Taking the Back off an Old Watch
Listening to - Electric Guitar Phase - Steve Reich
Something safe has fractured over the last two days. Nothing seems quite right with the world. It is fine when Governments are being incompetent - that is what they are there for - but now they seemed to have crossed the line into plain deception. I know we can never say what has really happened; There is so much complexity and so many individual elements of the communications between divisions of Government that the truth of all this will never come out. I suppose within the remit of the report that no other conclusion could be reached. What does seem excessive is the reaction from the accused parties. The poor victim in this obviously had a problem with someone in authority and that fracture seems to have been overlooked even if the reporters do seem to have exaggerated his stance for the sake of a story. As I said yesterday, the intelligence was wrong though not, we are told, deliberately made-up to mislead. What we need now is an enquiry into how the intelligence was so far off the mark. But then again, the intelligence services are not usually up for that sort of thing are they? Undermines the point of their existence.
Security by obscurity is no security at all.
Electric Guitar Phase is stunning; It is a re-working of Reich's Violin Phase which is two lines of Violin music playing against each other. This as you can guess, is the same two lines played on Electric guitar. Each line is played at a slightly different rate from the other so the interaction and the creation of new melodies from the counterpoint changes gradually, sometimes creating fuzzy messes and sometimes beautiful complexities. Listen to a sample here. The repetition in Steve Reich's work is deceptive; He loves melodies and he loves repeating them. His stuff has some of the best hooks in any music I know but on top of that he can get those hooks to change gradually over time and still have each stage sound wonderful. I started liking the repetition after seeing a programme about Philip Glass. There was no gradual appreciation of this music; I liked it from the start. My Steve Reich simulator is at an advanced stage but as it is completely automatic and ransom in its progression, it lacks the real power of genuine composition. Occasionally it will throw up a great line but the change will take it away to messy confusion. It as more like a complex bell ringing simulator with 4 sets of bells. Actually that does sound like a Steve Reich thing. Triple Quartet on the same album as Electric Guitar Phase, is three string quartets recorded and played against each other so why not fours sets of Church bells? I don't think it would be possible to control the bells sets accurately enough.
Friday, January 30, 2004
Thursday, January 29, 2004
Treacle or Syrup?
Listening to - Sound-Dust - Stereolab
How small is my idea of the world. We all think because of the fact that our eyes are in our own heads, that what we see is the most important thing happening. To us it is but think beyond that.
As you can tell, I am trying to drag myself up from a seeming bog of something very sticky. I sat here with the view that there was no point writing anything as it would not be worth it. I seem to averaging about two poems a week at the moment maybe slightly more and sometimes they seem all that is worth writing.
I have thought for a few seconds and there are some things to mention though one is simply a link to a web site that displays digital artwork. Find it here and navigate through it virtually. Wonderful!
The other thing is the Huf Haus from last night's Grand Designs. Now I was already quite taken with this house having seen it on the trailers and said to my wife something along the lines of "If we win the lottery can I have one?". Now my wife likes cottages and Georgian houses and was quite dismissive of such a modernist house. However, by the end of the programme, she was converted. Of course it helped that the new owners were both artists and could integrate their own style with the rather monochrome style of the house itself. The main structure was put up and watertight in 4 and a half days. Off to rob that bank.
Listening to - Sound-Dust - Stereolab
How small is my idea of the world. We all think because of the fact that our eyes are in our own heads, that what we see is the most important thing happening. To us it is but think beyond that.
As you can tell, I am trying to drag myself up from a seeming bog of something very sticky. I sat here with the view that there was no point writing anything as it would not be worth it. I seem to averaging about two poems a week at the moment maybe slightly more and sometimes they seem all that is worth writing.
I have thought for a few seconds and there are some things to mention though one is simply a link to a web site that displays digital artwork. Find it here and navigate through it virtually. Wonderful!
The other thing is the Huf Haus from last night's Grand Designs. Now I was already quite taken with this house having seen it on the trailers and said to my wife something along the lines of "If we win the lottery can I have one?". Now my wife likes cottages and Georgian houses and was quite dismissive of such a modernist house. However, by the end of the programme, she was converted. Of course it helped that the new owners were both artists and could integrate their own style with the rather monochrome style of the house itself. The main structure was put up and watertight in 4 and a half days. Off to rob that bank.
Where are You Ed?
Listening to - Possessed - Balenescu Quartet
Now I am thinking of changing the walls at the weekend. I could use wallpaper but that is too fiddly. There is paint but what I think I really want is WHITEWASH!
Around Christmas, two newspapers decided that they had a small portion of the 'truth' about Diana - Princess of Wales' death. So we had one paper with the headline "Diana was NOT pregnant" next to "Diana WAS pregnant". Now that is sloppy journalism. However, it is like the problem with the law that states that if it cannot be decided which parent murdered a child then neither can be found guilty. (I think that this is changing in law). My point however, is that a small rogue accusation which looks increasingly less untrue has led to what I personally feel is unduly harsh criticism of the BBC. Obviously, the point of the Hutton report was to investigate the facts of the death of Dr Kelly and not the whole question of the accuracy of intelligence that led the Government to believe that Saddam had WMD. However, is there not now a wider question of how good that intelligence actually was. Who should we get to carry out that investigation? Of course such things are never investigated.
Maybe I just do not like change. WMD is still the most meaningless phrase. The argument now is that we have got rid of a bad man and I suppose if the so-called rogue states, do now start thinking that they may be next, then something has come of all this. However, there are still plenty of 'bad men' out there and we still do nothing against them. Some very established countries with no hint of being part of an 'axis' of anything have terrible regimes which deserve overthrow just as much as Saddam did (and I have to agree that he did deserve it ). As usual you see that this is degenerating into a soupy mess of indecision but the world is not black-and-white. There was much merriment in this office this story about the Salesman who pretended to be an MI5 agent and told students that they were on IRA hit lists because of their association with him. Now the response here was they were stupid. If you actually think about it, con-men make their living from being plausible. I know that many people are more gullible than me (just as plenty of people are less gullible than me) but I could never say that I would not be taken in by that sort of con.
Listening to - Possessed - Balenescu Quartet
Now I am thinking of changing the walls at the weekend. I could use wallpaper but that is too fiddly. There is paint but what I think I really want is WHITEWASH!
Around Christmas, two newspapers decided that they had a small portion of the 'truth' about Diana - Princess of Wales' death. So we had one paper with the headline "Diana was NOT pregnant" next to "Diana WAS pregnant". Now that is sloppy journalism. However, it is like the problem with the law that states that if it cannot be decided which parent murdered a child then neither can be found guilty. (I think that this is changing in law). My point however, is that a small rogue accusation which looks increasingly less untrue has led to what I personally feel is unduly harsh criticism of the BBC. Obviously, the point of the Hutton report was to investigate the facts of the death of Dr Kelly and not the whole question of the accuracy of intelligence that led the Government to believe that Saddam had WMD. However, is there not now a wider question of how good that intelligence actually was. Who should we get to carry out that investigation? Of course such things are never investigated.
Maybe I just do not like change. WMD is still the most meaningless phrase. The argument now is that we have got rid of a bad man and I suppose if the so-called rogue states, do now start thinking that they may be next, then something has come of all this. However, there are still plenty of 'bad men' out there and we still do nothing against them. Some very established countries with no hint of being part of an 'axis' of anything have terrible regimes which deserve overthrow just as much as Saddam did (and I have to agree that he did deserve it ). As usual you see that this is degenerating into a soupy mess of indecision but the world is not black-and-white. There was much merriment in this office this story about the Salesman who pretended to be an MI5 agent and told students that they were on IRA hit lists because of their association with him. Now the response here was they were stupid. If you actually think about it, con-men make their living from being plausible. I know that many people are more gullible than me (just as plenty of people are less gullible than me) but I could never say that I would not be taken in by that sort of con.
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Look Away
Sometimes I have a staring competition with my daughter and I usually try to distract her by asking her what colour her mother's eyes are or whether there is something strange on the ceiling. Well of course she is wise to these ploys now but tries her own on me, the latest being "Is that a new Sylvia Plath book in the bookcase?" Does my daughter know me well? The movie is supposed to be out Friday but it only seems like it is down south. As usual arty stuff is seen as the stuff of weedy southerners. Accuse me of generalisation if you like. I wonder if it is at Hebden Bridge?
Sometimes I have a staring competition with my daughter and I usually try to distract her by asking her what colour her mother's eyes are or whether there is something strange on the ceiling. Well of course she is wise to these ploys now but tries her own on me, the latest being "Is that a new Sylvia Plath book in the bookcase?" Does my daughter know me well? The movie is supposed to be out Friday but it only seems like it is down south. As usual arty stuff is seen as the stuff of weedy southerners. Accuse me of generalisation if you like. I wonder if it is at Hebden Bridge?
But Instead it Just Kept on Raining
Listening to - Progressive Rock
Reading - Experience - Martin Amis
Hoping - for snow, like my daughter.
Neutron Bomb
I could now choose a long list of unconnected phrases and you might think they were the lyrics to a track by Yes. Somewhere along the Yangtze River, people are trying to make sense of the world in the sort of Pre-Post-Modern way that we seem to have forgotten about. Whole towns have been flooded by the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. Try and make sense of that. It happened here I know but on such a small scale. Every time we have a drought, the local news shows pictures of the villages once flooded and now exposed by the low water. One village came up so often that souvenir hunters were endangering their own lives by going into the church which then had to be blown up.
In a Spanish garden, the mild winter weather makes flowers come out at any time. The town below this village is full of foreigners, elderly English and Germans with their shuffling indecisive walks and bad attitudes. Shining, Flying, over the arid hills, through the watery sunlight of the afternoon, comes the missile that will end it all, the bomb to kill all people and yet leave the buildings standing. It is only in my head so no one dies here. I see the glint off its silver sides, the red glow where re-entry has heated it to some high temperature. How fast is this weapon. Fast enough darling! The water vapour in the air has cooled it down now as it piles un-armed into the sandy hillside. Sometime in the future, the local children will find the crater and the bits of scrap; It may turn up as some small news story in the local paper possibly picked up by a foreign paper and turned into some alien myth.
We are all gone, all memory and thought and idea faded into dust. The good stuff of science and art, wasted in a second. Some madmen lose themselves and yet some become our masters. One button is all we think it takes but it is so much more than that. This man has to show himself to be sane before they let him fire these weapons. And yet how could he be sane to wish this fate on the world? For years, I lived like everybody else, sure that our lives were just the gateway to the horror of the war that seemed inevitable. Music and sex was our escape from this certainty. Now they just want one city to send us scurrying back the shelters. We just want to dance and forget about it all. The sky will vapourise our nerves before we have time to realise. The way to go; No pain or anything else. The terrorists and hackers fail, are voided like the rest of us. No seventy-three virgins waiting for you like some bad movie. That building came at you and took your head off. At that moment, your fragile mind emptied and came to earth with the dust. You are floating round the city like everyone else you killed but they lie inside us all and you are forgotten on the sidewalk. I am the first person to remember you. Maybe some faint remains of memory lies in these streets, enough to see what happens following this. We take pictures back through time, intelligent missiles capable of conversation, to show you what happens. God could not gather you up. There is not enough to make a decent soul for any purpose.
We are machines, machines with fragile minds. We are machine, are machines, are machines.
Listening to - Progressive Rock
Reading - Experience - Martin Amis
Hoping - for snow, like my daughter.
Neutron Bomb
I could now choose a long list of unconnected phrases and you might think they were the lyrics to a track by Yes. Somewhere along the Yangtze River, people are trying to make sense of the world in the sort of Pre-Post-Modern way that we seem to have forgotten about. Whole towns have been flooded by the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. Try and make sense of that. It happened here I know but on such a small scale. Every time we have a drought, the local news shows pictures of the villages once flooded and now exposed by the low water. One village came up so often that souvenir hunters were endangering their own lives by going into the church which then had to be blown up.
In a Spanish garden, the mild winter weather makes flowers come out at any time. The town below this village is full of foreigners, elderly English and Germans with their shuffling indecisive walks and bad attitudes. Shining, Flying, over the arid hills, through the watery sunlight of the afternoon, comes the missile that will end it all, the bomb to kill all people and yet leave the buildings standing. It is only in my head so no one dies here. I see the glint off its silver sides, the red glow where re-entry has heated it to some high temperature. How fast is this weapon. Fast enough darling! The water vapour in the air has cooled it down now as it piles un-armed into the sandy hillside. Sometime in the future, the local children will find the crater and the bits of scrap; It may turn up as some small news story in the local paper possibly picked up by a foreign paper and turned into some alien myth.
We are all gone, all memory and thought and idea faded into dust. The good stuff of science and art, wasted in a second. Some madmen lose themselves and yet some become our masters. One button is all we think it takes but it is so much more than that. This man has to show himself to be sane before they let him fire these weapons. And yet how could he be sane to wish this fate on the world? For years, I lived like everybody else, sure that our lives were just the gateway to the horror of the war that seemed inevitable. Music and sex was our escape from this certainty. Now they just want one city to send us scurrying back the shelters. We just want to dance and forget about it all. The sky will vapourise our nerves before we have time to realise. The way to go; No pain or anything else. The terrorists and hackers fail, are voided like the rest of us. No seventy-three virgins waiting for you like some bad movie. That building came at you and took your head off. At that moment, your fragile mind emptied and came to earth with the dust. You are floating round the city like everyone else you killed but they lie inside us all and you are forgotten on the sidewalk. I am the first person to remember you. Maybe some faint remains of memory lies in these streets, enough to see what happens following this. We take pictures back through time, intelligent missiles capable of conversation, to show you what happens. God could not gather you up. There is not enough to make a decent soul for any purpose.
We are machines, machines with fragile minds. We are machine, are machines, are machines.
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass
I was just writing a poem about fish, which is always, a very calming thing to do. Now is it possible to worry about the future even if you have no memory? It is always said that fish (usually Goldfish) have no memory beyond five minutes. Well they must have instinct enough to let them 'remember' that they need to eat something or to flee from danger so what does this actually mean. It sounds like it should be one of the Myth-Chasers from Fortean Times. Anyway I am sure that the fish will never catch up with this incredible Parrot which seems to be able to understand what it is saying. Sounds a bit fishy to me if you will excuse the mixed Taxonomy.
This lunchtime has vanished from under me. I want to be able to write a poem and a blog entry and there is never enough time for both to be completed to satisfaction. Of course it is only because I have the means to enter the blog at my fingertips that I manage to update it so regularly. Unfortunately, the content seems to lacking something recently. I looked back through some old entries and there was so much more meaning.
I was just writing a poem about fish, which is always, a very calming thing to do. Now is it possible to worry about the future even if you have no memory? It is always said that fish (usually Goldfish) have no memory beyond five minutes. Well they must have instinct enough to let them 'remember' that they need to eat something or to flee from danger so what does this actually mean. It sounds like it should be one of the Myth-Chasers from Fortean Times. Anyway I am sure that the fish will never catch up with this incredible Parrot which seems to be able to understand what it is saying. Sounds a bit fishy to me if you will excuse the mixed Taxonomy.
This lunchtime has vanished from under me. I want to be able to write a poem and a blog entry and there is never enough time for both to be completed to satisfaction. Of course it is only because I have the means to enter the blog at my fingertips that I manage to update it so regularly. Unfortunately, the content seems to lacking something recently. I looked back through some old entries and there was so much more meaning.
Ice and Plainchant
Listening to - Nothing Like the Sun - Sting
I had to go out to a "community meeting" last night - the sort they still hold in school halls and it meant walking through the cold and dark. It brought back memories of walking to the phone box when I was at college to phone someone back home. I used to listen to Gregorian Chant on my headphones that I suppose was quite unusual for someone of twenty. It didn't take me long to get used to living in the city but I was cut-off from most of the rest of the people on my course so I spent a lot of time walking with my camera and headphones. The winter of 1983 was very cold, and cold for a long time. I had a problem with my landlord not that he was aware of it. He was bigoted and ignorant and I got wound up so much by it that I was on the point of throwing it all up and returning home. The little walks with the happy monks were my calming time. I can't remember why I started listening to Gregorian Chant though it may have been something as stupid as being the chosen listening of Ria's husband in Butterflies. In fact I think I have some chant on the hard disk so :-
Listening to - Gregorianischer Choral
This one is not quite as good as the tape I usually had on my walks but in this world the thought of a defined regime with no ups and downs and outside worries is quite a tranquilliser. There was a monastery near where we used to live though it was not really obvious. I once had a look at the aerial photo of it on Multimap (when the quality was higher) and sure enough it showed a walled garden with tranquil paths and vegetable gardens. I think there was some sort of dispute between the monks and the neighbours when in response to the fact that the new estate was built closer than agreed to the walls of the garden. The monks put up a tall extension to the wall and I was with them all the way.
Listening to - Nothing Like the Sun - Sting
I had to go out to a "community meeting" last night - the sort they still hold in school halls and it meant walking through the cold and dark. It brought back memories of walking to the phone box when I was at college to phone someone back home. I used to listen to Gregorian Chant on my headphones that I suppose was quite unusual for someone of twenty. It didn't take me long to get used to living in the city but I was cut-off from most of the rest of the people on my course so I spent a lot of time walking with my camera and headphones. The winter of 1983 was very cold, and cold for a long time. I had a problem with my landlord not that he was aware of it. He was bigoted and ignorant and I got wound up so much by it that I was on the point of throwing it all up and returning home. The little walks with the happy monks were my calming time. I can't remember why I started listening to Gregorian Chant though it may have been something as stupid as being the chosen listening of Ria's husband in Butterflies. In fact I think I have some chant on the hard disk so :-
Listening to - Gregorianischer Choral
This one is not quite as good as the tape I usually had on my walks but in this world the thought of a defined regime with no ups and downs and outside worries is quite a tranquilliser. There was a monastery near where we used to live though it was not really obvious. I once had a look at the aerial photo of it on Multimap (when the quality was higher) and sure enough it showed a walled garden with tranquil paths and vegetable gardens. I think there was some sort of dispute between the monks and the neighbours when in response to the fact that the new estate was built closer than agreed to the walls of the garden. The monks put up a tall extension to the wall and I was with them all the way.
Monday, January 26, 2004
Sonata for Unaccommpanied Sheep
Radio 3 just played the Dolly Suite which, as all you people of a certain age will know, was the signature tune for Listen With Mother. The result is a very calm Office Worker who is nevertheless feeling slightly despondent over the fact that those days will never come again. I cannot actually remember what was on Listen With Mother so follow the link to find out all about it. Misty-Eyed indeed! Aha! My Naughty Little Sister! I loved those books and so does my daughter. I think my copies had the original illustrations in rather than the lovely Shirley Hughes ones. As I was an elder brother, I identified with the narrator - the older sister of the pesky little scamp of the title. My daughter has all the stories now which is a lot more than I had and she will read them over and over again.
Anyway, back to the Dolly Suite. The music never fails to conjure up long, empty and always sunny afternoons. I know that it must have rained sometimes but those days never stick in your head do they? If you remember it and hear it again then I would say that you couldn?t fail to be moved.
We watched Enigma last night. I was worried because I was aware that this was a fictional story set around real events and thought that maybe we Brits could do just as good a hatchet job on history as the Yanks did with U-571. All fears ungrounded. Well nearly all fears. Bletchley Park did not look like Bletchley Park which should have been a bit like a school rather than the barbed-wire-fenced horror in the film. It seemed more like some outlying ministry from nineteen-eighty-four rather than a secret station. Bletchley was only bombed once and that was a stray bomb meant for the railway station so the Germans never suspected what was going on there at all. So after having said how good the film was and then having complained about the central location being all wrong I will let you either ignore everything or go and watch it yourself. I didn't manage to see Mick Jagger in it though.
Radio 3 just played the Dolly Suite which, as all you people of a certain age will know, was the signature tune for Listen With Mother. The result is a very calm Office Worker who is nevertheless feeling slightly despondent over the fact that those days will never come again. I cannot actually remember what was on Listen With Mother so follow the link to find out all about it. Misty-Eyed indeed! Aha! My Naughty Little Sister! I loved those books and so does my daughter. I think my copies had the original illustrations in rather than the lovely Shirley Hughes ones. As I was an elder brother, I identified with the narrator - the older sister of the pesky little scamp of the title. My daughter has all the stories now which is a lot more than I had and she will read them over and over again.
Anyway, back to the Dolly Suite. The music never fails to conjure up long, empty and always sunny afternoons. I know that it must have rained sometimes but those days never stick in your head do they? If you remember it and hear it again then I would say that you couldn?t fail to be moved.
We watched Enigma last night. I was worried because I was aware that this was a fictional story set around real events and thought that maybe we Brits could do just as good a hatchet job on history as the Yanks did with U-571. All fears ungrounded. Well nearly all fears. Bletchley Park did not look like Bletchley Park which should have been a bit like a school rather than the barbed-wire-fenced horror in the film. It seemed more like some outlying ministry from nineteen-eighty-four rather than a secret station. Bletchley was only bombed once and that was a stray bomb meant for the railway station so the Germans never suspected what was going on there at all. So after having said how good the film was and then having complained about the central location being all wrong I will let you either ignore everything or go and watch it yourself. I didn't manage to see Mick Jagger in it though.
Friday, January 23, 2004
It's Like a Long, Thin Bungalow
How about a random Friday?
A grey window, the whole city below us stretching out to the calm sea and over the sea to Ireland. Where does the world go when the curve of the earth takes it away from us? There is cool, clear water punctuated and split at the level that makes legibility impossible. I cannot take each sentence written here and split it into anything which you may understand at any real level. This text is simply that: text with no special relevance for any concepts in my head. In Italy it is an hour ahead as it is through most of mainland Europe. Portugal may be different but I am not sure; It is certainly the furthest west. 70% of all flights are across the Atlantic. There is no connection. I am trying to bring this round to something more meaningful but all I get is fragments of the world with no connection. No Connection. My hand is taken by some person on the other side of the planet and made to write automatically. There is a fizz somewhere underneath my brain as some chemical leaches out of a gland into my blood. What is mad now? In the rain forest somewhere, a man loses his mind as the night closes in. There are strange sounds here, the sounds of a million undiscovered species starting up for the hours of darkness. A strange mantis, red and green, meets its mate in the crook of a tree close by while a type of cat never seen by man spits hairballs into the undergrowth.
I return to a small apartment, high up in a building in some big North-American city. It is evening but not yet night-time though at this time of year, it is as dark as it will get. Listening carefully, I can hear the traffic down below and sometimes see the quality of the light outside changing as traffic signals and advertising signs alter to give their different messages. This is a clean apartment, not overly furnished but nice enough. In the whole damn world, I am in this place and it is the centre of all I think about. I try to think of curling up in a small wood in the country or of the only shade under the highest hill in some desert but all I can think about is washed out by the senses of this place. The table, the chairs, the glass with its quivering shadow on the wall over there; they are all part of the main show. So much happens and yet so little happens. My life seems full but when I look back at it there is so much repetition, where the same thing happens or nothing happens for hours on end.
How about a random Friday?
A grey window, the whole city below us stretching out to the calm sea and over the sea to Ireland. Where does the world go when the curve of the earth takes it away from us? There is cool, clear water punctuated and split at the level that makes legibility impossible. I cannot take each sentence written here and split it into anything which you may understand at any real level. This text is simply that: text with no special relevance for any concepts in my head. In Italy it is an hour ahead as it is through most of mainland Europe. Portugal may be different but I am not sure; It is certainly the furthest west. 70% of all flights are across the Atlantic. There is no connection. I am trying to bring this round to something more meaningful but all I get is fragments of the world with no connection. No Connection. My hand is taken by some person on the other side of the planet and made to write automatically. There is a fizz somewhere underneath my brain as some chemical leaches out of a gland into my blood. What is mad now? In the rain forest somewhere, a man loses his mind as the night closes in. There are strange sounds here, the sounds of a million undiscovered species starting up for the hours of darkness. A strange mantis, red and green, meets its mate in the crook of a tree close by while a type of cat never seen by man spits hairballs into the undergrowth.
I return to a small apartment, high up in a building in some big North-American city. It is evening but not yet night-time though at this time of year, it is as dark as it will get. Listening carefully, I can hear the traffic down below and sometimes see the quality of the light outside changing as traffic signals and advertising signs alter to give their different messages. This is a clean apartment, not overly furnished but nice enough. In the whole damn world, I am in this place and it is the centre of all I think about. I try to think of curling up in a small wood in the country or of the only shade under the highest hill in some desert but all I can think about is washed out by the senses of this place. The table, the chairs, the glass with its quivering shadow on the wall over there; they are all part of the main show. So much happens and yet so little happens. My life seems full but when I look back at it there is so much repetition, where the same thing happens or nothing happens for hours on end.
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
Genericism
Listening to - Ex:El - 808 State
I have been 'discussing' something with a colleague here. From blaming Sky for the ills of the football league (see the woes of Leeds United) we got on to James Bond films and my colleague mentioned that the last James Bond film - Die Another Day - was good apart from the Invisible Car and that such a technology was never going to be possible. I see this as a dangerous sort of comment especially bearing in mind that the technology in the film actually mentions a real technology used in 'daylight' stealth aircraft. Now of course, the real thing is nowhere near as good as that portrayed in the film but I would have thought that having even a rudimentary system is enough to suggest that a perfect invisibility technology is possible. Cue Arthur C. Clark and saying something is possible is probably true whilst saying it is impossible probably isn't true.
Think of what we have today that we didn't have fifty years ago, or even ten years ago. I mentioned the Asimov short stories written in the fifties, which had people a hundred years in the future still using film scanning and microfiche. And that was from one of the best sci-fi visionaries. There are only a few things I consider not possible and even then I think you have to qualify them. Time-Travel, Matter transference etc - both demonstrated on some very low level.
Film Fun
I was off work yesterday and for the sake of filling time I watched the comedy film of Channel four. It was called Captain's Paradise. It starred Alec Guinness as the captain of a ferry travelling between Gibraltar and Tangier. In each port he had a wife, one home-loving and respectable and one more passionate and out-going. It might sound contrived but it wasn't; A lost gem of a movie. Films these days seem to rely far too much on cinematography and not enough on story. What goes in through the eyes always outweighs what goes in through the ears.
Listening to - Ex:El - 808 State
I have been 'discussing' something with a colleague here. From blaming Sky for the ills of the football league (see the woes of Leeds United) we got on to James Bond films and my colleague mentioned that the last James Bond film - Die Another Day - was good apart from the Invisible Car and that such a technology was never going to be possible. I see this as a dangerous sort of comment especially bearing in mind that the technology in the film actually mentions a real technology used in 'daylight' stealth aircraft. Now of course, the real thing is nowhere near as good as that portrayed in the film but I would have thought that having even a rudimentary system is enough to suggest that a perfect invisibility technology is possible. Cue Arthur C. Clark and saying something is possible is probably true whilst saying it is impossible probably isn't true.
Think of what we have today that we didn't have fifty years ago, or even ten years ago. I mentioned the Asimov short stories written in the fifties, which had people a hundred years in the future still using film scanning and microfiche. And that was from one of the best sci-fi visionaries. There are only a few things I consider not possible and even then I think you have to qualify them. Time-Travel, Matter transference etc - both demonstrated on some very low level.
Film Fun
I was off work yesterday and for the sake of filling time I watched the comedy film of Channel four. It was called Captain's Paradise. It starred Alec Guinness as the captain of a ferry travelling between Gibraltar and Tangier. In each port he had a wife, one home-loving and respectable and one more passionate and out-going. It might sound contrived but it wasn't; A lost gem of a movie. Films these days seem to rely far too much on cinematography and not enough on story. What goes in through the eyes always outweighs what goes in through the ears.
Testudo
Listening to - Take Five - Dave Brubeck
How boring are Caucuses? I suppose I should take note but Caucuses, along with talk of European constitution seem to be the ultimate political cure for insomnia. Still, I can remember my O-Level history lessons being mainly about the 1832 reform act for ages and us all being intensely interested in it. I can't remember anything about it now other than the date. Our history teacher was very good at making boring parliamentary history interesting. We got over our initial dismay at not having many good wars to do and were quite happy with things like the Chartists and the Peterloo massacre. Maybe we still need a written constitution but any more of this is the news on top of US elections and Euro-red-tape would render the nation collectively unconscious before the end of the headlines.
Listening to - Take Five - Dave Brubeck
How boring are Caucuses? I suppose I should take note but Caucuses, along with talk of European constitution seem to be the ultimate political cure for insomnia. Still, I can remember my O-Level history lessons being mainly about the 1832 reform act for ages and us all being intensely interested in it. I can't remember anything about it now other than the date. Our history teacher was very good at making boring parliamentary history interesting. We got over our initial dismay at not having many good wars to do and were quite happy with things like the Chartists and the Peterloo massacre. Maybe we still need a written constitution but any more of this is the news on top of US elections and Euro-red-tape would render the nation collectively unconscious before the end of the headlines.
Monday, January 19, 2004
The German Guns
Listening to - Silence - (Forgot the headphones - a personal and repeating performance of 4'33")
Boom boom boom boom
Boom boom ....
That's enough of that.
Alice Bachini says we must go and vote for Blackadder as the best sitcom and I think I might agree with her. I am not sure whether I agree with her on her opinion of 4'33" as I am not really clear as to what it is. I think she thinks of it as a sort of Emperor?s new Clothes. Now if 4'33" had been written by a well-known producer of music-less music (in the style of artless artists) then I might have agreed with her but as John Cage actually can string a few notes together and produce real symphonies I can take it as a slightly long and slightly boring comment on something quite interesting. I seem to remember about Brian Eno having lots of tapes of the gaps between notes or tracks which he uses to add 'ambient silence' to other records that he produces. He also has some favourite recording of crickets of some such insect that he plays over the top of other sounds or loops to make them more interesting or effective or something like that. Alice is probably lumping me in with the people who take the wrong things too seriously.
What should we take seriously? (I don't mean this question to be any slight on Alice's comment).
I was going to post a poem here but I have the usual dilemma of which one. Never mind. More tomorrow.
Listening to - Silence - (Forgot the headphones - a personal and repeating performance of 4'33")
Boom boom boom boom
Boom boom ....
That's enough of that.
Alice Bachini says we must go and vote for Blackadder as the best sitcom and I think I might agree with her. I am not sure whether I agree with her on her opinion of 4'33" as I am not really clear as to what it is. I think she thinks of it as a sort of Emperor?s new Clothes. Now if 4'33" had been written by a well-known producer of music-less music (in the style of artless artists) then I might have agreed with her but as John Cage actually can string a few notes together and produce real symphonies I can take it as a slightly long and slightly boring comment on something quite interesting. I seem to remember about Brian Eno having lots of tapes of the gaps between notes or tracks which he uses to add 'ambient silence' to other records that he produces. He also has some favourite recording of crickets of some such insect that he plays over the top of other sounds or loops to make them more interesting or effective or something like that. Alice is probably lumping me in with the people who take the wrong things too seriously.
What should we take seriously? (I don't mean this question to be any slight on Alice's comment).
I was going to post a poem here but I have the usual dilemma of which one. Never mind. More tomorrow.
Friday, January 16, 2004
Silent Running
Listening to - Running up That Hill - Kate Bush
Which hill would that be then? Oh! Really? Well whatever turns you on I suppose.
Radio 3 is to broadcast a full performance of 4'33" tonight. I have never actually heard it right through though sometimes I might catch a snatch of it during a meeting. Yes we can all joke about it but doesn't it have a serious meaning. I don't think that the score defines that the piece is 4'33" of silence but rather that amount of the Orchestra NOT playing which in most case means that it is not silence but rather the ambient sounds of the performance venue. There are of course many musicians who use ambient sounds as part of their own compositions so 4'33" id simply the ultimate distillation of that within the formal structures of a performing orchestra. Not sure I like all the pieces for prepared piano, though some of the sounds produced are interesting if not musically familiar.
My daughter likes making the spanners in my tool kit into some sort of xylophone. I tried to improve on it at the weekend by using plastic Raw-plugs as suspension for the spanners but the act of hitting them to make the noise just knocks the whole arrangement about. I have been wanting to make my own rough-and-ready marimba out of blocks of wood ever since I went to Bali but of course along with lots of other projects I have not managed to get around to it. Anyway, my daughter is now going to drum club at school and I suppose I will have to drag the drum pads down from the attic and put batteries in them. I love loud drumming!
Listening to - Running up That Hill - Kate Bush
Which hill would that be then? Oh! Really? Well whatever turns you on I suppose.
Radio 3 is to broadcast a full performance of 4'33" tonight. I have never actually heard it right through though sometimes I might catch a snatch of it during a meeting. Yes we can all joke about it but doesn't it have a serious meaning. I don't think that the score defines that the piece is 4'33" of silence but rather that amount of the Orchestra NOT playing which in most case means that it is not silence but rather the ambient sounds of the performance venue. There are of course many musicians who use ambient sounds as part of their own compositions so 4'33" id simply the ultimate distillation of that within the formal structures of a performing orchestra. Not sure I like all the pieces for prepared piano, though some of the sounds produced are interesting if not musically familiar.
My daughter likes making the spanners in my tool kit into some sort of xylophone. I tried to improve on it at the weekend by using plastic Raw-plugs as suspension for the spanners but the act of hitting them to make the noise just knocks the whole arrangement about. I have been wanting to make my own rough-and-ready marimba out of blocks of wood ever since I went to Bali but of course along with lots of other projects I have not managed to get around to it. Anyway, my daughter is now going to drum club at school and I suppose I will have to drag the drum pads down from the attic and put batteries in them. I love loud drumming!
Thursday, January 15, 2004
Oblique Strategy Number 2,456,342
My daughter now has Googolplex invisible brothers as well as Googolplex invisible sisters. This is obviously due to her now having one visible brother but as the invisible ones are not old enough to commit any misdemeanours, the various 'accidents' in the house are still down to the hoard of Lucys and Abigails who she has invented to cover for her. I cannot wait for the fights which will occur when the brother have grown enough. They will make the battles in Lord of the Rings look like spats. Well they would if you could only see the protagonists.
One day I will get across to her exactly how big a number Googolplex actually is. She thinks it is just a little bit bigger than a million at the moment but sometimes when she sees a Googol written down: -
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
she begins to see that it must be rather large. Imagine how big a Googolplex must be.
I like miserable days. You probably guessed that. It is grey here with spits in the wind. Up in this building there is no hint of the busyness of the city. I went out for the paper on New-Years Day and found the streets empty even at 10am. It was like 28 Days Later or for us older people, the Day of the Triffids. (Must get that book). I love it when it rains.
Short postcard
An Indian sounding musical phrase bounces round my head as I wake up. The sun comes through the palm-leaf blinds and is my alarm for the day. Outside I see a man on a motorscooter who I already know will later blow himself up outside some official building. Although I know this, I feel that the day will go well, like the first day of summer or the time before I had things to worry about. The music trickles through this building like the smell of cooking, meaning annoyance for some of my fellow residents, the late-nighters, the poets and the drinkers, or like for me, a good feeling with no worries. The man on the scooter has gone and now I know what really will happen to him. He will nearly knock down a woman in a long flowing white dress and a wide brimmed hat in the coolie style but bought expensively in some western colony far away. She will shout at him and then he will take her for a drink in some shady bar off the main street and fall in love with her.
The orange-robed monks are here now. I have dressed and breakfasted and now I give something to the calmest men I know. They thank me graciously as they thank everybody. The world began here. The world is centred in this small town. The heat does nothing to make this place dirty like you in your universe may be imagining. Here we are far removed from all those little ifs which made your world like it is. We see ourselves as prosperous because we are and you are lost in poverty. One day we will do something about it. Maybe I will walk with the poets and learn how to write like they do. I would start now but they are all still asleep or nursing hangovers. Our religion means life to us not death which I am sure is what you think of when you see a temple.
The bomb I saw this morning has made me unhappy. There are never bombs here. Apart from not having any reason to set off a bomb, there is no one for thousands of miles who knows how to make one. I see this place in the world whenever I try to see humanity in my head. Any state of human existence is possible on this planet and yet I always see this place. Did that man with the scooter die or meet his mate? I need to follow him to find out. I take my hat and leave the house, water bottle at my side. There he is laughing with his friends by the shop on the corner. The heat makes my shirt stick to me and I am tired already so I but a paper and sit at a cafe table while he continues his discussion. I cannot speak much of the language and I am far enough away to make what he says into complete nonsense but he seems happy. Maybe if you are willing to blow yourself up then you think you are about to enter paradise and then you would be happy. What if you believe totally? "Great Joke Kieu. See you in Heaven. Just off to blow myself up."
That is it. Some idiot has got to him. Make the world unstable; it's a great life out there. Why not make it better by blowing something up tomorrow. We promise you 70 Virgins in Paradise. Bite that apple! Lunacy! I don't want to die and neither does anyone I know. What if they hate us? They can't all hate us can they.
It will rain later. Never cool rain but rain just the same. Something to distract me from an afternoon reading the yellowed books we have found in the house. Everything is damp all the time and nothing on paper stays pristine for ever. I can see the drops falling off the Veranda roof into the garden. It is warm the rain here, like a cup of tea you have forgotten for a while but which is still just warm enough to drink rather than throw down the sink. When I first got here I worried about the food, the deadly animals, the illnesses. Well I got ill and bitten by Mosquitoes and I am still here. We have Doctors here better than yours. "Yours"! See I do not know where I belong any more. They are the doctors I had when I was young in the place where I was born. My mother was one of them but they worked her into the ground. What is the second world because that is where you live now? See it has started raining already while I was off thinking about my home. Home, Home Town, Home Country, Home Planet. Citizen of all of them. This country is about to put men back on the moon. This is where all the money is. We will be outside the solar system before long. Dust here - dust there - its all the same.
My man has started on. I cannot follow him because he is on a scooter. You must expect me to hail one of those motorised single sat taxi things. There are none about because they do not exist. All we have here are scooters and big cars. Maybe I should wait to see the news. I will never know if he meets the woman though. This no longer matters for there she is just around the corner shouting loudly enough and simply enough for me to be able to understand most of what she says. He is smiling and they are walking towards me, towards this very cafe. Life is wonderful when you know exactly what is going to happen. I will go home to watch the rain and listen to the poets arguing
My daughter now has Googolplex invisible brothers as well as Googolplex invisible sisters. This is obviously due to her now having one visible brother but as the invisible ones are not old enough to commit any misdemeanours, the various 'accidents' in the house are still down to the hoard of Lucys and Abigails who she has invented to cover for her. I cannot wait for the fights which will occur when the brother have grown enough. They will make the battles in Lord of the Rings look like spats. Well they would if you could only see the protagonists.
One day I will get across to her exactly how big a number Googolplex actually is. She thinks it is just a little bit bigger than a million at the moment but sometimes when she sees a Googol written down: -
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
she begins to see that it must be rather large. Imagine how big a Googolplex must be.
I like miserable days. You probably guessed that. It is grey here with spits in the wind. Up in this building there is no hint of the busyness of the city. I went out for the paper on New-Years Day and found the streets empty even at 10am. It was like 28 Days Later or for us older people, the Day of the Triffids. (Must get that book). I love it when it rains.
Short postcard
An Indian sounding musical phrase bounces round my head as I wake up. The sun comes through the palm-leaf blinds and is my alarm for the day. Outside I see a man on a motorscooter who I already know will later blow himself up outside some official building. Although I know this, I feel that the day will go well, like the first day of summer or the time before I had things to worry about. The music trickles through this building like the smell of cooking, meaning annoyance for some of my fellow residents, the late-nighters, the poets and the drinkers, or like for me, a good feeling with no worries. The man on the scooter has gone and now I know what really will happen to him. He will nearly knock down a woman in a long flowing white dress and a wide brimmed hat in the coolie style but bought expensively in some western colony far away. She will shout at him and then he will take her for a drink in some shady bar off the main street and fall in love with her.
The orange-robed monks are here now. I have dressed and breakfasted and now I give something to the calmest men I know. They thank me graciously as they thank everybody. The world began here. The world is centred in this small town. The heat does nothing to make this place dirty like you in your universe may be imagining. Here we are far removed from all those little ifs which made your world like it is. We see ourselves as prosperous because we are and you are lost in poverty. One day we will do something about it. Maybe I will walk with the poets and learn how to write like they do. I would start now but they are all still asleep or nursing hangovers. Our religion means life to us not death which I am sure is what you think of when you see a temple.
The bomb I saw this morning has made me unhappy. There are never bombs here. Apart from not having any reason to set off a bomb, there is no one for thousands of miles who knows how to make one. I see this place in the world whenever I try to see humanity in my head. Any state of human existence is possible on this planet and yet I always see this place. Did that man with the scooter die or meet his mate? I need to follow him to find out. I take my hat and leave the house, water bottle at my side. There he is laughing with his friends by the shop on the corner. The heat makes my shirt stick to me and I am tired already so I but a paper and sit at a cafe table while he continues his discussion. I cannot speak much of the language and I am far enough away to make what he says into complete nonsense but he seems happy. Maybe if you are willing to blow yourself up then you think you are about to enter paradise and then you would be happy. What if you believe totally? "Great Joke Kieu. See you in Heaven. Just off to blow myself up."
That is it. Some idiot has got to him. Make the world unstable; it's a great life out there. Why not make it better by blowing something up tomorrow. We promise you 70 Virgins in Paradise. Bite that apple! Lunacy! I don't want to die and neither does anyone I know. What if they hate us? They can't all hate us can they.
It will rain later. Never cool rain but rain just the same. Something to distract me from an afternoon reading the yellowed books we have found in the house. Everything is damp all the time and nothing on paper stays pristine for ever. I can see the drops falling off the Veranda roof into the garden. It is warm the rain here, like a cup of tea you have forgotten for a while but which is still just warm enough to drink rather than throw down the sink. When I first got here I worried about the food, the deadly animals, the illnesses. Well I got ill and bitten by Mosquitoes and I am still here. We have Doctors here better than yours. "Yours"! See I do not know where I belong any more. They are the doctors I had when I was young in the place where I was born. My mother was one of them but they worked her into the ground. What is the second world because that is where you live now? See it has started raining already while I was off thinking about my home. Home, Home Town, Home Country, Home Planet. Citizen of all of them. This country is about to put men back on the moon. This is where all the money is. We will be outside the solar system before long. Dust here - dust there - its all the same.
My man has started on. I cannot follow him because he is on a scooter. You must expect me to hail one of those motorised single sat taxi things. There are none about because they do not exist. All we have here are scooters and big cars. Maybe I should wait to see the news. I will never know if he meets the woman though. This no longer matters for there she is just around the corner shouting loudly enough and simply enough for me to be able to understand most of what she says. He is smiling and they are walking towards me, towards this very cafe. Life is wonderful when you know exactly what is going to happen. I will go home to watch the rain and listen to the poets arguing
North Pole - South Pole - There's two for you
Listening to - Limbo - Throwing Muses
I tried to find something short to read yesterday so that I could drop straight into The Teatime Islands whenever my wife finishes it. I came up with The Best of Isaac Asimov - 1959 - 1972 which starts with a very short story called The Fun They Had which describes how children in 2157 are intrigued by finding a real book. The kids have mechanical teachers that are stand-alone instruction devices and appear to be very mechanical requiring visits from an engineer who says things like "The geography sector was set a little fast." It intrigued me that Asimov completely missed the ideas of computers in their current sense. The computers we were using ten years ago were more sophisticated that the mechanical teachers.
This contrasts with the wonderful snap-shots of the future of human kind which Asimov provides in the next story - The Last Question, which details the development of humanity up until the heat death of the universe when all that is left of mankind is a Cosmic computer with all human minds melded into it. The various computers used by man over the years have each been asked the question of whether it is possible to reverse the entropy of the universe and each time it replies that there is insufficient data to give a meaningful answer. The computers develop their own replacements until the whole thing exists only in hyperspace. As the universe dies the consciousness eventually works out a solution and says "Let there be light" - guess the next and last line. This gives an interesting view on the circularity of the universe. Maybe if time is unbounded as well as space then the intelligence that arises in the universe will actually create the universe in which it exists. Don't forget that the Universe is like it is because if it wasn’t we would not be here to wonder why the universe is like it is. Extend this to why is the universe like it is? Because we are here to create it! I think some wacky cosmologists actually believe this is the case; our beady eyes looking back in time to the big bang actually cause it to happen or something like that.
I have been trying to write a happy poem. My wife says that the recent efforts (not posted) are depressing. My attempt to address this resulted in a comment regarding how we get upset by the 20 seconds of a news report of some atrocity or natural disaster and then go back to our meal without a continuing thought for what has happened. This reminds me of how much newspaper space was devoted to the death of a corgi when there were 50,000 people lying under the rubble in Iran. (No comments about how the Earthquake was less powerful than the one in California that killed two people and the consequent implications suggesting a corrupt Iranian building inspection service).
There is no point trying to write poetry along a particular mood line. I have written more poems in the last year than in any previous year and yet I don't set out to write them. Maybe I need to rigorously define themes write about. Or maybe just a very loose topic for a set of poems.
Listening to - Limbo - Throwing Muses
I tried to find something short to read yesterday so that I could drop straight into The Teatime Islands whenever my wife finishes it. I came up with The Best of Isaac Asimov - 1959 - 1972 which starts with a very short story called The Fun They Had which describes how children in 2157 are intrigued by finding a real book. The kids have mechanical teachers that are stand-alone instruction devices and appear to be very mechanical requiring visits from an engineer who says things like "The geography sector was set a little fast." It intrigued me that Asimov completely missed the ideas of computers in their current sense. The computers we were using ten years ago were more sophisticated that the mechanical teachers.
This contrasts with the wonderful snap-shots of the future of human kind which Asimov provides in the next story - The Last Question, which details the development of humanity up until the heat death of the universe when all that is left of mankind is a Cosmic computer with all human minds melded into it. The various computers used by man over the years have each been asked the question of whether it is possible to reverse the entropy of the universe and each time it replies that there is insufficient data to give a meaningful answer. The computers develop their own replacements until the whole thing exists only in hyperspace. As the universe dies the consciousness eventually works out a solution and says "Let there be light" - guess the next and last line. This gives an interesting view on the circularity of the universe. Maybe if time is unbounded as well as space then the intelligence that arises in the universe will actually create the universe in which it exists. Don't forget that the Universe is like it is because if it wasn’t we would not be here to wonder why the universe is like it is. Extend this to why is the universe like it is? Because we are here to create it! I think some wacky cosmologists actually believe this is the case; our beady eyes looking back in time to the big bang actually cause it to happen or something like that.
I have been trying to write a happy poem. My wife says that the recent efforts (not posted) are depressing. My attempt to address this resulted in a comment regarding how we get upset by the 20 seconds of a news report of some atrocity or natural disaster and then go back to our meal without a continuing thought for what has happened. This reminds me of how much newspaper space was devoted to the death of a corgi when there were 50,000 people lying under the rubble in Iran. (No comments about how the Earthquake was less powerful than the one in California that killed two people and the consequent implications suggesting a corrupt Iranian building inspection service).
There is no point trying to write poetry along a particular mood line. I have written more poems in the last year than in any previous year and yet I don't set out to write them. Maybe I need to rigorously define themes write about. Or maybe just a very loose topic for a set of poems.
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
CMYK - 0 0 0 0
The mechanics of existence are hard. The actual functional bits of the day are fine to get along with but the repetitive things just get me down; the drive to and from work, even just getting up in the morning now. As writing this I can always choose something different to write, (indeed it would not be worth writing the same thing over and over), I feel happier now. My possibly irrational worries about what will happen to the world build up over time rather than being limited to a few tears over an impossibly heart-wrenching news-report. Cry over the death of the Tsar or the holocaust and then go back to your meal. That is not the way things should be but it is how they are. Maybe we can't all emote for the problems of the world but it builds up in me. It has been building up for years, ever since I started reading the papers.
How did I get here from the mechanics of existence? Sometimes I want to go to some form of secular monastery where I can sit in a cell and read, occasionally coming out to mop a floor or dig a garden but deep down I know that the mechanics of that existence would become as bad as those of this. So what is the solution? There is nothing easy I can write down here. So many people have tried to define ways of getting around this, from religious ideas to deeply existential philosophy but nothing works for everyone. We are all banging the rocks together and getting nowhere.
All this is of course my own problem and does not have any bearing over the problems of everyone else; they all have different problems and their own solutions. Nothing I can say can make their lives any better and likewise nothing they say to me will help. Well maybe it will but it would have to be very good.
Now tell me whether this is fiction or some sort of prose poem. I am not sure myself. It may be some solution to a little local problem which will resolve itself by lunchtime or it may be a long decline until something turns up, and something always turns up.
The mechanics of existence are hard. The actual functional bits of the day are fine to get along with but the repetitive things just get me down; the drive to and from work, even just getting up in the morning now. As writing this I can always choose something different to write, (indeed it would not be worth writing the same thing over and over), I feel happier now. My possibly irrational worries about what will happen to the world build up over time rather than being limited to a few tears over an impossibly heart-wrenching news-report. Cry over the death of the Tsar or the holocaust and then go back to your meal. That is not the way things should be but it is how they are. Maybe we can't all emote for the problems of the world but it builds up in me. It has been building up for years, ever since I started reading the papers.
How did I get here from the mechanics of existence? Sometimes I want to go to some form of secular monastery where I can sit in a cell and read, occasionally coming out to mop a floor or dig a garden but deep down I know that the mechanics of that existence would become as bad as those of this. So what is the solution? There is nothing easy I can write down here. So many people have tried to define ways of getting around this, from religious ideas to deeply existential philosophy but nothing works for everyone. We are all banging the rocks together and getting nowhere.
All this is of course my own problem and does not have any bearing over the problems of everyone else; they all have different problems and their own solutions. Nothing I can say can make their lives any better and likewise nothing they say to me will help. Well maybe it will but it would have to be very good.
Now tell me whether this is fiction or some sort of prose poem. I am not sure myself. It may be some solution to a little local problem which will resolve itself by lunchtime or it may be a long decline until something turns up, and something always turns up.
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Soft Concrete
I finished Hard Water last night in a weird half-awake state which fits very well with the poems. They seem to describe reality but with a fractured sense of the absurd in them - visits by dead people or tidal waves in Liverpool. This is all compounded by being written with the scenery being places near to here. It was coherent as well. Sometimes a poetry collection can seem disjointed as it leaps from subject to subject but this book seems linked though in a way that is hard to pin down.
The Ted Hughes Collected poems is too long to have a complete consistency and I have to say that some of his more famous collections which I should have read before now, do seem a little random in their themes. This is of course the opposite of what we had been led to believe. Maybe I should comment more when I have read more than about 1% of it. I struggled through the first two early poems that I have to admit are a slight cut above McGonagall but only just. Suddenly the poems arrive at a fully formed adult style which may be a product of the editing which has taken only published poems rather than some weird selling-of-his-soul-to-the-devil. Still waiting for The Teatime Islands
I finished Hard Water last night in a weird half-awake state which fits very well with the poems. They seem to describe reality but with a fractured sense of the absurd in them - visits by dead people or tidal waves in Liverpool. This is all compounded by being written with the scenery being places near to here. It was coherent as well. Sometimes a poetry collection can seem disjointed as it leaps from subject to subject but this book seems linked though in a way that is hard to pin down.
The Ted Hughes Collected poems is too long to have a complete consistency and I have to say that some of his more famous collections which I should have read before now, do seem a little random in their themes. This is of course the opposite of what we had been led to believe. Maybe I should comment more when I have read more than about 1% of it. I struggled through the first two early poems that I have to admit are a slight cut above McGonagall but only just. Suddenly the poems arrive at a fully formed adult style which may be a product of the editing which has taken only published poems rather than some weird selling-of-his-soul-to-the-devil. Still waiting for The Teatime Islands
Monday, January 12, 2004
Here be Monsters
Listening to - Mellowosity - Peatbog Faeries
I have probably written this before but I bought this CD randomly from a music shop in Stornoway just to say I had bought something local. The Peatbogs actually come from Skye and I am not sure how much solidarity there is between the inners and the outers as it were. Maybe it is like lumping music from Morocco with music from the Lebanon or something. Anyway, it is a good CD - foot-tapping you might say.
Listening to - Mellowosity - Peatbog Faeries
I have probably written this before but I bought this CD randomly from a music shop in Stornoway just to say I had bought something local. The Peatbogs actually come from Skye and I am not sure how much solidarity there is between the inners and the outers as it were. Maybe it is like lumping music from Morocco with music from the Lebanon or something. Anyway, it is a good CD - foot-tapping you might say.
I have booked a waltz with the Duchess of Greenwich
Listening to - This Woman's Work - Kate Bush
There is a battle going on in our house at the moment. My wife has been given The Teatime Islands by Ben Fogle (The nice one from the BBC's Castaway 2000) which is about his trips to the various far-flung islands that still remain in the British Empire - Ascension, The Falklans etc. As you may suspect her reading time is curtailed at present due to baby-care duties and I keep getting my hands slapped when I pick up the book with a view to racing though it. A condition of non-disclosure has had to be made like it was when I read the last Harry Potter through first. I am now trying to think of a book to fill the gap, having finished the Joan Bakewell Biog and Cider with Rosie for the fourth time. I am also in the middle of Hard Water by Jean Sprackland, who I saw on the local news programme because this book was nominated for this years Whitbread Poetry Prize; it didn't win but she is a local poet. For some reason I keep putting local landscapes to the images conjured up by the poems in this book.
As Hard Water seems to have a loose theme maybe I should choose one for myself.
Skidding softly across the mud of the fields behind our house, I fell for my companion, wholly, like dropping down a well with no end until I fely myself balanced at the centre of the Earth, bobbing gently where there is no gravity because all the mass of this planet is outwards. I am the centre of what they used to consider the middle of the Universe. Everything you could think of is away from here. The winter became the finest season that year, the ice a necessary accompaniment to the hard life without fire or oil. What music sounds in my head from that time? We have no sound, no record; the technology is absent and music comes through tinny speakers.
Listening to - This Woman's Work - Kate Bush
There is a battle going on in our house at the moment. My wife has been given The Teatime Islands by Ben Fogle (The nice one from the BBC's Castaway 2000) which is about his trips to the various far-flung islands that still remain in the British Empire - Ascension, The Falklans etc. As you may suspect her reading time is curtailed at present due to baby-care duties and I keep getting my hands slapped when I pick up the book with a view to racing though it. A condition of non-disclosure has had to be made like it was when I read the last Harry Potter through first. I am now trying to think of a book to fill the gap, having finished the Joan Bakewell Biog and Cider with Rosie for the fourth time. I am also in the middle of Hard Water by Jean Sprackland, who I saw on the local news programme because this book was nominated for this years Whitbread Poetry Prize; it didn't win but she is a local poet. For some reason I keep putting local landscapes to the images conjured up by the poems in this book.
As Hard Water seems to have a loose theme maybe I should choose one for myself.
Skidding softly across the mud of the fields behind our house, I fell for my companion, wholly, like dropping down a well with no end until I fely myself balanced at the centre of the Earth, bobbing gently where there is no gravity because all the mass of this planet is outwards. I am the centre of what they used to consider the middle of the Universe. Everything you could think of is away from here. The winter became the finest season that year, the ice a necessary accompaniment to the hard life without fire or oil. What music sounds in my head from that time? We have no sound, no record; the technology is absent and music comes through tinny speakers.
Friday, January 09, 2004
Brigand of the Year Award
Strange phrases have been popping into my head over the last few days. This was one of them and cascaded a whole vision of a gathering somewhere in the Mountains of Sardinia. Maybe something like the 'terrorist bazaar' at the start of the James Bond film which was on on Christmas Day.
I was hoping to be listening to The Hurting by Tears for Fears on which the original of Mad World can be found but I forgot to bring it in with me so :-
Listening to - The Guitar and Other Machines by The Durutti Column.
Being awake in the middle of the night has meant that days are beginning to roll into each other so that it is difficult to decide when something actually happened. But then again that is just a contraction of what most people's lives are actually like anyway as far as I can tell. I know that this feeling is because the only life I can pinpoint accurately is my own and therefore anyone else's will seem dream-like in comparison but it is quite a strong impression. My prose is getting a bit loose isn't it? I once wrote about how so many blogs seems to be written out of the blue with the idea that the target audience is totally familiar with everything you are writing about so that great swathes of meaning are missing from the text; the only person able to understand everything is the author. But then isn't that also the case with a great deal of poetry? (Who said, "it certainly is with yours"?)
I want to start writing about the big things again. Somewhere down the valley, the fires burn brightly and the warmth fills the houses. Here is an empty world in the sparseness of the last lost county. It is as if everyone has been sucked up to some other place maybe just for a visit or maybe in some real version of 'The Rapture'. Here is a room lit only by the flames from the fire, a whiskey glass on the table beside the armchair. The spirit evaporates and makes curly shadows on the wall. Have the animals gone with us? It is cold and dark outside, maybe midwinter with the promise of Christmas to come. Maybe it is the empty days of early new-year. I cannot tell for this is a land without technology or clocks or calendars. It should be snowing but wishing it to seems wrong. I may be creating this world but some things should be outside my control. Control people but never the weather. It snows without help from me. Music filters in from some other room, the radio perhaps which means that the whole world has not lost its people, just this house, this field, this county.
Strange phrases have been popping into my head over the last few days. This was one of them and cascaded a whole vision of a gathering somewhere in the Mountains of Sardinia. Maybe something like the 'terrorist bazaar' at the start of the James Bond film which was on on Christmas Day.
I was hoping to be listening to The Hurting by Tears for Fears on which the original of Mad World can be found but I forgot to bring it in with me so :-
Listening to - The Guitar and Other Machines by The Durutti Column.
Being awake in the middle of the night has meant that days are beginning to roll into each other so that it is difficult to decide when something actually happened. But then again that is just a contraction of what most people's lives are actually like anyway as far as I can tell. I know that this feeling is because the only life I can pinpoint accurately is my own and therefore anyone else's will seem dream-like in comparison but it is quite a strong impression. My prose is getting a bit loose isn't it? I once wrote about how so many blogs seems to be written out of the blue with the idea that the target audience is totally familiar with everything you are writing about so that great swathes of meaning are missing from the text; the only person able to understand everything is the author. But then isn't that also the case with a great deal of poetry? (Who said, "it certainly is with yours"?)
I want to start writing about the big things again. Somewhere down the valley, the fires burn brightly and the warmth fills the houses. Here is an empty world in the sparseness of the last lost county. It is as if everyone has been sucked up to some other place maybe just for a visit or maybe in some real version of 'The Rapture'. Here is a room lit only by the flames from the fire, a whiskey glass on the table beside the armchair. The spirit evaporates and makes curly shadows on the wall. Have the animals gone with us? It is cold and dark outside, maybe midwinter with the promise of Christmas to come. Maybe it is the empty days of early new-year. I cannot tell for this is a land without technology or clocks or calendars. It should be snowing but wishing it to seems wrong. I may be creating this world but some things should be outside my control. Control people but never the weather. It snows without help from me. Music filters in from some other room, the radio perhaps which means that the whole world has not lost its people, just this house, this field, this county.
Thursday, January 08, 2004
Just listen to those delicious Marimbas!
Listening to - Reich Remixed
You would think that with all the absence of writing over the last few weeks, I would have loads to put down now. Well I might have thought of lots of things over those two weeks but they have all flown away in all the confusion.
The night our son was born, I was trying to keep awake and look after him while my wife slept (a common concession these days I believe). As I was looking out of the window of the room at the hospital, I saw a fox slope across the car park. I have since decided that it must have been the sodium lights which made it look bright white. The next day I asked if there were foxes in the area and one of the midwives confirmed that there were.
Listening to - Reich Remixed
You would think that with all the absence of writing over the last few weeks, I would have loads to put down now. Well I might have thought of lots of things over those two weeks but they have all flown away in all the confusion.
The night our son was born, I was trying to keep awake and look after him while my wife slept (a common concession these days I believe). As I was looking out of the window of the room at the hospital, I saw a fox slope across the car park. I have since decided that it must have been the sodium lights which made it look bright white. The next day I asked if there were foxes in the area and one of the midwives confirmed that there were.
Steenbeck Editing Machine
Listening to - Gregorian Chant
Reading - Ted Hughes Collected Poems
Just finished Reading - The centre of the Bed - the Autobiography of Joan Bakewell
Well the Gregorian Chant is purely for calming down after I could not find anything else appropriate in this PCs media library. Actually I might have listened to Quiet by Sheila Chandra but the Chant is first alphabetically. Well you don't really need to know my thought processes do you though I suppose it makes you aware of my rarefied mood; I could have happily sat in the car outside the office this morning listening to the rain on the roof but I managed to force myself inside.
I had a dream in comic strip yesterday. I cannot remember all the details except that I was one of three people competing to complete a dive or something else involving holding one's breath. I won and the final frame was of the other two contestants frozen in front of the flare that had been set off to mark my victory. Funnily I realised that I should breath deeply before the dive in order to flood my blood with oxygen and I was still breathing deeply when I woke up.
The Joan Bakewell Autobiography is very good. It left me with that feeling of disappointment at completion that I usually only get with novels. Joan Bakewell is one of those people who you always think of as twenty years younger than she actually is. This may be why she writes a column for the Guardian called Just 70. I just wish I had bothered to stay up for all those Heart of the Matter programs when they were tucked away late on Sunday nights.
Listening to - Gregorian Chant
Reading - Ted Hughes Collected Poems
Just finished Reading - The centre of the Bed - the Autobiography of Joan Bakewell
Well the Gregorian Chant is purely for calming down after I could not find anything else appropriate in this PCs media library. Actually I might have listened to Quiet by Sheila Chandra but the Chant is first alphabetically. Well you don't really need to know my thought processes do you though I suppose it makes you aware of my rarefied mood; I could have happily sat in the car outside the office this morning listening to the rain on the roof but I managed to force myself inside.
I had a dream in comic strip yesterday. I cannot remember all the details except that I was one of three people competing to complete a dive or something else involving holding one's breath. I won and the final frame was of the other two contestants frozen in front of the flare that had been set off to mark my victory. Funnily I realised that I should breath deeply before the dive in order to flood my blood with oxygen and I was still breathing deeply when I woke up.
The Joan Bakewell Autobiography is very good. It left me with that feeling of disappointment at completion that I usually only get with novels. Joan Bakewell is one of those people who you always think of as twenty years younger than she actually is. This may be why she writes a column for the Guardian called Just 70. I just wish I had bothered to stay up for all those Heart of the Matter programs when they were tucked away late on Sunday nights.
