Unfrozen

I've been thinking about Beauty a lot lately. Not very deep thinking. Nothing of the furrowed brow about it. Just pleasantly superficial, noting how much Beauty there is within easy reach, and what fools we are to ignore it. Case in point: I had a close encounter with Steve Reich's Variations for Winds, Strings & Keyboards this afternoon, in SAC of all places. And it took me to another, better place (which is pretty remarkable considering what a fine place SAC is.)

Funnily enough, some people haven't learned how to listen to Reich, et al. I'd advise approaching the Variations as if you're hearing frozen sound unfreezing. Sounds dumb, I know, but, hey, it works for me.

Stupidity

Managed to get home early enough to allow myself an uninterrupted listen to Beethoven's Symphony 9 before having to get on with other stuff. Fell asleep about two minutes into the first movement, waking only when things got really noisy in the final movement. There are times I'm less than impressed with myself and, trust me, this was one.

In Addition

Still trying to get on top of my journal-reading and very much enjoying the October-November 2019 issue of Philosophy Now in the process. The featured philosopher is Schopenhauer and I'm embarrassed to say that I knew next to nothing in terms of detail about him before reading the first few articles. This is especially embarrassing since I've seen so many references to his work and ideas in the work of thinkers I generally admire that I feel I've let the side down somehow by being so ignorant.

What took me a little by surprise was the extent to which a number of ideas which I have explored in recent years and developed a distinct sympathy for feature in Schop's The World as Will and Representation. I had been wondering whether I should put WWR on my reading list at some point - and now that point has definitely arrived. (Mind you, the list is so long I'm not sure I need to get round to buying a good edition for at least a couple of years.)

A Blessing

Look at the moon! So bright!! said Noi. And it was.

And I felt blessed.

Other Voices

The ones in our heads, if they're the only ones, are not enough. We need other voices to free ourselves from the prisons of ourselves. The voices we hear through art are intensely valuable in this respect - but if the art to which we expose ourselves only reflects ourselves the freedom granted is limited. The voices we hear through listening to the views of others are, again, intensely valuable, but, again, limited if we only hear what we already think echoed back at us. Perhaps the voices allowing us the greatest freedom are those which represent ways of thinking that are fundamentally different to our own, and ideas that make us uncomfortable.

I've found much truth in this seeming paradox and tried to learn to listen attentively and sympathetically. That doesn't mean I believe all those voices say (or even any of it), but there's a powerful sense of freedom in understanding exactly why I might disagree.

Things You Forget

Was looking back in my journals again today, this time to the year 2003. But this wasn't the usual idle browsing to find out what the young me was up to 20, 15, 10 years back. This time my reading was prompted by a conversation with Peter over a cuppa in SAC. He was telling me that Su had mentioned to him the shutting down of schools here in the SARS scare and wondering if I remembered this since he couldn't. It turned out that my memory was worse than Pete's since I had the impression the SARS thing had happened after we'd both started teaching at our current place but he somehow knew that was the H1 N1 thing (I think that was what the virus was called) and that came later. He also knew that the SARS scare took place in 2003, which was actually two schools back for me. Disconcertingly I had no memory whatsoever of a school closure, but I mentioned I kept journals covering the period and I would look them up.

So I did. But I needed to google for info on the month(s) involved, duly discovering that, yes, the schools did close late in March, opening again in early April. Checking on what I actually wrote in the period, I found that I did reference the closure and expressed some awareness of the SARS situation, but not all that much. My concerns were largely elsewhere (of course, I and my family and friends were lucky not to be effected by the virus in any way) with the only reference evoking a distinct fragment of memory being one about Mum expressing concern over the whole situation in a phone call and needing to be reassured.

The days in question were filled with my usual references to music listened to and books read and the like, but there was one aspect of current affairs that clearly got my full attention - that being the war in Iraq (which I referred to then, quite rightly I think, as the 'illegal invasion'). And those references brought back a flood of memories. Funny how one's mind works.

Some Things Never Change

I was glancing back to some journal entries from February 2001 - to see what was on my mind around the turn of the century - and I came across one talking about enjoying a drama session, especially the laughter. A different school then, but some things never really change. Had an equally good, if not better, time this afternoon with my current round of drama guys.

Isn't it great to have a job that features at least one thing that's pretty much pure enjoyment?

Quite Ordinary

Happened to catch some of a late night drama on Noi's Suria Channel from a series entitled Bingit. The series deals with various aspects of mental illness or problems, each episode featuring a particular condition. The programme being screened dealt with a woman with a compulsion to hoard and it made for uncomfortable yet compassionate viewing, with several powerful moments. I was struck, as I so often am, as to how the material produced by the channel is nearly always at its best when dealing with the common stuff of life, since our ordinary problems are so compelling.

It was a reminder also of the quietly undemonstrative heroism of so many ordinary people negotiating their way through this vale of tears.

A Question Of Faith

Felt mildly disappointed with Alice Oswald's first collection The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile. Everything else I've read by her has been so obviously the real poetic thing that it seemed odd to find myself not quite getting most of the shorter poems in the volume, though funnily enough I thought the opening piece, Pruning in Frost, was perfect in its way. I particularly struggled with the sonnets in the collection, though recognising the obvious command of form. Of course, there was enough of quality in every poem for me to realise the problem was me not living up to what was on offer rather than any inherent deficit in the poems themselves.

Having said all that, the final extended piece, The Three Wise Men of Gotham Who Set Out to Catch the Moon in a Net was so obviously wonderful that my faith in Ms Oswald as my favourite living poet (probably, provisionally) was restored.

Making Cuts

Spent a good part of the day excising lines from As You Like It, preparing an acting script for a production of Shakespeare's comedy we're planning for July. To be honest, I've had the job of finalising the carved-up version of the script for quite some time, it being on my to-do list since last November, but it's an odd sort of job requiring lots of preparatory thought and extended private time in a space where you can run lines over and over (to yourself) to test that the cuts aren't doing any active damage and are genuinely helping shape the show the way it's intended to go.

And what is the 'vision' behind this version? Pure entertainment, I'm afraid: a good time guaranteed for all kind of thing. With a bit of magic here and there, we hope. Not too much of a stretch I reckon with WS often at his daftest and having a good time deconstructing the Pastoral Romance every which way.

The interesting thing about carving Shakespeare up is how easily the drama survives the operation and how much you get to learn in the process about the nuts and bolts of how it works.