Fireworks

I've moved on from the calculated restraint of Ishiguro to the pyrotechnics of Jeanette Winterson's Sexing The Cherry. It's been a good while since I've picked up anything by the lady. I read the first novel, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, some fifteen or sixteen years ago based, surprisingly, on the recommendation of a Principal I was working under and immediately followed up with this one for reasons I can no longer remember. What I do remember is being a bit irritated by the wilful obscurity of the texts and a tiny bit suspicious that the packaging was hiding a very fragile gift. Viewing subsequent appearances by Ms Winterson on various television programme didn't instill much confidence She struck me as more than a little tiresome and more than a little in love with her own ideas.

So when I found her singled out for a particularly unkind skewering in John Carey's What Good Are The Arts? I wasn't entirely surprised. He may have been unkind but he was deadly accurate regarding her ideas about art.

So I found myself rather pleased to be thoroughly enjoying Sexing The Cherry rather than standing in miserable critical judgement over it. It's got energy and as long as you don't bother too much about where it's going it turns out to be a pleasantly funny journey, well so far at least. Oh, and I like the paperback edition I've got it in. From the Grove Press, New York. Rather handsome

An Argument For The Existence Of God

Papa Haydn's 3 symphony sequence Le Matin, Le Midi, Le Soir - especially as performed by Trevor Pinnock and The English Consort. The product of a meaningless universe based on random chance? Yeah, right.

Orphaned

Thoroughly enjoyed Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans, which I finished early yesterday. As I suspected from the early chapters, my reading of which was continually subject to interruption by the great and grey necessities of life, it proved an easy read in terms of unputdownability. Ishiguro is very clever in terms of planting little puzzles that you have to read on to sort out, and the prose is thrillingly bland. Has there ever been such a highly rated writer who willingly limits himself in terms of verbal fireworks to none at all? The sense of restraint is very powerful, and pervades the text in that you are aware that everything on the surface is exactly that - and what lies beneath is precisely other.

The problem is, though, that he's done this before, all the time in fact, and you realise very quickly it's going to be more of the same. Of course, that's extremely good stuff, so it's hardly a matter for complaint, but predictability in this sense is surely for writers stuck in particular genres. They may do it well, but they do it over and over.

Having said that, I do think there's something new in Orphans, but I'm not sure it's entirely to the writer's credit, though in some ways I rather enjoyed it. I'm referring the distinct sense of melodrama hovering around the novel and, with reasonable frequency, making an occasional distinct landing. The dialogue alone is extraordinarily stagey. I mean, you can really hear whole conversations as being delivered in a movie - an expensive one with bigtime backers from the States somewhere in the background but a very British movie for all that. And some of the contrived encounters, especially in the later sequences in Shanghai, make you reach for a good helping of salt.

It does lead one to suspect that Ishiguro wanted a popular success and went a little out of his way to try and get it. And why not? In the final analysis it's a darned good read. It's not often I suggest to the missus that she might like to pick up something I've put down - but this time I did.

Tripping Out

We're just back from Geylang where I conducted a little experiment on myself. I timed a walk we took after an eminently satisfying round of epok epok, kueh lopez and teh tarik at Zain's Café to Tanjong Katong Complex to see how long it took before I'd need, and I mean need, to sit down. The answer was thirteen minutes and twenty-six seconds. The first six and a half minutes were entirely pain free. Then came the first slight shadows of something. For the next two minutes or so a faint numbness enshrouded my right foot and the pain, starting embarrassingly in my backside steadily made its course down my thigh. By ten minutes the muscle at the side of my right shin started throbbing. That's the sign that I must move and get seated, especially when the throbbing becomes distinctly rhythmic. At that point I went off to the car whilst Noi continued her shopping. One of the interesting, and sometimes demanding, aspects of my current condition is the need to plan anything that involves being upright with great care such that it's always possible to find somewhere to sit down.

I'd been hoping that the latest medicine might keep me on my feet a little longer than this but possibly it hasn't really kicked in yet. But the pill that is said to make you drowsy certainly appears to be having that effect on me. The feeling of being mildly detached from the world is rather pleasant, but I'm not sure it's going to help me on a working day. My plan is to try it tomorrow and hope no one notices how spaced out I am.

Noi tells me I'm now slanting, a phenomenon the doc pointed out to me yesterday in the course of his examination. I have no real sense of this though I do notice it to some degree when looking in a mirror in a state of undress. The missus has advised me to walk straight which is something I don't think I'm going to be able to achieve as I'm not in any way aware of walking bent. I think she's a bit embarrassed about me looking like a stooping old fellow, but I quite enjoy the drama of limping along.

In fact, it has occurred to me that this will be a good time to do a little activity called Where's The Pain? with the drama guys on Wednesday. The idea is to imagine a pain in some part of your body and then let it affect your movements without telling, as it were, the audience (the circle of pain you are in) where it is. Then the watchers try and guess what the problem was. It's a fascinating activity usually. Quite disconcertingly you can get a powerful sense of discomfort, almost suffering, just watching the participants. I suppose that, in the final analysis, it's all in the head.

Of Medicine and Men

Pictured above is the latest dosage assigned to me by my back doctor - twice daily, with two of the pills for ingestion in between also. A couple of them may induce drowsiness; the little white and red number is one, so I'm just about to try them out and see how close they take me to the land of nod.

I'd expected to be sent for an MRI today and was quite pleased this wasn't the case. I'd rather we continued the conservative approach than go under the knife too soon. Not that I terribly mind the being sliced open, but I'd rather this be at my convenience and I'm just too busy at the moment. And I can put up with the pain. In fact, this is likely to be significantly reduced since the last cache of medicine pretty much ran out a week ago, so the last week has been basically one without too much in the way of pain-killers to keep me going. I'm hoping that the next couple of weeks will be easier.

Actually this makes things sound a lot worse than they really are. The pain never reaches the proportions of an ordeal as it dissipates almost as soon as I sit down. It's only when I'm upright that there is a real problem - for some inner, mechanical reason, at that time gravity is not my friend.

It's strange to think that the pain manifests itself in a place distinct from where the problem lies. As far as I understand it, the nerve is getting trapped? irritated? near or at the vertebrae, but it's my right leg that's suffering. (Isn't it odd how we can sort of detach ourselves from our various bits and pieces, as in that last sentence. After all it's me that's suffering rather than my leg - but then that implies my leg is somehow not me. Whoops.)

It's also strangely intriguing to monitor the pain. It begins as something that is not-pain, something almost pleasant, like the mild soreness you experience when or after playing a vigorous game. At some point (usually around the ten minute stage) it becomes a definite discomfort, but, still, it would be a bit exaggerated to call it 'pain'. That arrives about five minutes later and, in a sense, it remains something you might willingly put up with, except that you begin to acknowledge you can't. The right foot now starts to, ever so slightly, go numb. At this point mild vocalising sets in, on the lines of ouch! or agh! Then the need to sit mysteriously transmutes itself into a complete, total, unarguable necessity. And then, as soon as you are seated the pain either disappears immediately or slowly eases in almost pleasant waves. Of course, there's a mild and useful fear in the back of my mind that one day it might not go and then what will I do? This is useful because it keeps the reality of the situation clear and serves as a reminder that I am nowhere close to real suffering (which begins when it doesn't go - and it's pass me the morphine, nurse, time.)

In that sense I'm undergoing an extremely useful, privileged, experience. In Islamic thought we have this idea that God might test us, but it will be only to the limits of what we can bear - though those limits might surprise us. I'm nowhere close to that line and, at the moment, being given a salutary glimpse of what that test might be like. A little like the useful hunger of fasting month.

Memories

When We Were Orphans is the novel I'd like to claim to be reading currently, but since the opportunities of actually getting to sit down and open it have been few and far between lately, especially over the last three days, I'm not sure it would be entirely honest to make that claim. Fortunately it's so mesmeric that it's easy to imagine getting back into it over the weekend once I can push the piles of marking to one side. Unfortunately it's so subtle in terms of the details of the plot that I'm wondering if I'll really pick up where I left off without missing some key features and feeling a bit thick in the process.

As I've pointed out in this Far Place on previous occasions, the joy of having a not particularly great memory is that you get to read stuff again and it can be quite fresh. But the down side is that you can feel like less than the Ideal Reader that the talents of Mr Ishiguro call for.

Of course, since the protagonist's problems in the novel themselves revolve around memory and its inherent deceitfulness there's something peculiarly appropriate in all of this.

Ear Opener

The busyness is relentless, but the sweetness of the stolen moments remains, brief as it is. Tonight, late on the ECP (from a highly enjoyable session with the drama guys) when the jam was at its worst, a chance to get an extended listen to Dylan's Tell Tale Signs Vol 8 Bootleg Series - a transcendent 2 CD set of outtakes & live stuff from the period of the later albums (sort of, Oh Mercy onwards, if I'm not mistaken.)

All of it was great but the live version of High Water from the end of CD1 is astonishing. I've heard it twice now. The first time I thought just brilliant. Tonight I was simply pinned to the car seat by the stompiest, stonkiest, smokingest version of a great song (lovely banjo on the original 'Love And Theft' cut from Charlie Sexton or Larry Campbell, not too sure.) Coruscating guitars (the touring band from the 'Love And Theft' stuff, I think - so Charlie & Larry again) over a completely hot, loose but tight, in the pocket arrangement; and over that Dylan's astonishing (sorry, I just can't think of other superlatives at present) almost completely wretched but still hanging in there voice nailing the lyric. It's so incredibly dangerous. I really thought he wasn't going to make it to the end and he triumphs. Just.

I have no idea where they played it on that night's set but it's difficult to believe it was anywhere except the end. I mean you couldn't follow that. Mind you, maybe Dylan could

Ears Open

So much great music and so little time! But here's a thing: being overwhelmed with work helps me hear more intensely. Those sweet moments of surrender to sounds in concord (and sweet discord in some cases - I'm thinking Dylan, offhand) become even more, well, sweet, when they are short & more precious as a result.

Last night, for example, just fifteen minutes to grab some Chopin - four Nocturnes (from the complete set by Barenboim on DG, 2 CDs at a bargain price) and I had never quite grasped their utter crystalline gorgeousness (a vile phrase that gets nowhere near how it felt, but will do for now.)

Barmy Benitez?

Though it goes against the grain to say so, I was quietly pleased regarding Liverpool's victory over Chelsea yesterday. True, a draw would have been better for United, but I'd prefer a closely fought finish to the league (as long as the right team win) so this result has put a bit of juice back into the fruit. But most of all I'm pleased for Rafa. In the Singapore press he's been picking up a lot of stick for losing the plot, which I'm pretty sure echoes the British papers. As if any of these writers could run a kids' team, never mind a top club in the Premiership.

Just lately every manager you can think of, except Sir Alex whose record puts him beyond this nonsense, has come in for massive uninformed criticism (oh, and O'Neill, I suppose, whose brilliant record should do the same, but won't if Villa stumble): Wenger, Scolari, Benitez, who just happen to be managing clubs who are not exactly doing badly. Doesn't it occur to the critics that no manager (Sir Alex included) gets it right all the time? The projection of some sort of omniscience on these ordinary mortals, and then relentless sniping when things don't quite work out, is deeply disturbing.

Of course, it sells papers, which, I suppose, is the point in a culture where everything's for sale. But it reduces the level of informed, sensible commentary on footie - and just about everything else.

Mind you, having said all that, if I were paid the wages of a top manager I'd more than happily accept just about anything that appeared about me in the press.

Burning Brightly

Very pleased to see an appreciative article in The Sunday Times this morning regarding Alfian Sa'at's fine first collection of poetry One Fierce Hour published back in 1998. (And quite a shock to realise that it's a whole ten years since I first came across his work.) It was quite rightly recognised as a landmark in local writing - prophetically enough being published by Landmark Books.

Quite a bit of the article was devoted to the somewhat outspoken nature of many of the poems, understandably, I think, since the vibrantly anti-establishment voice of the poet was something quite new (at least to me) and extremely striking in the writing of that period. It seems the writer now regards his early work as rather immature, not surprisingly. There is something a bit callow about the general tone, but thrillingly, rightfully so in a young writer. I know that sounds patronising, but it's really not meant to be. Sometimes a lack of balance can be a strength and in certain circumstances can seem a necessity.

But I think that the attention devoted to Alfian's criticisms of society tends to obscure his real gifts as a poet. Having said that there's some judicious quoting in this morning's article that shows a warm response to those remarkable gifts. I think the first poem of his I read was The Marooned Island, which I came across in a kind of anthology of Singapore poetry distributed by the Ministry of Education for use in schools before I bought the collection itself. I thought it was a stunning poem with an almost hallucinatory power, utterly unlike anything else I had read by either Singaporean or Malaysian writers. I read it again this morning, and still think so. Its images have a direct raw power, yet evade a simple reading as the outpourings of an angry young man. Maybe angry, yes, but seeing things in that anger that perhaps lie beyond ordinary vision.

It's the same with Singapore You Are Not My Country, probably the most obviously 'political' poem in the volume. It's the rich unexpectedness of the connections made in what is explicitly, gloriously an unreasonable rant that give the poem its power. The controversial content comes second, for this reader at least, to the manic rhythms of a voice at one imitating Ginsberg (I'm thinking Howl) yet still sounding genuine and individual - indeed, Singaporean.

I don't think there were all that many copies of One Fierce Hour printed - I came across mine by a very fortunate accident - but I'd advise anyone who's not come across it, and has an interest in writers from Singapore, or just good writing in general, to try and get hold of it. Stirring stuff