Back On The Treadmill

In truth it was the elliptical trainer I got back on today, but I hope you'll accept the poetic license involved in the rather spiffy title above. At all events it was a notable reunion of man and machine, at least from the point of view of the man actually on the machine. It's been more than a month since I've been to the gym - 29 November being the most recent auspicious occasion - and I was wondering to what degree my fitness might have declined. The answer seems to be: somewhat, but not precipitously; though I'll need to ascertain exactly how my body has reacted to my latest work-out on the morrow.

I managed my statutory 35 minutes of labour, though I must say I felt like giving up after the first 15 minutes and had no real energy at all for the final 5. I thought I'd remained reasonably active in New Zealand but reality set in today. Insofar as I have any target related to these activities, I'm hoping to feel fit enough to repeat the experience a couple of times this week, even if I can't manage the full 35 minutes each time.

The funny thing is how I always find myself looking forward to each session, and after the first 10 minutes wonder why I keep torturing myself.

Extremes

Got a little bit of focused listening done today, given the space opened up by the weekend. Thoroughly enjoyed Van Der Graaf's Present, the double CD set they recorded when they got back together around 2005, with Jaxon on board. Much as I admire the CDs recorded as a trio since he left, it was refreshing to hear how the newer older version of VDGG sounded with the saxes and flute enmeshed in their sound world. I particularly enjoyed the disk of improvisations, finding it more immediately accessible than the trio's improvisational Alt CD. Somehow having Jaxon blaring/wailing away sounds more like what one expects from an improv. Present was one of my purchases from Auckland's Real Groovy, an incredible bargain at around six bucks second hand. If you're ever in the shop and wondering can the second hand stuff be trusted, the answer is an emphatic yes: I haven't had a single problem with anything from there, with everything looking and, more important, sounding brand new.

After putting the VDGG boys to one side it was time for a bit of Brahms. I deliberately didn't listen to anything whilst reading Swafford's magisterial account of the great man's life as I felt I needed to build up to some intelligent listening (not that I was entirely sure of delivering the necessary intelligence, I hasten to add.) And so now it was time to re-hear the first symphony, with Swafford's comments at hand.

Was it an enlightening experience? Well, it wasn't revelatory. I realised I was a lot more familiar with the symphony than I thought I was. I generally knew what was coming next and it sounded like it always had. (Obviously, duh!) But there was a richness about the listening experience I don't think I'd felt previously and I had a strong sense that when I listened again lots of things would click into place.

It occurs to me now that the distance between the kinds of music I've been listening to today is vast. From the calculated and crafted to the freely spontaneous. But both require a sympathetic listener with ears and mind open. Hope I did each some kind of justice.

10 More Views Of NZ - Retrospective

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

The weekend ahead offers some much needed space. But not as much as we found ourselves frolicking in last month.

The Shock Of The Old

Four days into my working year and I feel physically battered. This is very odd as the physical demands of my work can hardly be said to be all that great and I kept myself what I considered active during the holidays. In fact, when I was moving our stuff from one apartment to another early in December the work involved was very intense physically, yet didn't lead to quite the same sense of bone weariness I'm now experiencing. I suppose there are routine movements involved in my work I'm just not aware of that make particular demands on muscles that need adjusting to.

I recognise this syndrome from previous experience and am happy to recall that by the second week the necessary adjustments are mercifully made and I'm left wondering what all the fuss was about. I can only hope for that mercy this time round.

10 Views Of NZ - Retrospective

 

 

 

 

When the world starts to close in, it's good to recall the wide open spaces.

Back To Brahms

I put Jan Swafford's biography of Brahms to one side, two-thirds completed, when we went to New Zealand, sensing I wouldn't be able to do it justice on a real holiday. It was a wise decision. The final third proved very easy to move on with on my return. The biographer writes with such clarity and purpose that it was easy even for a forgetful old soul like myself to maintain the necessary continuity. In fact I'd suggest the final part of the biography dealing with the composer in the years of melancholy decline and assessing his place in musical history takes the work to another level - from the excellent to the superlative. Swafford is simply the best writer about music and musicians I've ever read. I mean, I'm no great fan of Brahms yet his biographer had made me ultra-keen to listen and appreciate the full range of his work. Isn't this what any kind of writing about any art should do?

He's also made me feel very guilty. This bit from the final segment really hurt: Yet in today's concert hall relatively few concertgoers can follow the course of any traditional musical form. The mode of listening that Brahms condemned Bruckner for fostering - wallowing without thought in a bath of sonority and emotion - is how audiences today largely listen to Bruckner symphonies, Bach fugues, Wagnerian opera and Brahms. Yes, that's me, and I'm now acutely aware it's really not good enough.

Wardrobe Malfunction

If you're going to have a complete disaster at work then the first day of a new year is a good time to choose. It prepares you for the worst that can happen. Fate duly selected today as a good time for me to encounter a major problem with the zip on my trousers and to remind me of the great truth that they don't make zips like they used to.

Fortunately the great breakdown took place after I had completed all my lessons. Unfortunately this still left me with an hour of Chapel to negotiate plus a TOK briefing. The zip having given way irreparably at the top still held uneasily together for some of this time and only completely dissolved, as it were, just after the briefing. With the aid of a brilliantly positioned file and diary I managed to evade notice throughout this period thus pulling off an unlikely victory in the jaws of defeat and humiliation. Sadly the offending trousers were deemed beyond salvation by the Missus who knows of these things and brutally threw them out. (Although I've got to say she treated the whole incident with an inappropriate degree of levity.)

Possibly the best single piece of advice I've ever heard in my career came forcibly to mind today. It was Phil Chappell at Rawmarsh many years ago who told me: Always check the zipper on your trousers before you do an assembly. Wise words. I can only give deep thanks that there was no reason for me to be on that stage this afternoon.

A Sense Of Order

I didn't quite finish Perec's Life A User's Manual on the way back from New Zealand, though I did get through quite a few pages in a rather protracted stop-over at Brisbane. Completion was achieved only yesterday in the quiet spaces between the joyous noises of Family Day, Part 2 here in Melaka, and fittingly so: the high spirits and sheer abundance of the text blending in with the abundance of life and energy generated by our little gathering.

I never really grasped the notion of the constraints that Perec created for himself in putting the pieces of his puzzle together, but that was no obstacle to enjoying his novel. There's plenty on the surface that's easy to grasp and straightforwardly rewarding. I suppose most of all I was struck by his extraordinary lists. It's as if he's trying to inventory every single item that has a place in his fictive Parisian apartment block, in every location therein, in painstaking detail. The effect is strangely illuminating. The possessions of the inhabitants of the various rooms seem to shed light upon their owners, but it's a subtle, indirect kind of light. And the various things also have much to say about the world that at some point created them but, again, it's not said directly.

The fact that the reading of the novel coincided with our moving of apartment added to the resonance of the lists for me. I almost feel inclined to try and list the many, many items, and their provenance, that Noi and I are gallantly attempting to shoe-horn into our new place of residence. The things we possess, mysteriously so at times, say much about us. But I'm no writer so I'll stick to trying to make sure that everything's been cleaned up. That's one of my tasks for the weeks ahead.

Fun & Games

There's nothing quite like getting the year off to a start with a bang, and Family Day has provided a good supply of loud ones.

A Sense Of Movement

My resolution for the year ahead: keep moving, keep thinking. The two go together well.

Walked to the masjid down the road for Friday Prayers as a beginning. I've walked there before, of course, many times, so there's nothing new about this. But no New Year is entirely new as we know we will repeat ourselves. The important thing is to repeat what we get right, when we can, if we can.