A Question Of Justice

A very jolly afternoon with lots of friends around for high tea and Noi surpassing herself on the hospitality front. The only downside on the proceedings came in the form of a number of critical comments concerning my seniority in terms of years spent on the planet. I found all this unnecessarily ageist - and said so, pointing out that I now self-identified as a handsome and charismatic forty-year-old. People failed to take this at all seriously.

All you social justice warriors out there need to take up my cause, I reckon.

Something Lost

I'm very annoyed at myself. I contrived to waste forty minutes of my life this morning watching a supremely dumb video on YouTube about the 'downfall' of a famous 'influencer' from the early days of the Internet. I'd never heard of the young lady in question prior to watching the video and I learnt nothing of value to myself, or anyone else for that matter, in the excruciating trawl through her sad life.

I suppose I vaguely thought I was finding out something about an aspect of our culture that I'd previously been blind to, but really that wasn't the case. I'm well aware of the fact that a lot of young people are capable of behaving very badly indeed in public and that a few paradoxically get rewarded for this, with disastrous consequences for themselves and a fair number of the people around them. It's no great secret either that the substances often used to fuel such behaviour don't help, especially when there appear to be serious mental health issues involved.

The funny thing is that the video itself, though dismally parasitical in nature, feeding off the emptiness it documented, was really well put together in terms of its production values. Someone with a fair degree of talent had worked hard to create something that was fundamentally worthless, except in terms, I assume, of making money somehow. 

And there I was, watching the darn thing. Stupid or what!?

Something Gained

It's an odd sort of time of year. On holiday, but lots to do. Happily managing to find some time to do absolutely nothing though. Crashed out spectacularly after the Zuhor Prayer this afternoon. I suppose some might see it as two hours being lost, but it felt like time well spent to me.

A Bit Bothered

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, despite enjoying Matt Haig's The Midnight Library there was something about the novel, something I couldn't quite place, that bothered me. Now I've figured it out. It's the fact that his protagonist, Nora, is so gifted. In some of the various lives she is able to live, through the various volumes of possibility offered in the titular library, she is able to develop her talents for music and swimming and academic philosophy. Now it's true that she doesn't achieve great things in all the many lives she inhabits, but for a presumably Everyman (Everywoman? Everyperson?) character it's not bad going to win an Olympic medal and become an internationally famous rock star in just a couple of them. 

I can see a point being made here about the possibilities involved in making full use of our talents, but this all seems more than a bit heavy-handed to me. And it conflicts with the celebration of simple ordinariness that lies at the heart of the story. Of course, that may be the point but for this reader it doesn't quite work.

I suppose that's the problem with any 'thesis-novel'. Once you interrogate the premises involved the work will start to wobble, and just to have a thesis is to invite interrogation.

Still think it's a good read though.

Happy News

It seems that my sister Maureen is doing pretty well these days, according to the latest from my niece Cheryl back in the UK. I really should write more often for updates but I tend to operate on the foolishly timid principle that no news is good news. So actually confirming today that all really is well came as a bit of a relief. Maureen's short term memory is gone, something we've known for some time, but it sounds like she's happy with what life gives her and particularly enjoys the visits of grand-daughter Imogen each week when they can do a bit of drawing together.

The longed-for calm after the storm.

Seeing Red

This is weird. If anyone had ever told me that my all-time favourite version of Crimso's Red would not actually feature KC themselves I would never have come close to believing them. But I reckon the one that features on the latest series of Daryl's House fits the bill. It's the two keyboards that do it for me, especially the honky-tonk stylings of Mr Hall himself. And to think the band were playing the piece for the first time ever - with its steely-eyed progenitor along with them. Talk about nerve; talk about edge.

Great to see the Frippster clearly having the time of his life, by the way. 

Literature As Therapy

Finished Matt Haig's eminently readable The Midnight Library this afternoon. I don't think I've read such an avowedly therapeutic novel before. Not sure I quite approve of the potential genre, if this turns out to be the beginning of a new school of fiction, but I approve of Mr Haig's inventiveness and his soundness of heart. I can understand why so many readers love the book and I suspect it'll do a lot of good in the world.

Am still trying to figure out what exactly is bothering me about the novel, but something is, despite my admiration for what the writer has achieved.

Staying On Message

One of the most subtly irritating aspects of modernity is the whole business of communications in the context of work. Who was it, I'd like to know, who thought it would be a good idea to generate numerous platforms for sending messages as to what suddenly needs to be done or undone or might be done in the event that somebody else in the chain thinks it would be a good idea to do it? 

When I started teaching in the last century most messages were conveyed by word of mouth (supremely efficient) or written down on pieces of paper and delivered well in advance of whatever 'events' were in the offing. We managed to get lots of things done - pretty much all the stuff that schools do now - and, on the whole, things remained calm, even when busy, because people knew they needed to make their messages clear and avoid last minute changes.

These days even what might appear to be a firm date for something turns out to be speculative and pretty much everything seems open to renegotiation until it's actually happening (or not.) I'm sure someone, somewhere is going to tell me that this is all mysteriously efficient and boosts productivity (a word that should be banned from serious educational discourse, methinks.) I intend to avoid that person.

Perfection

Have discovered the perfect music for the gym. I've never quite been able to make up my mind about Miles's 80's albums, and Tutu is a case in point. I should like it, and sort of do, but the production sort of drives me crazy. I can't unhear the drum machines. On the other hand, Miles is Miles and weaves his way through the funky aural wash in typically unexpected and expressive style.

But in the gym it doesn't matter. The funk drives you along on the elliptical trainer and the brilliant variations keep the brain alive and alert and distracted from suffering.

Catch It While You Can

One of the unexpected fascinations of reading the somewhat academic tome A History of Russian Theatre has been finding out about famous Russian actors of the nineteenth century whose work was obviously of the highest order in creative terms yet now is lost for us forever, except for very general reports of what their performances were actually like. It's strange to think that despite being reasonably interested in the world of theatre in general I'd never heard of the likes of Martynov and Shchepkin, two giants of the Russian theatrical world around about the 1830s.

In some ways, though, the very loss of their work adds a kind of value to it. From a distance we can catch echoes of how meaningful it was for their enraptured audiences, and I suppose this is still true of theatre today. When I think about my life-time of theatre-going I realise that very little of what I've experienced would have been captured on film - and there's a strange sense in which even the best films of theatrical performances can't ever quite completely capture the reality of the moment.

Perhaps, at some deep level we don't really want to capture it. Part of the magic is the fact we know it happened as a gift in time, but we never expected or needed the gift to last.