The Bright Side

The month ends with me paying for car insurance and road tax and torturing myself in the gym immediately afterwards. And how fortunate I am to be able to do any of this: to be able to afford the bills and be fit enough to keep going for my 45 minutes of misery.

Other Stuff

Now contemplating the books I'm supposed to be reading at the moment. (I say supposed since I got side-tracked after work today by an issue that needed to be dealt with and, thus, haven't managed even a page so far.) The pile comprises: Gilbert White's The Natural History of Selborne; the second in Joseph Campbell's The Masks of God series - Oriental Mythology; the Collected Poems of James Merrill; Gerard Genette's Palimpsests - Literature in the Second Degree; and Connections 2014 in the National Theatre's annual collection based on their youth theatre festival.

Not a dud amongst them, but nothing utterly unputdownable either. At least, that's my excuse for something approaching neglect in the one area of human experience I think of as almost defining me.

Culture And Society And Stuff

It's with some relief that I record here that I've just finished Raymond Williams's Culture and Society 1780- 1950. The relief stems from the fact that this means I've actually got some serious reading done after a period of something close to complete turpitude on that front. I didn't really read much in June, when I was relatively free from the Toad, work, and I've been so busy since that I've only managed a page here, a page there from the books I'm supposed to be engaged in. In fact, I started this reading of Culture and Society back in June, it being one of my 'KL books'.

It's a book that I've often dipped into over the years, since acquiring it back in my university days when it was sort of regarded as a text that everyone should read. Since it features in part a series of chapters on individual writers (e.g., Carlyle, Lawrence, Orwell) it certainly lends itself to dipping and I suppose at one time I would have claimed to have actually read it, but it takes a sequential read-through in its entirety to appreciate the breadth of Williams's conception of culture and its relation to society. 

Many segments, especially those on the twentieth century, now seem dated in the terms used by the writer and the understandable innocence regarding developments in modes of communication that make his conception of mass communication seem distinctly quaint. But I felt I gained much from Williams, not least an understanding of the historical seriousness of his concerns.

Radiance

Noi has gone off to Melaka until Sunday with Fuad & Rozita and I'm indulging in a little late night Elgar: Introduction & Allegro, Serenade in E minor and Symphony No. 2. The music matches the hour, radiantly subdued. It doesn't get much better than this, unless it happens to be RVW, whom I over-dosed on this afternoon to gloriously somnolent effect.

Quite A Finish

 

 

 

Tonight saw the final performance of Black Comedy, and we concluded in appropriately storming style, with a most satisfying mess upon the stage. Of course, it takes real skill to create a good mess, and ours was very good indeed. Plus we cleared it up and dismantled a bed before 10.30.

And now I’m pretty much finished myself, so goodnight all.

Good Taste

Just ate a bowl of spaghetti with mushroom sauce with bits of salmon mixed in, as prepared by the inimitable Missus. As a kid there was no way I could have even looked at such a dish. Thank goodness for changing tastes.

Interesting Times

I've been trying of late to keep up-to-date with the latest events of a political nature in the UK and US. But such is the strange intensity of all that's going on in those far places that I'm finding it almost impossible to do so. The fact that I have no understanding at all of what quite large segments of the populations in those nations might be thinking doesn't help.

I don't believe this is happening, I keep thinking. But it is.

Out Of Place

Found myself wearing a jacket today for the first time since 1988, in this country at least. I suppose I might have borrowed one for funerals in the UK over that period. Anyway, I was consorting with the Great and the Good this morning and, frankly, that's not my natural element. It was a bit of a relief to get back onto territory with which I'm familiar and return the jacket to the Cheeky Chappy to whom it belongs. Of course it no longer fits Peter, but I didn't have the effrontery to ask him for it. And considering the effort I'll put into avoiding any possibility of having to wear a jacket again for some years to come, it would be a pretty pointless request.

A Crimson Moment - 2

The first time I heard Waiting Man in the version from Beat  I didn't think all that much of it. After a while I sort of grew to like it. But then I heard and saw the version that opens Live in Frejus. A reminder that Crimso have always been the band for a hot date, and that what really counts is what happens in performance.

Over The Years

Nice surprise at yesterday's performance of Black Comedy when three of the original team, Reuben, Luke and Jordan, dropped by to see the show. Reuben and Luke had graced the stage eleven years ago as Harold and Selva (the philosopher-electrician, who morphed into Wang this time around) but in my mind it was as if that production was almost as freshly minted as the on-going one. For a little while I'd stepped out of time again. I felt caught between echoes in the most satisfactory manner imaginable.

Question to myself: What is it about the intensity of stage time that connects it to that sense of forever-ness that attends upon each and every production?