A Sort Of Greatness

The flags in school have been at half-mast this week to mark the death of one of modern Singapore's founding political fathers. It's been fascinating to witness the more than determined efforts to engender a sense of nationhood through the establishment of a sort of collective memory. Judging from the genuine sense of respect for the gentleman in question one senses from the students I think it's working.

Initially I was telling myself that this is something my childhood was largely free of, and then realised just how far off the mark that notion was. To cite but one example - I found myself thinking of the funeral of Churchill (Winston - he of the big cigars) which took place when I was nine or ten years old. What passed for the media in those days certainly went to town on that. Little as I was, I had a melancholic sense of the passing of greatness from the land.

It was roughly seven years later that Lou Whittaker sort of spoilt the effect by telling me of how he had come to hear the news. He was walking down the street when he found himself approached by an old buddy, an old-school radical of the type that Denton bred in those days. According to Lou. his pal told him the big news and drew this colourful moral: Well, Lou, when we finally get to hell and there's a war on, at least we'll know which bastard started it.

Funnily enough I've now reached an age when an understanding of Churchill's many faults if anything increases my respect for him. I rather think, for example, that he would have quite enjoyed Lou's story.

The Unavoidable

A chap at work seems to have been avoiding me all day. I can't say I blame him though. I'd frequently like to avoid me myself, if possible.

In The Forest Of Arden

The first Arden edition of a Shakespeare play I ever picked up was that of Macbeth from Denton Library. I don't think I made it through the first witches scene. Almost two full pages of densely arcanely academic notes for about twelve lines of text (which, if played in a hurry, can take less than a minute of stage time.)

That's not the way to read Shakespeare, not when you're twelve. In fact, you shouldn't read Shakespeare at that age, except to act it.

So why have I been happily wading through Frank Kermode's introductory material to his Arden edition of The Tempest? Because it's wonderfully informative stuff once you know the play, seen the play, felt the play. But then it should be back to the play - don't get lost in the forest; don't mistake the wood for the trees.

Critical Factors

I don't know who Chang Tou Liang is but I can only have the highest of praise for his? her? (pardon my abysmal ignorance of gender in relation to Chinese names) reviews of classical music in The Straits Times. There was a lovely piece today on a chamber concert featuring material from Brahms that made me wish I'd been there to take it in - always the sign of a good review. Chang usually manages to say positive things, but in a precise and judicious manner that shows a genuine listening ear at work. And there's also a sense of the reader being actually informed by the reviews. You could learn a fair bit about the nature of Brahms's music itself from today's review.

And this was a review of a little concert, as it were, with nothing terribly prestigious or glamorous about it. One of the soloists had only just graduated from a local conservatory. I imagine it's extremely heartening to read supportive criticism of this sort when you're just starting out.

And that leads me, circuitously, to the main point of all this. Much as I distrust critics/reviewers, they are integral to the development of a culture. At the least they can nudge things in fruitful directions. It's a pity there aren't more here with the class of this one.

Seeking Sobriety

I suppose I consider myself a reasonably well-informed sort of chap. So it's extremely sobering to remind myself once in a while just how wide of the mark this perception is. Case in point: only last December as we were counting our euros in gay Paree I was telling the missus what good sense the currency made in terms of the stability it could afford to smaller nations who'd got on board. I think my pontifications sort of impressed the poor, misguided girl, and I'm hoping she doesn't remember too much of them now.

Mind you, I'm also aware that though I know so little, it happens to be more than most folk manage. Which is kind of funny and scary at the same time.

Seeking New Worlds

Finished reading Frye's Anatomy of Literature earlier this week and Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher this morning. Both were rewarding in their different ways, so much so that I found myself protracting my reading of each beyond what was strictly necessary - though I finished the real life tale of the Road Hill murder in quite a rush today, carried away by the stories of William and Constance Kent in the years after the murder of their little brother. For what it's worth, Ms Summerscale's 'solution' seems to me wholly satisfactory in the necessary way of such solutions.

Just at this moment I wish I had a good murder on the shelves to move onto, inspired, I suppose, by the various telling points made about the classic detective story in The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. But recent successes in the War on Capitalism have seen me walk out of various bookstores heroically empty-handed. Thus I find myself without an obvious candidate for a fictional world to escape into. It looks like I'll be turning to a bit of Shakespeare, I'm thinking of The Tempest which has lodged in my mind since seeing it last month. That should more than fill the gap for a day or so.

A Sort Of Silence

With Noi popping over to Melaka this morning for most of the weekend I'd been hoping to spend a good deal of the day listening to soothing sounds from the stereo to make up for her not being around. It was not to be. Even though I'd mentally lined up a number of items - involving Elvis Costello, some Fripp soundscapes and Led Zeppelin & its various alumni - these took second place to the sombre necessity of reading and grading a pile of Theory of Knowledge essays.

For some reason I require silence these days for this kind of work. I seem to remember being able to watch television, listen to music and argue with anyone who happened to be around whilst writing essays as a younger man, but those days are long gone. I wonder just how coherent those essays were though.

So the music has largely gone by the board, though I'm intending an intense encounter with the Page/Plant No Quarter album a little bit later, just to salvage something from the wreckage of time.

Coalescing

For the first time in years I find myself interested in how the country of which I am a citizen is being, or about to be, governed. The fact that the coalition doing the governing looks about as unlikely a combination as you can get points to the odd possibility it just might work. I must say, I enjoy the idea of nobody quite being able to get their own way.

I reckon the press will turn nasty in about four months, and then we'll see what the guys at the helm are made of. I rather hope it'll turn out to be something solid, despite supporting neither of them. I must be mellowing in my old age.

Not Asking For More

A couple of weeks ago I was teaching Chekov's Three Sisters to a class and found myself rhapsodizing on the stunningly modern sense of futility, disappointment and general failure therein when I became aware that there two or three (at least) thoroughly disconcerted young people in the room. It seems that my fleeting observation that such futility is what lies in store for most of us was seen as strong stuff. I don't think it helped that I radiated cheerfulness at this bracing thought. In that moment it came home to me that a mode of thought to which I have been habituated since my early teens is really quite foreign to an awful lot of other people.

I think this is why failure and disappointment are so useful to us - as glimpses of real, indeed likely, experiences to come. I don't buy into the idea that they are necessarily character forming. It's really quite easy to deal with them in the generally harmless modes in which we encounter them in the comfortable worlds most of us inhabit. But the discomfort of dealing with them helps remind us of a bigger reality in which we are no longer the centre around which all else circles.

I suspect Gordon Brown is a better man for screwing-up as PM, and I rather think he already knows that. That little resignation speech was the best thing he's said in years and the rueful half-smile when he spoke of an awareness of human frailty was the only time I've ever seen him smile naturally. It made him almost human.

And the best disappointments are those when you know you've done your best, curiously enough. They are the ones that say, well this is the human condition - and there's no option of rejecting it. So just get on with it.

No one likes to see kids disappointed. I must admit, I felt a bit guilty in my Chekov lesson. Some of our rugby guys faced defeat this week, and my wonderful drama guys had to accept not getting what they understandably wanted and had worked hard for. But playing well and doing good work can be, should be, its own reward, if you let it. And if you don't let it, then all will turn out to be futile. Even if you win.

Asking For More

Just a quick word about Chicago, which we watched last Sunday at The Esplanade. I can't do justice to the excellence of the production in a few words so I'll just say that the quote about the production being near flawless from an Aussie review was no exaggeration. Everything worked - simple as that.

In fact I was surprised at what a wonderfully constructed show Chicago is. I really had no idea that it was going to be that good - just a vague awareness that the film-makers seemed to have been considered hard-pressed to match up to what worked in the theatre. Actually in the theatre the way the story plays out in a sort of metaphorical cabaret works on every level conceptually. There's only one thing the show lacks - and I don't mean this as a complaint, rather as requesting the almost impossible. The songs are very, very good, beautifully constructed, but they lack genius. Nothing in there is transcendent in the Sondheim/Richard Rogers sense. It's completely unfair to imply that the music should be that good, but it's a sign of the brilliance of everything else that I felt the lack (ever such a little) of that ultimate fulfilment.