Good News

Decided that the news has been so unrelentingly depressing lately (not to mention the footy results) that I had to go looking for feel-good stories. Found a couple in The Graun that made me smile.

The headline Species named after David Attenborough believed extinct rediscovered already sounded pretty wonderful, and the fact that said species happen to be next door in Indonesia added to the piquancy of the tale. The lovely photo of Attenborough's long-beaked echidna further added to the cheerfulness of the piece.

But to my surprise I cracked open an even bigger grin in relation to a brilliant article from the Experience series: Stevie Wonder secretly played on my band's single. Good grief, imagine not just meeting the great man but having him play harmonica on your stuff! It made me wonder what I might say if I ever encountered him. Probably something completely stupid like: Mr Wonder you've been the soundtrack to a lot of my life and I play your albums when I go to the gym and I am just not worthy. By the way, I found the Feelabeelia track featured very tasty in itself - and not just because of Stevie on the mouth harp.

Just A Suggestion

When we were in the Fairprice supermarket at Clementi Mall this afternoon the Missus suggested buying some jacuzzies to munch on. I found this both intriguing and faintly horrifying in roughly equal proportions. It turned out that she was actually thinking of buying a zucchini, some sort of vegetable I believe. Bit disappointing in the end, though I'm sure she'll do something spectacularly delicious with the veggie in question.

Feeling Sad

I found reading the final sections of Atwood's Dearly a bit tricky. The poems were wonderful and in almost every respect easy to read. But the subject matter was painful. The sequence relating to climate change was devastating, rightly so. And those on the loss of her husband (I'm guessing that was the background) similarly dark. Not without some vague sense of hope, I think. But dark.

A bit like the final scene of Lear, I suppose. The truth hurts, but it's all we've got, finally.

Now And Now

Just to add something to what I was writing yesterday regarding the video for Now And Then and its relevance to the notion of time and staying young forever. Underlying the beautifully blended shots of the younger Beatles and their later selves is the inescapable truth that we don't stay forever young but, at one and the same time, our younger selves, for better or worse, remain essential to what we become. I suppose that sounds more than a bit pretentiously deep, but the film and song convey the notion in an appropriate spirit of playfulness.

There's a moment when we see for the first time the elderly (80+) Ringo singing back-up to the Lennon vocal, along with Macca, and he's completely, delightfully, lost in the moment. And that's immediately followed by a black and white shot of John & George, circa 1964 at a guess, laughing as they harmonise playing live. We could be back in the middle 60s with all of them, or earlier. We're not very good at time, are we? We sort of float through it, out of our depth. But in those moments when we lose ourselves in the joy of it all we make a kind of sense and learn something of what we are here to do with the time we are mercifully given. 

Then And Now

I wasn't in any great hurry to hear the 'latest' Beatles' single, Now And Then, thinking it was likely to be mediocre late-Lennon with a distinct corporate dad-rock flavour, what with the Peter Jackson video and all. An event that is/was just that - a kind of vacuous PR-driven week or so of a special event that isn't/wasn't all that special.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

The song is gorgeous. Not among the genuinely great Beatles' songs, but a really good one. I know this because I've now listened to it four times and two segments have been on a lovely warm endless ear-wormy loop in my mind since the third listen. And the video is perfection. Somebody decided to go easy on the sentiment and let the simple good humour of the four lovable mop-heads from Merseyside do the job, and got it absolutely right. That's the thing about John, Paul, George and Ringo. They weren't just rock gods. They were always four ordinary (but brilliant) lads from the streets of Liverpool and everyone sort of knew that all along, even when they behaved badly, as lads often do, or said daft things, as lads always do.

And the whole package (horrible word, but let it pass for once) manages to say wise and telling things about time and aging and staying forever young.

Towards The Light

Played RVW's Dona Nobis Pacem this afternoon as therapy. Kept reminding myself that as the Maestro wrote this between the wars (around a century ago now) the idea of peace in Europe must have seemed absurd. Yet even by my long-ago boyhood that peace had emphatically arrived. To think of conflict as the norm in human affairs is a failure of imagination.

Of course, it helps that the music is of itself stunningly beautiful. A living, breathing reminder of what the imagination is for.

On Top

It occurred to me today that I've not read all that widely in the work of Margaret Atwood, four novels, a few essays and occasional poems in anthologies and set for exams as 'unseens', but everything I've read has been excellent. This reflection was brought on by the fact I'm reading her latest book of poems, entitled Dearly, and that it's proving expectedly excellent. I received it as a gift from a student for Teachers' Day and dipped into its pages immediately, instantly unearthing a couple of gems. Now I'm going cover to cover and, to be honest, it's impressing me a lot more than Robert Lowell's 1961 collection Imitations, which I've just struggled to the end of in the Collected.

I suspect I'd feel a lot more at home in an Atwood Collected or Selected.

Learning A Lesson

Over the last four weeks I've been making a habit of finishing my stint on the elliptical trainer with a bit of a sprint over the last three minutes or thereabouts. It's a way of making sure I've genuinely pushed myself and not settled into a comfortable routine.

The odd thing is how unpredictable the various batches of last few minutes have proved. There are occasions when I know I have the reserves to really go for it, and there are times when I've known within 30 seconds that I had nothing left to push with. I thought this evening that I was going to enjoy a feeling of strength in reserve as I hit the 52 minute mark only to discover there was nothing there. I stepped off the machine 3 mediocre minutes later all a-tremble, knowing I had come close to throwing-up territory.

So here I am now, royally aching, happy to have something done, but puzzled as to why it had to be so difficult. I suppose I'm learning something; I just don't know what that something is.

Words Of Wisdom

Minor truth: A half-warm cup of tea - when you expect something nice & hot - is a deep disappointment. 

Major truth: But a deeply hot cuppa when you're feeling less than tickety-boo sets the world to rights.

(Actually I scrawled the above in a notebook some time back, early in 2022, and happened to read it again today. Have no idea of the particular context but was struck by my own insight. No one can accuse me of not knowing a thing or two worth knowing.)  

In The Dark

As I made brief reference to yesterday, I'm sort of trying to avoid what's in the news, but at the same time feel compelled to get some sense of what's happening in Gaza and the West Bank. The fact that what's happening isn't good and isn't likely to result in any kind of positive outcome relates to my desire to avoid learning too much. But learning of the facts in themselves is a kind of moral compulsion.

I suppose something similar is true in relation to learning what took place at the heart of government in the UK in the early months of the pandemic. Except that following the covid inquiry feels akin to watching farce, in contrast to the utter tragedy of events in Israel. But then I recall the staggering death toll brought about by the staggering ineptitude of Johnson's government, and the darkness descends.