On The Up

Just back from a late afternoon run around the streets of Katong. This is all part of a very gradual attempt to get back into the kind of routine of exercise I established last year. In late May 2007 I was in Vietnam bounding up various scenic ascents with the vim and vigour of a mountain goat - a goat that had no doubt been pensioned off and was in the sunset of its years but still sufficiently active to warrant the alliterative adjectives appended above.

At the moment I'm wondering if I've done myself any lasting damage through my efforts, but at my age this has to be considered after any and all forms of exertion. The joys of aging!

A Matter of Style

I spent a good deal of the day watching a fine game of cricket between my school's senior team and their number one rivals for the top slot in Singapore. Our opponents won but our guys put up a strong showing. In fact, at the point when I left for prayers at the nearby mosque I thought they might just snatch a victory, but by the time I got back it was all done and dusted. There's a lot of nonsense these days about winning being everything. It isn't. Giving it your best shot, doing it the right way and recognising both victory and defeat for the imposters they are: that's everything.

The best novel I know about school cricket, in fact, my all-time favourite school story (which I think I read probably twenty times around the age of eleven) is P. G. Wodehouse's Mike and Psmith (which marked Psmith's fictional debut.) Here's a paragraph describing one of the teachers attempting to bowl:

Mr Downing was a bowler with a style of his own. He took two short steps, two long steps, gave a jump, took three more short steps, and ended with a combination of step and jump, during which the ball emerged from behind his back and started on its slow career to the wicket. The whole business had some of the dignity of the old-fashioned minuet, subtly blended with the careless vigour of a cake-walk. The ball, when delivered, was billed to break from leg, but the programme was subject to alterations.

Now that's a style to which to aspire - the writing, not the bowling.

Perspectives

The images of the aftermath of the dreadful storm that hit Burma are humbling. The sense that those who have least are most likely to have it taken from them is overwhelming.

Some shots shown on the BBC this morning of guys starting to repair simple structures were a reminder of what is most extraordinary about our species, in a good sense. The possibility that aid might not make it through to the rural areas at all, and the thought of what that will entail for the survivors, invokes the opposite.

For Art's Sake

One of the features of art: it's like life, only more so. That defining intensity goes a long way to explaining why there's always at least one moment when doing a production that you think: It's not going to work. I wish we'd never started this. But it also explains those other moments when the thing takes off and soars. Today we've enjoyed more than a few of the flying high variety at our last rehearsal of the SYF piece in the venue where we'll actually perform next Thursday. Twenty cast members acting their socks off and a production team to die for. Yowza!

In the meantime we'll be pressing on with maintenance and high performance engineering in the days to come.

Birdsong

According to the cliches it's reckoned to be melodious and soothing. It's not. The birdsong I get to hear in Singapore and Malaysia is scrappy, skittering, scatty stuff. And I love it - when I make myself hear it, that is. All too often I'm too busy thinking of weighty matters, like how many emails are lying in wait for me, to lend an ear to the cacophony that accompanies my entrance to the staffroom. These last few mornings I've made myself lend an ear though, and been all the better for it.

This was prompted by an observation from Bernard who reckons that one bird keeps singing t-o-k, t-o-k. I think I know the one he means. Smart little thing.

Enthusiasms

Yesterday I finished Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled, and a jolly good read it was. I think the first part of the book dealing with prosody is the most effective and sees him at his best, but there are sound judgements made throughout and the sheer enthusiasm of Fry towards all sorts of verse is infectious. It was heartening that this enthusiasm extended towards a good deal of modern poetry - some felicitous comments on Ted Hughes were particularly striking. I think Hughes's reputation is going to grow considerably in the next half century based on his accessibility, helped along by non-academic enthusiasts for poetry like Mr Fry.

In fact, that's where the future of poetry (and I believe it will have one) will lie - outside the Lit departments. With regard to most forms of art I long ago came to the conclusion that criticism as such was generally worse than useless. What counts then? Two things: the enthusiasm of the audience and an audience that actually practises art in terms of trying to make the thing. (Then they realise how difficult it all actually is, as well as quite enjoying the process of finding this out. The salutary effect of all this is to make you that bit more charitable as a responder, and a good deal more perspicacious.)

We can safely leave it to generations to come to discriminate between what was good and what wasn't. In the meantime it's best to simply get stuck into the stuff, with gusto.

Beyond Cynicism

I was coming to the end of my quota of marking for the day when I found myself watching something on the History Channel. (I regularly interrupt bouts of marking with short breaks to stretch, unwind and get in touch with real life.) The programme was about the history of Antarctica and began with an account of Shackleton's expedition on The Endurance, showing some great period film of the whaling station on South Georgia and of the ship breaking up in the ice.

The story was told in about fifteen minutes, but even that brief version was enough to remind me of how incredible (I use the word carefully) it all was. I suppose it would be fairly easy to comfortably deconstruct the whole thing to render it a metaphor for the failure of Empire or the like. But the difficult truth is that saving those twenty-two men was heroic in the simple sense of the word, and there is such a sense, regardless of how life might like to undercut it.

In fact, it doesn't take much imagination to grasp that, somewhere in this benighted world, there are taking place equally extraordinary tales of survival against the odds on a daily basis, featuring the kinds of people we find it difficult to envisage as heroes. Not so much a cause for celebration as for making you feel a bit small, a bit petty, a bit of a whinger, all told.

More Cynicism

It's odd and interesting to degree to which cynicism can genuinely offend people. I suppose it represents a threat to our ability to deceive ourselves, a threat that, for some, must be quashed at all costs. Hence that curious sense of desperation, of wilful denial, that is so often apparent beneath the promotion of various manifestations of positive psychology.

But life is so much richer when we take cognisance of all its aspects, that is, insofar as we are capable of facing a little of the reality which ultimately we cannot bear. When Zappa's Oh No segues into the instrumental that follows we are treated to one of his most gloriously ebullient melodies, radiating a good natured humour and acceptance, in perfect balance with the mordancy of the lyric we've just heard. It's intoxicating (I've had the tune in my head all day, despite having known it for years) and life-affirming.

The Virtues of Cynicism

One of the CDs that made into the car's CD changer this week is Zappa (and The Mothers') Weasels Ripped My Flesh. It's an album for which I have a good deal of affection despite being a messy hodge-podge of live and studio material with no real centre - well, not one I've ever been able to find. To be honest, I think it's the wonderfully offensive cover art that accounts for the nostalgic glow the thing evokes for me. I remember admiring it as something approaching the height of cool in a record shop near my secondary school back in 1969, or thereabouts, thinking one day I'm going to own that. And now I do.

It also contains what I consider one of Frank's all-time-great compositions: Oh No. (In fact, the segue into The Orange County Lumber Truck really means the album contains two such compositions, but I tend to hear them as one, which is how the Mothers live generally played them in this period.) To be honest, this first recording of Oh No is a pretty messy version compared to some of the great live accounts, but it's such a wonderful song it works in any context.

Its biting cynicism about the vague aspirations of the love generation (as far as I understand it was written in response to The Beatles's All You Need Is Love) is a welcome reminder that songs can be intelligently truthful about the world to which we are condemned, rather than blearily, Pollyannaishly, aspirational, as seems to be the case with most 'pop' music these days.

How refreshing it is to be told: Oh no I don't believe it / You say you think you know the meaning of love / You say love is all we need / You say with your love you can change / All of the fools, all of the hate / I think you're probably out to lunch.

Anyone who sings this on American Idol will get my vote.

Adam's Curse

On a day set aside for celebration of those who labour I found myself labouring, with ironic heroism, over a large pile of marking. As Noi would say, What to do?

Well, what I did, once I'd fulfilled my quota for the day, was get out for a run down to Siglap - not far, but a sensible distance considering my lack of fitness. Then it was back to preparing a lecture for tomorrow. Ho hum.

But it'll soon be time for the results show of this week's American Idol. My money's on the two Davids in the final and Jason for the long walk home tonight.