Just back from dining out at Jalan Kayu. A bit of a family get-together, though given the busy lives we lead we weren't able to get everyone assembled. A good try, though, and in an uncertain world as good as it is likely to get.
There's a distinct wisdom in being more than satisfied over the great good fortune of being able to enjoy a family dinner.
I've been reading Stephen King's The Outsider over the last couple of days; indeed, it would be fair to say that I've been racing through it, to some degree against my better judgement. I'd like it to last longer, but I really need to know how it ends.
What a strange talent King possesses. You could try and analyse it, I suppose, but his ability to tell a story that grips because you actually care about the people the story is happening to seems to escape cold-blooded analysis precisely because there is something warm and alive about it.
I suppose I found mid-period King a bit tiresome, as if I knew all the tricks and was just content to play along with something that didn't entirely convince. I'm thinking about stuff like Needful Things and From a Buick 8. But since Full Dark, No Stars the Master has been firing on all cylinders and I, for one, am blown away.
Just finished the first novel in Iain Banks's sci-fi Culture series Consider Phlebas. Not quite as outrageously imaginative as Liu Cixin, but getting there, and considerably better written in terms of basic style. My only reservation lay in the fact that I thought the action was overdone. Mr Banks clearly enjoys destroying things (as does Mr Liu, now I come to think of it) but it gets a bit wearing after the third or fourth semi-heroic escape.
I'm sure I'll find myself reading another in the series at some point, but it won't necessarily be all that soon. I can't be doing with an excess of over-excitement.
Spent a very jolly afternoon at the Asian Civilisations Museum with Noi and Fifi. It's well worth a visit simply for the standing exhibitions but we were there specifically for the Life in Edo special exhibition featuring some glorious woodblock prints. I didn't realise that the prints were accompanied by a display of some photos by Russel Wong based around the present day equivalent of the floating world, but I was happy that they were given the simple beauty of his work.
Poring over the various prints it struck me I could have happily spent a few days just looking at them. And more than that, I realised that this period, these artists and their aesthetic represent what is far and away my favourite form of visual art.
When I first read Alexander Pope's Epistle to Miss Blount, on her leaving the town, after the Coronation I suppose I felt quite sorry for the young lady in question. But some years later I can't help but think she was on to quite a good thing in moving on: She went from opera, park, assembly, play, / To morning walks, and prayers three hours a day. / To part her time 'twixt reading and bohea, / To muse, and spill her solitary tea, / Or o'er cold coffee trifle with the spoon / Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon. I suppose I'd miss the plays but I'd welcome the coffee and tea most definitely, though in my case sharing these with the Missus would be a hugely important feature of the quiet life.
I mention this as a completely irrelevant prelude to the main thrust of my post today. This pertains to good old Lipton's Yellow Tea. Just a few weeks ago I was astonished to learn that this noble brew was regarded by some friends as a sort of lower class tea, not fit for those with a discerning palette. Bah! say I, and forcibly so. It's an excellent cuppa and preferred above all brands by those who really know (i.e., me and the Missus.) I'm sure Miss Blount would have found the lonely hours in the country speeding by on her lazy old clock had she only had access to the tea-bags in question.
Those clever people at the Guardian on-line (who are probably not really people at all but even cleverer bits of technology that I don't understand, and never will) have contrived to make Yours Truly feel even more guilty than he normally does this early in the week. I've just read (major error) their latest message to me regarding how I am one of their top readers globally. It seems that I've now read 4271 articles in the last year and am worthy of their thanks - and a relentlessly logically convincing request that I should be paying for what I read in order to keep this level of journalism alive.
They're right of course, and I'll be figuring out the best way to cough up before the end of the week.
I do intend, though, to keep recommending the Graun as an on-line location well worth a visit to my poverty-stricken students as it remains laudably buckshee. At least that'll make me feel I'm really getting my money's worth.
Since discovering the brilliance of Skip James on YouTube I've been regularly making time for some of those long-ago merchants of the blues, who somehow contrive to sound so immediately in the moment. Today I treated myself to a taste of Blind Willie McTell, of whom it has been said, or rather sung, that No One Can Sing The Blues Like...
Isn't it strange that a nice white middle-class Jewish boy understood that great truth? And not only understood it, but made us all aware of it at the deepest level of feeling. And was able to do that more than once.
When folks mutter about cultural appropriation and insist on the politics of identity they should be made to listen to that which transcends all politics all race all identity and simply embodies human truths.
Excellent article by Samuel Moyn, a professor at Yale, on the US creating a world of endless war, featured in yesterday's Guardian on-line. Particularly powerful in its understanding of Obama's involvement and genuine thoughtfulness in the process (of the legitimisation of drone strikes) and its readiness to identify him as something close to the villain of the piece despite him being sincerely well-meaning.
I suppose this is all at something of a tangent to recent events in Afghanistan, but it strikes me that without some understanding of the wider context any attempt to grasp what is happening there must necessarily fail and leave us flailing in a disturbing darkness.
