Not So Ept

The link in yesterday's post to Sid Smith's tribute to the late Ian Carr turns out to be just a general link to his blog. Once again my IT skills are shown to be not so skilful after all. Whilst not entirely inept on the computer I'm not exactly ept either (as Wodehouse might have said, but with greater elegance.) I'm not even sure of how to open the podcasts posted at the Yellow Room and this is the kind of music my ears are particularly tuned to.

And while I'm on the subject of tuning the old lugs, I'm happy to report my rediscovery of Simon Rattle & the London Sinfonietta's The Jazz Album, a genuine curiosity from 1987 that I listen to at something like three year intervals, wondering why I neglected it for so long. (Mind you, that's true of most of my CDs and goes some way to explaining why I'm so conservative about buying new ones. Well that and the War on Capitalism.)

It's a curiosity in the sense of being a most unlikely assemblage of pieces with either a vague or very obvious connection with the idiom of jazz. Stuff from Bernstein and Stravinsky rubs shoulders with arrangements originally performed by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra (we are really talking 'white jazz' here) of tin pan alley standards. And it's not always entirely clear what we are supposed to make of the juxtaposition. But Rattle is incredibly hot on the serious stuff, as you might expect, and there's a version of Milhaud's La Creation Du Monde which is to die for. In fact in any version this has to be one of the highlights of twentieth century music full-stop. Funny and gorgeous at the same time, it's a reminder of what a great composer Milhaud was, supremely 'ept', even if we're only talking of a few pieces.

Alex Ross has some scintillating pages on Milhaud and the influence of jazz on 'serious' music in the twenties, particularly in France, in The Rest Is Noise and I'm now trying to figure out why I don't have more stuff from the period, especially of a Gallic flavour, since I think they basically beat the Teutons into the dust. I mean, try and swing to Webern, if you dare.

Oh, and apropos of nothing, wasn't it good to see an entire page devoted to young bands in Singapore in The Straits Times yesterday? The guy who said that he didn't expect to make any money but thought it would be great to give his CDs to the grandkids and say he was in a band should have a medal for the most sensible comment in the press this week.

In Passing

Sid Smith, author of the excellent In The Court of King Crimson, a history of every right-thinking muso's favourite rock band, maintains an equally excellent blog entitled Postcards From The Yellow Room. I've linked it here to a typically informative yet particularly poignant entry on the death of a great musician and fine writer, Ian Carr.

I was jarred when I came across this not simply by the sad news but because I'd been listening only a couple of weeks ago to a Radio 3 programme accessible at bbc.co.uk featuring Mr Carr in a fascinating conversation on his career in music. Sid's piece is a fine tribute in itself, to which I'd just add that Ian Carr's book on maestro Keith Jarrett is a model of informed critical writing and one of the best books I've read on any musician.

Slow Reading

Sometimes having very little time to read can work to one's advantage. I'm stealing half an hour here, ten minutes there, on The Master and it feels, oddly, like the right pace at which to read the novel. Essentially I'm being made to savour every moment.

Last night I almost completed the segment on Constance Fenimore Woolson's suicide and it was painfully yet gently moving. Restraint can be so powerful.

Incapacitated

I was back at West Coast Park this morning for the first time since my sort-of triumph in last year's cross country. Visitors to this Far Place may remember how I finished a remarkable fourth (or fifth?) in the teachers' race in a startlingly respectable time.

How are the mighty fallen! (Well, not exactly mighty but something mildly along those general lines.) This morning I could barely stand for ten minutes before being obliged to squat or sit in an effort to ease some of the pain radiating along the dreary nerve I am coming to be all too familiar with.

Fifteen years ago a sense of the unfairness of such incapacity would have served as a further irritation. Now I'm happy to remember better times and hope that one day I might see them again. In the meantime just temporary relief is something to be grateful, very, for.

Anyway, I'm off to see my back-doctor again this Saturday and hoping that some sort of resolution begins to emerge, even if only very slowly.

Making Millions

The idea of giving out awards for films (& records & tv programmes & plays & novels) is so obviously daft that it acquires a kind of charm, as long as no one takes it too seriously. It is also a great way of generating oodles of publicity. I must say I was pleased at Slumdog Millionaire winning everything in sight since 1) it is the only film that the missus and I are likely to go to the cinema to watch this year (a decision we came to well before Oscar-fever set in, but on which we have not actually acted yet); and 2) Danny Boyle's Millions is one of my favourite movies of all time (though hardly anyone I know seems to have heard of it) and my good taste seems curiously validated by Hollywood recognising what a great director he is.

Mastery

On the flight to Medan I honestly thought that in the days to follow I was going to make major inroads into the reading I took with me. In fact, I briefly entertained the idea I might not have taken enough. I seemed to be racing through Toibin's The Master and since I had only got a single copy of The New York Review of Books, Literary Theory (of which I'd already devoured the first three chapters before setting off) and a very slim collection of poems entitled Kid by Simon Armitage (which I picked up cheap, just 50 pence in England in December) I thought I'd severely misjudged the situation. Alas, whatever misjudgment there was related solely to the misconception that once I stepped off the plane I was going to get any time to read.

It was simply not to be, except for a stolen few minutes at the end of each day before I nodded off. Such minutes were spent in the wonderful company of Mr Toibin and his Mr James and very satisfactory they were. The Master has turned out to be much wider-ranging in its perspectives on the great writer than David Lodge's equally wonderful Author, Author. I still have about a hundred pages to go and, goodness me, am I looking forward to them.

Wiser?

I got back from Medan just before midday and I'm now trying to put my life into some kind of order and get back to tried and tested routines. Fortunately Noi has been keeping things in order in addition to having ensured I was well-equipped for my little adventure. Where would I be without her? Answer: nowhere at all.

It's certainly been a busy and extremely interesting few days. I now know a great deal more about how the school in which I work goes about the business of getting its 'scholars' from overseas. In some ways it's a harsh process, involving far more rejection than acceptance, but that's the way of the world. The thought that you are involved in decisions that dramatically change lives could be burdensome but knowing that you've worked hard and behaved in good faith helps to ease the old conscience.

Apart from the intensity of the work there's also the fascination of being able to look out into a different culture. Whilst Indonesia might not be so completely foreign to me as some other countries in the region it is certainly disorientating in some fundamentals, being the same but different. We didn't get that much opportunity to explore Medan and environs but the little there was provided ample food for thought.

So, almost at random, three images: Two cheerful children in immaculately clean school uniform, a sort of peach top and brown skirt, walking along the side of an extremely busy road winding up a steep slope, presumably making their way home to one of the tired old shacks clinging to the edge. A whole row of trees supporting garish election posters for a posse of candidates, not one of whom would have inspired the confidence to have succeeded as a used car salesman. Or woman. The smile on the face of the door-girl at the hotel which remained, astonishingly, genuinely curious and friendly regardless of the hour of day, or the weariness of her legs.

Tough Decisions

Tomorrow I'm off to Medan in Sumatra on a recruiting trip for the school I work for. I'll be there until Sunday. I suspect I'll be busy marking a lot of material from students aspiring to get an education in Singapore but it's still an opportunity to explore the region a little more. I was surprised when I found out that Medan is the third largest city in Indonesia with a population of around two and a half million. For some strange reason I've always pictured it as a sleepy little town.

Now I'm busy packing, or rather Noi is putting my house in order for me. She is frighteningly efficient when it comes to ordering my life. Thank goodness. She will be going over to Melaka in my absence - a great opportunity to help out, especially with Mak whom she'll be taking to her eye doctor.

I've been planing the reading I'll take with me with great care, and I'm hoping to find some time to genuinely get some done. Over the weekend I made a start on Colm Toibin's The Master and revisited Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory. Both are going down well and shall constitute the centre of my reading. I'm also taking across a recent edition of the New York Review of Books in case I can only find the time to dip into stuff. The question now is whether to take some poetry along or to travel really light. I'm tempted to pack the rather tasty Frost: Collected Poems, Prose and Plays from the Library of America but this could be a case of over-egging the pudding. I'm going to get very irritated if I don't get any chance at all to do it justice, which might well be the case. Ah, the rigours of globe-trotting.

Therapeutic

We've just got back from a one night jaunt to Melaka. This was occasioned by Noi's massage lady being in high demand and thus needing to be ferried over and a number of birthdays coinciding such that a sort of party was deemed to be in order. In addition to this Noi wanted to take over a baby carriage which would be more useful in Malaysia than Singapore (though I'm not entirely sure which baby it is intended for) and she thought it would be a rather good wheeze if I were to avail myself of a bubble bath in the spa that Khalsom and Rachid have created in the compound of the house.

The birthday celebrations turned out to be exuberant to say the least. Enough games were devised to ensure that all the kids looked messy and they all won something. The little ones were still walking around with their medals on Sunday morning. I visited a sort of spa for the first time in my life and had the aforementioned bubble bath. This was pleasant, but you can't read a book in a bubble bath which seems to me a major disadvantage of the experience.

All in all, the real therapy was getting away from it all, if only for a few hours.

Taking Risks

I'm glad I re-read Jeanette Winterson's Sexing The Cherry. I can't say I understood it much better this time around but I was entirely comfortable in my lack of desire to try and fit things together. I think it's a novel of parts that doesn't genuinely cohere but works because of the strength of those parts and the genuine energy driving the project. The loathing for London and the world of the City is palpable, especially in the final section, and Winterson is so good at hating that it has a positively bracing effect.

The same, I think, is true of the almost uniformly grim view of the male sex on offer. At times this seems comically extreme, but extremes seem to be where the writer is most comfortable and she convinced me, at least occasionally, that there are discoveries to be made there. The rule book that teaches about men is a nice example, sort of reductive, but funny in an alarming way: 1 Men are easy to please but are not pleased for long before some new novelty must delight them. I recognised myself in that.

It seems Ms Winterson has been frequently accused of pretentiousness in her writing, amongst other sins, and I can see why. But I like the sense of ambition, the obvious taking of risks in her work. I think it pays off in this novel, as long as you don't dig too deep or ask too much.