singapore - a festival of light. Enjoyed good food today on a couple of visits.

Before you do something it is important to do nothing.

Solutions

Decided not to go to Good People as I need a bit of downtime - the easy way out. I suspect genuinely good people don't slip out of their moral dilemmas (even the trivial ones) with such ease, but then I'm not one of them.

It's surprising how often the head-in-the-sand-pretend-this-isn't-happening approach pays off professionally. I've fruitfully ignored demands for IT plans in my areas of work for several years and have yet to be pinned down. A mixture of bluff and charm goes a long way. At least it seems to have done and I hope still does.

It's a useful strategy also if you're ever directing something, a play or musical or the like. When big headaches rear their ugly heads (a fine mixed metaphor) don't rush to deal with them. A period of splendid inaction often works wonders.

Dilemma

I'm trying to figure out if there's a way we can go and watch Haresh Sharma's new play, Good People, which is showing just down the road from our apartment, just a five minute walk away. The problem is one of finding a slot in our, what Singaporeans generally term, busy schedules - a curiously revealing expression - since it's only on for a little over a week. I feel something of an obligation to at least try and support people making art (and hope to be to some degree rewarded by the pleasures thereof for my pains) but generally fall woefully short in this department. If we do go it'll be on Thursday, but we've got to time other obligations (social ones) accordingly and I've got to figure out how to get tickets, if they are still available. Fortunately my wife is extraordinarily supportive in this regard (as so many others) and she'll go along even if it's not exactly her cup of tea. What a girl!

So as dilemmas go, compared to the real thing, mine isn't.

Endings

I'm not actually there yet, but I'm not looking forward to the last segment of Huck Finn. It's possibly the worst ending of any great novel in any language, not that I can claim to have read all the novels generally regarded as great, even just in English, but it's difficult to think of anyone screwing up quite as badly as Twain does in his last twelve chapters. There are, of course, interesting reasons why he screws up, but they cannot excuse the tedium of Tom Sawyer's endlessly daft plans. In the his Penguin audiobook reading Garrison Keillor simply drops the whole lot and changes the ending. Well done that man! (Oh, and a brilliant reading as well.)

And that sets me to thinking of great endings in literature. Here's a suggestion: the greatest writer of endings of novels & short stories in English is that wiliest of Irishmen James Joyce. Think of it: Finnegans Wake doesn't actually end but (rightly) goes round in a circle, thus avoiding the problem completely, though what's on the final page is a particular joy to read aloud; Ulysses has two great endings, one for Bloom, one for Molly; and Portrait of the Artist is one of the few novels of artistic growth to end in perfect, convincing poise between past and future, flying and falling - Icarus / Dedalus aloft, just.

Meanwhile Dubliners is a compendium of how to finish a story in a way that both puzzles and illuminates, to feel right even when you're not quite sure why or how. I remember once teaching The Dead to an 'A' level class (or, rather, learning about it with them) and not being able to resist going through the last paragraphs on a line-by-line basis. The snow that had been general over Ireland invaded my classroom in Singapore and I understood, for the first time in human terms, felt along the vein, how one can be jealous of the dead.

Questions

Why is it that whilst those who style themselves 'leaders' tell me change is good, it makes me feel bad?

How do I always know when United are not going to be able to defend a one goal lead?

Can I honestly claim that rereading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, surely the most subversive children's book (if that's what it is, or ever was) ever written, in order to prepare for next year's teaching, is really work?

Pastoralised

Is there anything better than a good lie-in? Yes, a good lie-in followed by Vaughn Williams's third symphony (followed in its turn by a bowl of cereal and three cups of hot, sweet tea.) Bliss.

Though I think the great man erred with the title A Pastoral Symphony. The casual listener, lulled by the gorgeous shimmering surface of the music (it makes great background for tea with the neighbours) easily falls into the trap of thinking bucolic idyll, cottage in Dorset, summer in the Cotswolds, punting on the Cam (hope they do, I've really no idea!), and the like.

Funeral for a Friend works better. It's difficult to think of much sadder music, and that stiff upper lip, though it trembles in the final movement, if anything adds to the prevailing sorrow. If music can tell us how to feel, this music speaks sense.

Back in the real(?) world we're having problems with the washing machine and can't go out shopping because we've got to wait for the plumber to come and plumb. Oh hum.

Anyway, tonight the Gunners will be spiked. You read it here first.

Closure

I've finished off a couple of things in the last few days: all six episodes of Bleak House have been duly viewed, and the journey through Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance concluded. Endings (to stories) are always difficult, I think. I've never written anything long enough to be faced with this problem in creative terms, but it's pretty obvious that despite all his greatness as a writer, as a storyteller, Dickens is rarely at his best in the final chapters (but nearly always on top form in the first episode of a serial.) The single exception I can think of (for endings) is that of Little Dorrit, which is wonderful - and maybe the ending he didn't use for Great Expectations. I'm afraid Andrew Davies, writer of the BBC adaptation of BH, in rounding up doesn't pull off anything to match the quality of almost everything else he achieves in the earlier episodes. The last fifteen minutes or so is pretty perfunctory, rightly going for pace and economy of effect. For those who want the story alone it's fine, but I'd have liked to see Timothy West's brilliant Sir Leicester Dedlock being given room to expand on his unexpected (or was it?) generosity of spirit. In fact, the Dedlocks were a triumph all round. I presume Gillian Anderson has been offered British citizenship and a minor gong (MBE?) in recognition of her note perfect portrayal of the perfect imperfect English lady.

In contrast, I thoroughly enjoyed the ending of Pirsig's most American travelogue. The pace of the last few chapters, dealing with Phaedrus's experience in Chicago and the rather thrilling demolition job on Aristotle, is powerfully maintained. The resolution of father and son also felt like an organic part of the narrative rather than a hastily assembled Hollywood ending of the kind Pirsig discusses in the preface. But as to whether the philosophy convinces…? I'm afraid the problem lies in the fact that anyone who can make such a dreadful howler over the meaning of the name Phaedrus and write with such animus about former teachers forfeits a certain amount of regard as a systems builder. There are plenty of insights in the novel and more than mere fast food for thought, but as to whether Pirsig is genuinely sailing out into uncharted waters, I am sceptical. Of course, I'm too ignorant of the broad field to be sure, but this is where my instincts point. But I remain open to persuasion, and certainly intend to dip into some of the juicier philosophical bits of the novel again.

Capital

A productive day at work mainly spent planning for next year. Brian Ng and I are working on a somewhat revised plan for the year for Year 5, based on some perceptive ideas from Ferdinand, and it's taking an interesting shape. One of the challenges is to remember the ups and downs of this year's programme and factor the concerns raised into the new scheme of things. There's a curiously strong tendency to forget what actually took place (almost an impulse) and just recalling the fine detail is a demanding but extremely useful exercise. I've always felt that this dealing with the nuts and bolts of the day-to-day experience of what is really going on in classrooms is where the real action in education is: the pedagogic equivalent of getting one's hands dirty.

After picking up Noi it was off to the hawker centre near Eunos MRT for a plate of hot, tasty curry puffs and a big cup of tea. We are now getting back to our pre-Ramadhan routines, a sort of minor fall from grace, I suppose, but not too sinful.

Then home to another treat: the great VW symphonic play-through continued with the second symphony - A London Symphony. This is my favourite of the symphonies, and up there amongst the VW raves to which every right thinking listener must surely subscribe: Tallis, Lark Ascending, Job. For a start, it's chock full of tunes, real tunes, great tunes, the sort you're humming along to almost on a first hearing and which rapidly become part of your aural consciousness, assuming there is such a thing. And the fact the tunes don't come in anything close to a neat sequence but sort of tumble abundantly in and out of each other, sometimes sort of scurrying through magical harmonic textures only to hide again, keeps the whole thing fresh and somehow unpredictable, no matter how well you know the piece.

And then there are so many examples of great scene painting going on. You are made to visualise the city, and this is a London of great charm and beauty I'm talking of, not the modern metropolis. That description of the slow second movement as Bloomsbury Square on a November afternoon (VW's own) is so right, you can taste the fog (in the viola, I think.) But there's also the less attractive underbelly of the city in the music, particularly in the unpredictable sudden floods of those oddly impassioned outbursts, usually led by the strings - like the two louder passages in the slow movement and that bit at the beginning of the final movement that comes out of nowhere, it seems, nailing you to the wall. I think VW saw something under (through? below?) the great capital and centre of empire he walked at the turn of the century. I think he saw Blake's Eternal City and he captured it in music. If this isn't great music, I don't know what is.