Finally

Just finished The Unconsoled and I am officially mystified. I thought that the ending of the novel might shed some light on what Ishiguro was up to in his narrative, but for this reader it was not to be. The narrator's final conversation with the electrician on the tram and his eating of a hearty breakfast are as baffling to me as the rest of the book, yet readable in a strange way. Is this meant to be symbolic and, if so, why is it I haven't a clue as to what is being symbolised?

So far I've managed to avoid googling around to find some guidance on this peculiar text, but such is my current bafflement that I'm intending to do exactly that in the next hour or so. I'll just say, for the moment, that I've been wondering if something archly Kafkaesque is going on - like Ishiguro mixing social comedy with FK in a peculiar literary omelette. I suppose that might account for the lack of any obvious ending.

Actually, for much of my reading I was expecting some kind of Dostoyevskian meltdown at the big concert/gathering of the final pages - and felt a vague sort of dread at what I thought was coming. I've also been toying with the notion that the text is intended as some kind of extended dream or exercise in being lost in memory, but can't reach any kind of clarity with regard to such a reading. I suppose I've been hoping for some kind of revelation as to why Ishiguro opts to write so badly, but the light has not yet dawned.

More anon. I think. Unless nobody has a good explanation as to what the 500+ pages have been about.

Showtime

Any time spent out with The Missus is, by definition, a good time, and I generally enjoyed yesterday evening's jaunt to the cinema at the Jem Mall. But I can't honestly say that sitting through the film we watched, Mat Kilau, the highest ever grossing movie in Malaysia, was an unalloyed pleasure.

Quick review: nice costumes (but too clean); good use of locations & sets; some effective cinematography - though very tiresome indeed on the (many, many) action scenes; tiresome soundtrack; patchy acting, occasionally dreadful; dreadful script; historically inaccurate to the point of being disturbing (very.) 

Now gearing up to watch our own production - The Independent Stage Guide to Using Your Imagination. Actually I've not yet seen the final edit of the show put together by our editing team, so that's one aspect of the piece that'll be entirely new to me.

And here's a first for this Far Place, with me providing a link to this evening's proceedings. It goes live (as they say, these days) 7.30 pm (local time) at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MRkkaSJycw. 

Wakefulness

Enjoyed a rare free afternoon after Friday Prayers, having no pressing work commitments. Took advantage by falling massively asleep for a couple of hours on the sofa. The necessity of the snooze wasn't in any doubt since I'd been nodding in the masjid and zoned out for whole portions of the khutbah, sad to say. I also need to be on top form this evening as we're off to the cinema for the first time this year. (Indeed, for the first time for a few years.) The booking is courtesy of Fafa, by the way, who's just earned a promotion at work and is treating us!

Irony Alert

Listening to a talk today about the need for patience, found myself growing increasingly impatient. Massive fail on the self-improvement front, eh?

Top Man

Excellent article in the Graun on-line today about RVW. Didn't know it's the great man's 150th anniversary this year and very glad indeed it is since that'll mean a lot of airplay of his great, great music and appreciative articles, like this one by Andrew Manze (who's described as a conductor, but who I know better as an outstanding violinist, having got a couple of CDs of him doing the business with Handel.) Big anniversaries often involve a sense of a reputation shifting, and I reckon Vaughan Williams is moving into universal acceptance as one of the 20th century greats in international terms.

Astonishing to think that back in 1958 he was being dismissed by the critics as passé. Good example of the stupidity of 'received critical opinion' if you ever needed one. 

Just A Thought

Had that odd experience this evening in which a train of thought, quite a negative, bitter one, took me over for a good ten minutes or so. And once the rant - internal - was over, the thoughts dissolved, as if no longer belonging to me.

I wonder if this is what writers experience, in a larger, more controlled, more clearly creative manner when inhabiting a character? A kind of benign possession. Especially writers of a theatrical bent. Dickens springs to mind.

On Silence

Just popped out quite late at night to lock up a couple of classrooms. Enjoyed the relative peace on the corridors, but was keenly aware of the night sounds accompanying my tread. Thought briefly about writing something clever about the sounds 'staining' the silence, but realised that, quite apart from sounding pretentious, it was just the wrong word. The sounds enhance the silence somehow, and if that sounds pretentious then too bad. It happens to be true.

Still Foolhardy

The air-conditioning was down yet again in the gym this evening. And, yet again, I decided it was best to give it a go, this time for forty-five minutes. This time I felt significantly more in control than I did last Monday. It helped not having done a full day's work before stepping out on the elliptical trainer I suppose. In fact, I had it in mind to speed up a bit at the half hour mark if I felt okay and was ready to do so up to twenty minutes in. But, then, I started to experience that slight sweaty tingling that says you'll end up wanting to throw up if you push too hard and, sensibly, just maintained my pace.

One of the great things about getting regular exercise is that you get better at listening to what your body tells you, even if you don't speak the language like a native. 

A Loss Of Momentum

I've been extremely neglectful of my reading of poetry of late. So it was with a feeling of mild guilt that I picked Volume 2 of The Complete Poems of A.R. Ammons off the shelf this evening and applied myself to the third and final section of his book of 1987, Sumerian Vistas. I'm a bit puzzled as to how exactly the various poems in this section, itself titled Motions' Holdings, are meant to cohere, if at all. They are generally dated, and the dates are very disparate - yet the first two sections of the book are clearly carefully sequenced in a Snow Poems-like manner. Having said that, I don't find the poems particularly hard work, as I did back in June with the earliest material from Volume 2.

One thing I'm struck by in relation to Ammons' work: he's not a poet I find myself wanting to quote. In part this relates to the obvious fact that the poems are intended to be read from the page, rather than to be heard in public performance. There are striking phrases here and there, but it's the cumulative power of the experience of reading Archie that points to where the action is.

Which, oddly, reminds me just a little, of the effect of Ishiguro's The Unconsoled, with which I continue to make slow but happy progress. I can't imagine anyone reading this aloud for an audiobook. The style is so markedly clumsy and ponderous that it becomes weirdly entertaining in itself. Still trying to work out what exactly it is that I'm reading.

Filling The Gaps

Here's an odd thing. I've been a bit of a fan of J.S. Bach since the earliest days of my discovery of 'serious' music in my twenties. I 'got' the Brandenburg Concertos right away, for example, and loved the Passions from the get-go. But for reasons that completely escape me I've never sat down to listen to the cantatas and never heard one performed live.

Recently I've been putting that right simply because various of the cantatas have been cropping up in my YouTube feed. For once the algorithm got it right. Just blasted my ears with the four glorious minutes of BMW 50 Nun ist das Heil und die Kraft. The world is now officially a better place.

(Hope I got the title right, by the way. I haven't a clue what it means, or what they're singing about.)