Guidance

Finished, for now, David Cairns's Mozart And His Operas, in the certain knowledge that this is one to go back to, as soon as I get my hands on a recording of one of the masterpieces it deals with. Isn't it odd how you somehow know that a guide can be trusted when you have no expertise in an area and you'll need to be reliant on them? I know this guy knows exactly what he's talking about even though I don't really know what he's talking about.

A New Life

We've just been watching Masterchef on our recently acquired BBC Lifestyle channel. It's become one of Noi's great favourites, tonight's programme being the start of the third series they've screened. I can easily understand her interest. The actual cooking involved is only part of the attraction, and that's quite fascinating in itself, even for someone like me who's never in the kitchen. But in addition to that there's the intensity of the competition itself with the various chefs being put under what looks from the outside like enormous pressure, especially when they're sent to do shifts in top notch kitchens and have to deliver for real. In fact it all gets a bit too much for me at times - I don't regard it as a programme I can relax to.

And I've noticed something else that adds to the pressure. You get a strong sense of the personalities of the contestants, even within the tight timeframe of a single episode. It's cleverly edited in that respect, often utilising telling reaction shots intercut with bits of interviews to illustrate just how seriously they take the competition, and take it seriously they do, almost without exception, if we are to believe them. The usual line is that they regard their participation as an opportunity to change their lives, and they are going to be none too happy if they don't succeed in doing so. So the viewer, well me really, ends up wanting them all to win in order to avoid what is obviously going to be a profound disappointment.

Which rather begs the question: what is it about their lives that's so bad they need to escape them? And why should cooking, of all things, be the solution?

Other People's Lives

Recently I've found myself intimately involved in the lives of a retired professor of linguistics who is going deaf, a prize-winning Australian vegetarian novelist, a probably psychopathic killer with a tendency to view other as objects of art, and a forty-eight-year-old recovering alcoholic and survivor of an abusive, violent marriage.

And all of this without having to leave my chair. The magic of fiction, eh?

Paradox: why is it that leaving the prison of self to occupy another's confinement feels like a form of escape?

Recovering

After an all-action day of good food, good company and good conversation (sort of pictured above, but not in a way to do it any justice), today has been what Noi terms a lazy day. A much needed one, I must say - though I forced myself into doing some work in the afternoon. Never felt into it though, as if it weren't appropriate somehow.

Something Afoot

Yesternight as I was luxuriantly yawning my way around the mall, the missus was all hustle, tustle, bustle and high purpose - as, indeed, she is as of now. Today marks our annual post-Raya Open House at the Mansion and I, as ever, am agog at Noi's ability to get everything sorted out in the extremely confined space of our little kitchen. My contribution? A wide passivity - I lug a few tables around and sometimes pop to the shop, but otherwise keep out of the way.

Ripeness

There's a rich, royal, relaxing version of being weary that one sometimes gets to enjoy at the end of a week's work that speaks of a kind of fulfilment. I'm enjoying something like that tonight. I could have nodded off quite easily just after the maghrib prayer, especially as I was lying down, listening to a Mozart piano concerto - no. 22, KV482 - and that was putting everything into proportion. But we needed to go to Parkway for cooking purposes and so off we went, and I thoroughly enjoyed drowsily shopping around, eating some porridge and buying precisely nothing. If this sounds inordinately self-satisfied, let me assure you it's meant to.

Spoilt For Choice

A few weeks ago, at a meeting at work, we were shown a short film of an American gentleman giving a lecture on the problems having too many choices brought to people's lives. It was entertaining and, to some degree, insightful stuff, though a little bit over-generalised. One example he gave was that of trying to buy a pair of jeans these days when there are so many available that you end up looking for the perfect pair and worrying that you might miss them. I can imagine people behaving in that manner but unfortunately, or fortunately, I don't, so the example didn't strike home with any great force.

Since watching the film I've been ruminating on whether the thesis does apply to me in specific ways, and I've reached the conclusion that having a wide range of choice can be a problem for me, but not in the way outlined in the lecture. Put simply, I don't have a problem with the need for perfection. Far from it - I find myself generally more than happy with what I've got in all aspects of my life.

No, the difficulty ubiquity of choice creates for me is simply that of using time effectively. I can't read all I want to, I can't listen to all I want to, I can't paint and draw all I want to. In fact, I hardly paint and draw at all, despite a slight hankering to do so, because it is only a slight hankering and I'm drawn more firmly in other directions. Sometimes this inability to do everything I would like to, when the choices are so readily there, is irritating, but it's also extremely useful. I can't recall the last time I was bored.

Another deeper point the lecturer made was that our part of the world - the prosperous bit - would be better off reducing its range of choice, especially when those choices can be so damaging, and providing more choices for those in the world who are not so privileged. I'm not so sure the economics of it all would work quite that way, but I applaud the sentiment behind the idea.

And I also recall him promoting the idea that it's useful to lower expectations in order to achieve the satisfaction we crave. That's made me think a bit. I don't feel like I've consciously lowered my expectations but I must say it's true that there's very little about me now that I see as being 'driven' in any sense. Of course, it's entirely possible that I am being wonderfully self-deceived in all this, and possibly that's the real choice I'm making.

On A Roll

Still hugely enjoying David Cairns's Mozart And His Operas to the extent that I'm deliberately dragging it out a bit. It helps that it's packed with information and needs to be savoured. It's obviously the kind of book that you go back to as a reference, when listening to a particular opera, as well as providing an excellent through-read.

But in the meantime I've been dashing through a fair amount of fiction: following Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, which I finished at the weekend, I've also completed David Lodge's Deaf Sentence and Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello and am now a fair way into Banville's The Book Of Evidence. It certainly helps when the marking is out of the way.

It's a curious thing that whilst a fair number of my generation find much to complain about culturally I see us as living in a golden age for poetry and prose and music (of all kinds.)

Elvis Is King

It's amazing what one guy can do with a great voice, a guitar and a magnificent back catalogue of songs for all occasions. To be strictly accurate there were five guitars on stage for Mr Costello's concert last night, ranging from an electric which responded to a number of tastefully deployed foot pedals to a nylon stringed number that he played sitting down, but the name of the game was simplicity and it worked wonderfully for the approximately two hour gig.

It helped enormously that we were part of an audience that reacted enthusiastically between numbers but knew when to shut up and listen. Elvis exploited the soft bits as much as he did the rock n' rollers, such that the switches in volume became part of the intended drama of the show. The degree of intimacy he conjured in what was obviously a foreign setting - he made at least two slightly rueful comments about the grandeur of the concert hall - was remarkable, assisted in no small part by the way he flung himself, sometimes literally, into his material.

And what of the material? He started with Accidents Will Happen and finished with Pump It Up which is a fair pointer to a sensible decision to base the performance around the fairly obvious hits, a policy which extended to the covers he performed, such as Good Year For The Roses (beautifully done) and She. Mind you, a cracking version of Jacky Wilson Says was unexpected and some of his own songs were slightly surprising choices - re Toledo from Painted From Memory. But all in all, it really didn't matter because the guy showed sheer class on everything. And I loved his hat.

Distorted Vision

I've really got to consider wearing glasses. On Saturday when playing The Hazards Of Love and reading the lyrics I distinctly read that one member of The Decemberists provided barking vocals for the prelude to the album. I thought that was a bit insulting as there wasn't any doggy-like howling over the music that I could hear. It only occurred to me later that the said member of the group may have been contributing simply to backing vocals. Not quite as expressive, but a good deal more likely. In defence of myself though, I must say that the lyrics are printed in a tiny white font against a black background.

Then today, whilst glancing at the cover of a magazine that the Ministry of Education here sends to schools, I read: Primary school system builds on solid foundation to torture new generation. That struck me as being refreshingly forthright until I realised they probably had nurturing in mind and re-read the sentence again to confirm the milder reading. A pity though: life is somehow more exciting when you view it at an angle.