The Basics

It's been quite some time since I've had a good moan here about bodily aches & pains. That's largely because I've been very lucky for a few months now in terms of avoiding the unpleasant results of decrepitude as manifested in particularly nasty aspects of the above. But there is a lingering exception to all this positivity which won't go away, and its a bit embarrassing to record it here because it is so low & petty.

The fact is that my feet remain uncomfortably sore on a daily basis and that some effort is required to pretend this isn't so - a genuine walking through the pain. I suppose this is all down to a lifetime's wear & tear (and having oddly shaped feet which are overly wide) and the only remedy, since there is no remedy, is to grin and bear it.

But, frankly, ouch and oh and ouch again.

Looking Back

It would be remiss of me not to say anything about the morning I spent at the Peranakan Museum last Friday. The carefully curated exhibition rooms offer a deeply nostalgic glance over the shoulder at a vanishing world. Hearteningly that world represents the positive aspects of inter-cultural exchange in the region, something in the way of an ideal. And pitching this for students at the level of Stella Kon's appealing play Emily of Emerald Hill makes for an experience that the average visitor will find easily 'relatable', as people like to say these days. (Never thought I'd use the expression in writing, but I'm keenly aware of the need to move with the times.)

One fascinating aspect of the social world on display was the degree to which it expressed itself in what one might reasonably characterise as creatively artistic ways. Female fashions especially seemed to have an unusual weight, as did music and interior decoration in general. Appearances were kept up and meant something.

Funnily enough I experienced something akin to an attack of nostalgia myself in the course of the morning - actually two quite separate onsets thereof. The first came as I approached Armenian Street, on which the museum is situated, from the Bras Basah MRT station. I'd walked through the SMU campus and was crossing the road leading to the tunnel for traffic that avoids the campus when I realised I could no longer picture the old National Library building which had been situated there and in which I'd spent a number of happy hours in my earliest years in this Far Place. The 'new' tourist area around the museum building had been superimposed on an old workaday world pretty much erased from memory. 

And the second came as I remembered the first musical I'd been involved in directing, back in 1989 for the school I worked in then. The powers-that-be had already decided to put on Flower Drum Song, wrenching it from its American setting, beautifully delineated by Rogers & Hammerstein, and transplanting it to the Peranakan community inhabiting the East Coast of the island. We ended up borrowing a lot of furniture for the show and getting help from various luminaries associated with that fading world. I'd enjoyed it then, but hadn't really invested myself too deeply in the cultural aspects of our version of the show. Something of an opportunity missed.

All our worlds fade eventually, of course. So best to enjoy them whilst they're around.

That's Entertainment

Was surprised at just how entertaining I found yesterday's concert with the SSO. Proceedings began with a short 5 minute overture from a late 19C comic opera by some chap called von Reznicek. Pure fluff, tunefully so. I found myself tapping my feet, and wouldn't have minded a few minutes longer. In fact I suspected that I wouldn't have minded sitting through the whole show had it been on the agenda for the evening. And even though the Saint-Sains symphony that comprised the second half of the programme is thought of as a serious piece, again I heard it as something close to aural cheesecake - a sort of happy luxury of sound to listen to. Loved the bits with the organ, by the way. Its sound added a gauzy depth and almost cinematic gravitas just when it felt needed.

But it was Sir Stephen Hough's own piano concerto that definitely provided just what the listener who's in the mood for a bit of impossible glamour required. I came across a version on YouTube today and it confirmed what I thought at first hearing. This is meant as pure entertainment, surely, but entertainment of genuine worth.

Interesting that the composer's own programme notes are so well written. Music of real intelligence as well as feeling.

Not bad for just $21.00 eh? (I claimed the discount for senior citizens.)

Resisting Temptation

Fruitfully busy day involving two trips into the centre of the city - one in the morning to a museum; one in the evening to the concert hall. A bit late in the day to try and summarise each of those experiences, so I'll need to make time for that on the morrow.

But just one thing for now. I managed to spend a few minutes at Bras Basah Complex in the course of the day in a rather nifty second hand bookstore there (pretty much the only viable one left, I think.) And it was there I chanced upon a full box set of King's Dark Tower series for a mere $138.00. I surprised myself by deciding (somewhat indecisively in truth) not to purchase. And not only that, I'm fairly sure I'm not going to retrace my steps tomorrow to hand over the shekels. 

The reason? I'm not entirely sure, but I've got the oddest feeling that gazing at the whole series on my shelves will be overwhelming and I'll regret the fact it's there and now MUST be read.

Uprooted

Enjoyed my second buffet meal at Swensen's in as many months this afternoon. As I was engaged in some deep and rewarding munching one of my table companions inquired of me whether I missed English food. The answer came easily: not in the slightest. And thinking about it further this evening it suddenly occurred to me that I'd rate my memories of the lingering smell of boiled cabbage as positively traumatic. The ability of the British to get the very worst out of vegetables in preparing them for the dining table is surely unparalleled in world history.

What I do miss, occasionally, about my homeland is the spoken language. Specifically the way people speak in the area of Manchester that I'd identify as my home in the deepest, most abiding sense. But the extent to which I miss it only strikes me in a powerful sense when I'm there to hear it.

It makes me feel rooted, for want of a better word. Which is odd for someone who has chosen a life of happy exile.

Not So Routine

It's a funny time of year for me. In many ways I find myself released from the routines with which I am so familiar. No timetable to follow, for example. Yet I can't help but hanker after those certainties as I think of the final days of the week and work out the logistics of how to make their various pieces fit together. Something as simple as figuring out where to attend Friday Prayers, simple as it will be, feels burdensome at this time of the evening.

I'm pretty good at going with the flow once I'm in the water. It's taking the plunge that's irksome.

At Ease

I first heard Saint Saens's Organ Symphony, more accurately his Symphony No 3 in C minor, in the early 1980s, when I started regularly attending 'classical' concerts in Sheffield City Hall, featuring the Halle Orchestra. I'm guessing this was in 1984, when this particular experience of live music was something fresh for me. I say this as I recall the piece making quite an impact on me simply because of the sonorities involved with the inclusion of the mighty organ. And also because I couldn't come to terms with the idea of said organ being used so sparingly in the symphony, despite its title.

I'm due to listen to it live again this Friday evening at the Esplanade Concert Hall, and have been endeavouring to be rather better prepared this time round than I was in my callow youth. In those days you couldn't just magic up great music from Apple Music or YouTube as you can in this century, so I had my excuses back then for my massive lack of familiarity with the standard repertoire. But I've taken advantage of said magic this week to have a couple of listens, up close through ear-phones, one of these just being completed. And my verdict is that this is very engaging stuff.

In fact, I'm beginning to wonder if my heart, or ears rather, really align with the French composers of the late 19th century as opposed to their German, or Russian, counterparts. I wouldn't call Saint Saens light or fluffy exactly, but he's a whole lot more restrained than the chaps from further east and there's a lot to be said for music that manages to have real weight yet somehow stays easy on the ear.

Not So Comfortable

Have drawn up a reading list of sorts, to give me some much needed direction & discipline up to the end of the year. This involves going back to the Thoreau and Douglas LOA editions I recently broke away from. I'm now accompanying David Henry to Cape Cod, the last of the four full length works in the volume devoted to his writings on the Maine wilderness. It's reckoned to be the bleakest of his works, which suits my mood. Sometimes you need to embrace discomfort, even if it's only through the pages of a book.

High Energy

When I first read Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test some decades ago I thought of it as a self-indulgent, repetitively sloppy piece of writing. Meretriciously clever enough to capture something of the spirit of 'hippy-culture' circa 1964, of which I knew next to nothing. I know a little bit more of that culture now from other sources, and I know enough about what it takes to create a world through words to appreciate that I was completely wrong about Wolfe as a writer.

His book is painstakingly crafted and, I suspect, very carefully researched. I can't be entirely certain of the latter but the signs are there. The shifting points of view can be traced to individual participants in the on-going saga of the Merry Pranksters when Wolfe is not around and, when he is, everything rings true regarding his limited participation in and understanding of the culture Kesey and his companions were consciously building. (Not one to last, I may add.) As for the style, once the reader is accustomed to the various devices adopted to re-create the mental atmosphere or subjective reality of it I suppose it starts to look lazy since the acid-head perspective on the world doesn't really change in its broad outlines. But the nuanced detail does shift and there are changes in tone and the geography of events which, reading the text closely as I don't think I did way back when, are substantial. 

What is astonishing about Wolfe's book is the sheer energy it manifests, almost over-poweringly at times. As a reader you have to bring a similar level of energy to reading closely. It's temptingly easy to skip the lists, obsessive as they are, but to do so means you are on the surface of this world and can never get inside the minds of the young people Wolfe tries to open for us. And being open & non-judgmental is something he's supremely good at. Does he admire Kesey? Does he despise him? Does he think he's deluded? Genuinely illuminated?

Was Wolfe right to build his narrative around his fellow writer? I think time has vindicated that decision. And the narrative, for there is one, is beautifully shaped, I've come to realise. 

Final point, or, rather, pointed question: Why are American writers so good at energy?

At The End Of The Day

Decided to draw a close to proceedings on this first day of the month by spinning Haydn's Te Deum in C major, as performed by Trevor Pinnock and his merry band of men & women of the English Concert and Choir. As with pretty much anything by Papa Haydn (and Trevor Pinnock et al) this was a jolly good idea.

Interesting historical footnote: Admiral Lord Nelson would probably have got to hear the Te Deum on the occasion of his meeting with the great musician. Pretty wonderful to think of the two heroes (in their own fashions) sharing notes in the Eszterhaza Palace. By all accounts they got on well together.