At The End Of The Day

At the end of the day, the day ends. If you're lucky.

Going Back

Delighted today to hear the Guest of Honour in an oratorical competition at my place of work recommend the reading of Dickens to the assembled students (along with Tolstoy, Shakespeare and the Authorised Version - a pretty formidable line-up methinks.) The greatest of the Victorian novelists (in the English language) doesn't seem to get much of a look-in in Lit courses these days. Can't remember any text being offered for Paper 2 in all my years as an examiner. A writer once central to the popular canon seems to be out on the periphery these days. (The last time I taught Dickens was for A level, in the early 90s - Our Mutual Friend - and what a blast that was.)

But then I have to remind myself that my own reading of the Inimitable came after university, strange as that might seem for someone with a degree in Lit. So I missed out on Dickens in my youth, though making up for it since. And sitting there today, listening to the sage advice, I must say I felt like revisiting the whole glorious sequence of novels some time soon.

Comfort Reading

I've not been engaged in reading a novel since the ones I read in KL in June. This is odd. A bit like the strange lassitude I've experienced of late with regard to listening to music. Decided to get things back to normal by popping into the library at work and grabbing a Stephen King. You just can't go wrong with the Master of the Macabre, well I can't, and he's so prolific that there's still plenty left of his oeuvre to read for me, despite my fanboy status.

The novel is question is Hearts in Atlantis, which I'm aware got made into a movie, but I haven't a clue what it's about. Which suits me fine. And now I'm about to make a start, despite the lateness of the hour, so Good Night, God Bless, to all.

Feed The World

Caught an item on BBC World just now about a lady in America, San Francisco, I think, who's developed, or is developing a service through the Internet that delivers excess food from the sort of places that tend to have such, to folks who are going hungry in places of need. The report began with a reference to how the lady in question was driven by the need to apply an intelligent solution to a problem that could be solved. Her company (if that's the right term) have been doing this for some five years now and have developed a sophisticated operation. The idea is to make the model as close to fool proof as possible and then duplicate it in other cities/countries. I felt like cheering as I watched.

It's easy - and necessary - to be grimly cynical about the world. But in the process you can end up deceiving yourself as to the possibilities of human goodness.

A Musical Interlude

For the last couple of months I've not been listening to music quite as much as I normally do. Even in the June vacation, in the days spent in KL, I can't say I spent that much time in genuinely focused listening. Stuff got played certainly, but intermittently. I'd spin a CD and sometimes that was it for the day; very uncharacteristic, I can tell you.

So it came as something of a relief this morning when, very early on, I just couldn't stop myself putting on a bit of Stan Tracy - the Under Milk Wood suite, with the quartet - and then banging on one thing after another with obsessive delight. In case you're curious, the playlist up to the early afternoon went as follows: A Grounding in Numbers - VDGG; Handel's Water Music; the 2 disks of VDGG Live at the BBC; Ignis Fatuus - White Willow; the first Peter Gabriel solo album; Songs of Innocence - U2.

All of which I know well, and all of which sounded utterly fresh. And there would have been more, except I kept falling asleep in between items.

Problem Solving

I suppose most of us tend to think of making art as being, at some level, a kind of expression of self. But from the point of view of someone directing a show it feels more like solving a series of problems; assuming, that is, one accepts the directing of a play as a form of art-making.

Extending this idea to art in general, though, I think is fruitful. At some level a poem, a string quartet, a painting, a statue, is the working out of a problem, or a whole series of them. 

Great art provides solutions of great beauty. Shakespeare's Dream is a perfectly balanced equation: day against night; waking against sleep; rationality against imagination; order against chaos.

Pressing Concerns

The focus afforded by the deadline of public performance is intense and strangely necessary. It's the way things get done, a paradoxically welcome and unwelcome truth.

Sources Of Energy

How much do we know, scientifically speaking, about where we get our energy from? I'm not thinking of oil and gas and solar power and all that shebang; I have in mind, rather, the energy we experience at a personal level - the stuff that gets us out of bed, enables us to get through a day at work, and generally spurs us on to fill our lives getting things done as opposed to sitting around and soaking in the environment. Is the level of energy we're granted a fixed thing, determined in a mysterious way by our individual physiology? Or is it related to what we soak in from outside? Can we consciously accumulate more, or is what we've got a done deal?

Do we inevitably lose it as we get older? This last question feels particularly relevant on a personal level. It isn't that I'm absolutely certain that the answer is a positive one, for someone of my age, that is, though obviously there does come a point if you live long enough when the batteries no longer recharge; but if I am no longer possessed of the wherewithal I once took for granted then I really do need to consider active remediation, if at all possible.

In this regard, I've been struck by things I've read about Donald Trump, especially in relation to his interestingly insulting low energy label in relation to the unfortunate Jeb Bush. It seems Trump can be genuinely characterised as a high energy kind of guy, which accounts for the tweeting in the middle of the night and contacting various reporters at what might fairly be termed unsociable hours. In that sense, the insult to Bush was sincerely meant, with Trump showing a kind of primitive awareness of a genuine difference between himself and his erstwhile opponent.

I suspect I'm a low energy kind of guy who sometimes needs to pretend otherwise, relying on sheer will power to do so. But perhaps it's time to look for ways of cultivating enough get up and go to make the pretence a bit more plausible.

In Space

I've been emphasising to the cast for our up-coming A Midsummer Night's Dream that they're going to have to adapt very quickly to the performance space for the show. We're using a familiar venue, but we won't be able to get in there on a regular basis until five days before we go public and they'll need to adjust to our fairly elaborate sets for Athens and the enchanted woods. I foresee some fairly radical alterations of the blocking (the basic moves we're prepared) once we're in there, if we are really going to exploit the possibilities available. Considering that there are a thousand and one other things to get ready, this is a little intimidating. Having said that, in many ways it's all to the good. The more autonomy young performers get the better in terms of what they finally take away from the whole experience.

I sometimes think that one of the things that separates 'theatre people' from ordinary, sane human beings is the obsessive concern of the former for space and how you occupy it. Even those performers who instinctively know where they need to go in relation to others, don't really know they know this. You need to develop a consciousness for what is, in the normal run of things, entirely unconscious, accidental. And once you've done that, boy it's hard to shake it off.

Temporary Stillness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The deceptive thing about pictures of kids is the comforting illusion they create of some sort of stillness on the part of those pictured. Such stillness, and its attendant quietude, were rare commodities indeed in relation to the youngsters above who brightened up our Raya in Melaka.