Jolly Good

Enjoyed a jolly good time at the Victoria Concert Hall this evening. The SSO put up a baroque night. Every piece was immediately accessible in terms of rhythmic spring and tunefulness, which was a good job in my case as I was only familiar with one of the concerti played - that being the third Brandenburg, which I know very well indeed. In this case familiarity did not breed contempt. Quite the opposite - I loved every moment.

And the price paid for this surpassingly excellent experience? A mere fourteen dollars. I got hold of the last of the cheap seats, and at the rate for senior citizens. Of course, it doesn't speak well of my character that paying so little actually added to my enjoyment, but I'm just keeping it real.

More Differences

I'm so used to thinking of Patrick Magee's performance in Krapp's Last Tape that watching John Hurt in the role earlier today felt strange, as if not quite right somehow. And the pacing of the piece captured in the Beckett on Film collection seemed very slow indeed. But I think I now prefer the Hurt version.

Magee was brilliant, but his Krapp was a wonderful grotesque, a kind of monster. Hurt is brilliant in a quieter way - the switch in his voice from the old man to the younger versions is remarkable - and he terrifies in his ordinariness. 

Differences

It's snowing in Norway. It isn't in Singapore. In fact, it's typically hot here. I have a photo from Noi to prove this. (The snowing bit, not the heat.) But for some reason I can't download the thing from my phone to my laptop to show it to the world. Not that the world cares over much, I suppose.

Postscript:

I finally got the photo uploaded, as above. And then Noi sent me this one with what she endearingly terms the 'raindeer', which looks even colder to me:

A Little List

I'll need to read Volume 1 of David Hawkes's translation of Cao Xueqin's classic The Story of the Stone (a.k.a. A Dream of Red Mansions) ahead of being involved in the teaching of the text in 2025. This is a wee bit intimidating and very exciting. The intimidation comes from the fact I know hardly anything of the cultural context of the novel and the excitement from the same rather embarrassing piece of information, with the add-on that I'll need to find out something and quickly so. With this in mind I gabbed the Penguin Classics edition from the shelves of our department cupboard, handily situated right behind my desk in the staffroom, and this will accompany me to the UK in December.

As will a copy of Yusnari Kawabata's The Sound of the Mountain, which appeared on my desk a month or so ago with the gnomic message: It's about aging and dreams. I think you might like it. Oddly enough, I reckon I will.

So that takes care of that major aspect of my holiday planning. I doubt I'll try and take any CDs, except perhaps the Dylan Christmas album which has become a happy fixture of my December. (I'm thinking of making John & Jeanette listen, but that's something I might just relent on. There are limits as to what one might reasonably inflict on one's hosts, and the Bobster in Holiday mode is, sadly, not for everyone.)

Catching Up

Met up with AK this evening for the first time in over a decade. He suffered a bad fall a while back and was a bit unsteady on his feet, but other than that was very much the same AK, battling on. Despite having plenty to talk about it was odd how often we came back to the need to take care of our aging bodies, especially in terms of avoiding falling down. As a kid, falling is a natural activity, almost to be welcomed. In adolescence and as an adult it's a sort of non-issue. So when it starts to loom large in one's senescence it all comes as a bit of a surprise, but a disturbingly fascinating one in its way.

The Sense Of An Ending

Thought I'd take some small advantage in Noi not being around for a while by playing some stuff on DVD that wouldn't exactly fit our usual routines. To this end I got a four disk set of Beckett on Film from the library at work. Kicked off my viewing today with the version of Endgame thereon and was entirely blown away.

This production featured Michael Gambon as Hamm and David Thewlis as Clov. As you might guess they are sensationally good. Definitive in the roles. Very funny and very sad at one and the same time. It really worked as film as well with the director often exploiting extreme close-ups in an almost painterly way. Nagg & Nell in the bins looked quite extraordinary. Not just old but in something close to a state of decay.

As with any really good production of Beckett, the viewer ends up feeling something like extreme despair but in an almost cheerful way. I suppose it's the very existence of the play that does it.

Hanging Loose

Saw Noi off this afternoon from Changi Airport on her Norwegian adventure. Felt a bit low afterwards, at something of a loose end. Decided to go to a concert performed by the students in our music programme. This was an excellent idea.

If kids performing creative wonders doesn't lift you then nothing can.

Undefeated, Sort Of

Bit of a funny day. Nothing really taxing about it. Yet, at 1.20 pm I really didn't want to keep walking around on my first shift of invigilation. And at 5.30 I really, really didn't want to carry on shopping at the supermarket with Noi. Following which I very much didn't want to do my scheduled stint at the gym at 7.20. And, finally, I could hardly stand to get going on the Isha' Prayer at 9.20. 

Somehow managed them all, and am glad I did so. Not exactly a triumph, but a lot better than a defeat. 

Mr Teh Tarik - 8

For the first time in a while Noi and I managed to get out for afternoon tea. She took a break from making her curry puffs and I managed to pull myself away from pressing workaday concerns, which, for once, were not pressing enough to pin me down. Actually this tea only involved tea as I forewent munching on a curry puff outside given that the curry puffs at home were several times more delicious.

But I was delighted to find we went to exactly the right place for a splendidly hot and genuinely large teh tarik gajah. We found this at the hawker centre on West Coast Road, I think it's called Ayer Rajah Hawker Centre. The stall at which the wonderful drink was available was number 67 - that of Abdul Aziz. I'm not sure if I've referenced this stall before in my Mr Teh Tarik saga (not having posted since back in very early 2022 when we were out and about at Geylang Serai) but it doesn't matter if it's a repeat since the teh in question is worth the repeated emphasis involved.

By the by, when we went out it felt like a surpassingly hot afternoon. We could barely sit in the overheated seats of the car when initially setting forth. There was a surprisingly large crowd at the centre, given it was a weekday afternoon. I suppose folks were sort of enjoying the relaxing quality of the heat. It was heartening to think that people were able to find time to warmly chill in this most busy of cities.

Of Real Value

One of the many contradictory aspects of my character is the fact that whilst I have very little time for academic literary criticism in general, I can really enjoy and read with enthusiasm odd examples of such on a seemingly random basis. Case in point: a little book fell into my hands a couple of days back entitled How To Read Joyce by one Derek Attridge, Professor of English at the University of York, as it turns out, and I think it's a great read.

I thought I recognised the prof's name when I was passed the book. I checked in the library and he's the editor of the nifty Cambridge Companion to Joyce which I'd been browsing in fairly profitably earlier in the year. There's a particularly good essay on Finnegans Wake in there, but not written by the editor. However, in How To Read... he writes excellently on a few excerpts from the Wake and, in the book in general, every analysis he provides of the passages he selects is both illuminating with regard to the passage in question and the broader work.

The simple notion behind the book seems an extremely useful one to me - look closely at carefully selected passages from the author in question to help explore profitable ways of reading them. I suppose it fits my notion of reading lit in general: read closely and sympathetically and enjoy what you read. That's all the Theory I need.

By the way, on the last page of the short tome the prof identifies what he terms the indispensable values Joyce celebrates in the Wake. These are the fruits of living in this fallen world: generosity, creativity and laughter.

Now there's a list to live by.