Night Mail.

Lots of poems to be listened to here. I went here because last night there was a short programme about the end of the Royal Mail Post trains. before it started I guessed they would start it with Auden's poem, Night Mail and they did. I always thought it was Betcheman with its strong rhythm and rhyme but I have heard it enough now to be certain. It accompanied a 1930s film by the Royal Mail which I don't remember seeing except for short clips.

I have just listened to both Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath's poems on this page and I have noticed a slight twinge of Hughes' Yorkshire accent in Plath's speech. Not a surprise I know but interesting to note nevertheless.

All this poetry has started me on an idea which I am off to realise. Bye

Dangling Action Men out of the Window on bits of String

I never quite worked out what this meant but it was said to be a pastime of Sixth-formers at my school. We had many pastimes in our sixth-form but I don't recall ever doing this. We did measure the mean free path of molecules in a gas using fifth years distributed in the hall and we did weigh fire extinguishers. Never got to hang Action men though. Really weird that. If anyone can explain then drop me a line at the email listed. Maybe its a euphemism for some practice which I never got involved with.

There are at least three people from another planet living on Earth.

Yesterday we watched a programme called My Family and Autism about a single mother with seven children. The four boys all have some form of autism spectrum disorder. The second boy, Luke is thirteen and has Asperger's syndrome. A very articulate child, he has written two books (see Amazon listings) and this programme last night was basically his film. The two younger boys seem to be affected more. However, and this may just be judicious editing, far from seeming like a family devastated by the disorder, they were happy and as my wife said, a great advert for family life. It seems that most problems that children have can be either exacerbated or lessened by the reactions of the parents and other children. The other family members have accepted the boys’ problems. Personally I didn't see that Luke had any problems other than being a boy who liked to read rather than play football and as he said you don't take your kid to a developmental Psychologist if he is obsessed with football so why do so if he is obsessed with, what other children would call, geeky things?

One of the most amazing bits of the programme was when Luke and his younger brother were given coloured glasses, which helped stabilise their vision. Luke got blue glass while his brother got red. This stopped letters dancing on the page and helped Luke walk a straight line along a corridor. Miracle and cheap. Can the NHS take note? If need be, do a cost/benefit analysis of any future care required. Who is normal? Certainly not me if this programme is right.

I have a theory that Autistic Children do not lack the social and emotional apparatus to determine how to interact with other people; they instead have a heightened awareness of the emotional factors in relationships and are just like the rest of us in being unable to decipher them. It is just that 'normal' people do not care about such things. Far from being unemotional, Autistic children are hyper-emotional. Too far? It's just a theory right.

The bottom line is that I feel humbled, having only one pretty balanced child. If Luke's mother can keep her calm with all that going on, then I can be a better father.

Blocks and Blocks of Dead End Lies

I know that mentioning dreams is probably bad practice but then again so is writing down poems so I will carry on. Last night I dreamed of Mandalay. No - sorry!. last night I dreamed something which I noted, while still dreaming, I should blog. As usual, I can't remember what the original thing was but I have remembered that I needed to blog it. Maybe there was nothing and I was just dreaming that I should blog something and this was a fear about forgetting all the things I should write down. I still feel that there was something which required noting.

I want to curl up in some little glade while the rain patters through the leaves. When Governments can set up mechanisms for allowing the free market to bet on Terrorist Attacks, you know that Wonderland was real and this horrible place in which you live is the dream. It is only right that this has been axed. Having said this, we could see the logic behind it but the basic idea that the free-market is a better indicator of such events than the intelligence agencies is an admission of failure on the part of those agencies. I think it's Wednesday - the morning.

From Chicago to New York

Got the Orwell book last night and watched the South Bank show special on Orwell (by the author of this book). Well that is reading log over with for the day. We float.

I dreamed about Bali last night though as usual it was not the real Bali, more some sandy, watery oceanic island with elements of the South of France about it. Rather strange to say the least. In the dream, I found a rough sketch, which was supposed to be Queen Elizabeth I during a visit to the island. Now I don't think Queen Elizabeth I ever left this country (was she at the Field of the Cloth of Gold with her father?) so that was rather interesting. It wasn't a bad dream, apart from the normal worry that I have been on a plane to get there and I have to get on one to go back. It was the flight back from Bali which made me frightened of flying so maybe this is trying to tell me that I will never be able to go back unless I get on a plane.

I can't find anything about Elizabeth I being at the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

Totally blank now. At this point I always remember that there was something really important to write down but that I have forgotten the details. Sometimes I will have an impression of what it is about but will not recall enough detail to set it down.

Aha! I have just remembered something. I worry about the implication of Chaos theory with regard to Genetic engineering. I may have mentioned this in previous entries. I took this to an ultimate end for the human race. This end is not that our species will die out, but that we all end up the same, like the Midwich Cuckoos. Even though we will all have normal intelligence and not be mentally deficient, we will be incapable of adjusting to the fact that everyone is the same. Society will collapse because there will not be enough variation to sustain changes in how humans interact and react to events around them. This will be in the same way that species die out if they do not Physically adapt to events and their environment.

I have not yet worked out how small genetically engineered changes could cause this to happen, but it just seems a logical possibility if you think about how small genetic changes can build up. Even if this does not happen, I suspect that some bomb-shell mutation in whatever species we engineer will cause some form of catastrophe. Fear it and don't buy genetically engineered produce.

Read this and get annoyed. Well I know I should not editorialise and direct juries but the fact that the US cannot deal with its own waste seems rather unacceptable. 200 jobs for 200 lives. Do you think 200 extra people dead because of these ships is possible? I do. I can be as partisan as you want here but I really think that countries responsible for pollution should also be responsible for clearing it up.

Oh for the open road and the haunt of the Seamew.

Jungfrau and Matterhorn

Re: The Movie - Sylvia

Every time I read something by or about Sylvia Plath, I seem to be listening to Steve Reich.

Anyway, have a look at this picture and see if you get the same spooky feeling which I got.

Mixed feelings as always over this matter. I probably will go and see the film but it is one of those case where you would not say "I wish they would make a film of this"; there is already so much feeling about her life already amongst the fans of her work that a film would be unnecessary. One of the correspondents on the Sylvia Plath forum site says "Believe it or not, there's many people out there that have no idea who Plath is.". That is extremely pompous. Plath's poetry is not exactly easy reading and even if she did enthuse about the glossy magazines ("Slicks"), she is never going to be popular like Big Brother or the soaps.

Talking about poetry, the BBC drama biog about Philip Larkin was very good. Now I am sure that this did not raise huge objections. I am not a fan of Larkin; he is the literary equivalent of Victor Meldrew I think, but this was quite absorbing if a little depressing. Only two laughs in the whole thing one being Larkin's take on what Ted Hughes' laureate poems would be like - not too far from the reality actually. When I mentioned it my wife said that she had never seen any of Hughes' laureate poems so I showed her "Rain Charm for the Duchy and other laureate poems". I remember the first poem which was for the Christening of Prince William. I didn't really appreciate it at the time but it is quite evocative of weather (very Hughes). The Daily Express had a real go at it (not known for literary criticism even in those days) and he seemed to be stung by this because the poem for The Duke and Duchess of York's wedding was so sickly sweet as to be almost like one of the verses in a cheap greetings card. This was not nearly as bad as our current Laureate's offering for Prince William's 21st birthday. "Better stand back Here's an age attack"! (Yes Andrew. It is an exclamation mark.) The B Side IS from a cheap greetings card isn't it? I am so glad that the Poet Laureate doesn't get paid. Maybe he does now and is part of some Public/Private Finance Initiative.

I want to write the word 'Fake' here.

No matter! The end of that biography will make you cry. Whatever happened to Holden Caulfield?

Mercator

Nothing - a special report. The complexity of the world seems to fade into the background here. We have nothing worth talking about and still there is so much going on everywhere else. I can close my eyes and see the Neutrinos colliding with my neurones. Who needs all that water and mine shafts? CERN is just another drain on resources. The light over the buildings faded as the devices started up. Round and round went the particles searching for something to crash into. They never found it. If I travel fast enough and my mass increases, does my own personal gravity increase? Is this part of relativity? I have not read about this. Outside, the sky still fades and the rain comes down. We sit in the doorway and watch it keeping just out of the wind, still warm and inside the house but connected to the water by the splashes from the ground outside. How do you tell anyone how wonderful this is? There is nothing like the rain. We are unique in the Universe. No other planet has water that comes from the sky or if they do, then there is no intelligent life form to experience it. They do not see things. Sight is also unique to us. As we do not see anyone else, then as far as we are concerned then we do not see it. Wait and see something only when you measure it. Humans created everything. Nothing existed in any sensory manner before we were here to see and experience it. I dreamed of being faceless with no eyes and not ears. How would I experience the world? My consciousness would not last long for I would be unable to sustain myself, but for the time I existed, what would the Universe feel like? It would be nothing. I would experience my own thoughts, a world within my head. If I had never seen or heard, what would those thoughts be? Maybe when we create the first computer with an intelligence and learning capacity matching that of humans we should not connect up any sensory equipment and just monitor the processes; let it freewheel for a bit. Think of the revelation when it was 'born'. No mind can be so pure. Think of those poor children who were kept from language to see what language they would speak by default. Many hundreds of years ago that was. Then there was Genie. She was the same and she didn't speak Hebrew or Sanskrit did she? She spoke nothing. Her parents stole her speech before she ever had it. Talk to the children and they will talk back. David Crystal knows all. Accent does matter but we all have one. My mind races when I write like this. Self reference and complete automatons must surely be dangerous. Who is controlling the freewheeling mind? We can never know but it is just me. My mind is mine and comes complete with the developed mind of all my ancestors. Think of this. You can trace your lineage right back to a single celled animal. All amoebas can. They are all the same genetically until they mutate somehow. Does my mind have elements of the control processes of such simple creatures? DNA is the beginning of intelligence. All of our computers are based on the simple idea of one or zero and all their complexity is built up from that. All life is based on DNA and DNA on its own is far more complex than one or zero. No wonder we are so clever. Computers should be based on something more complex than binary arithmetic. Think of the speed you could achieve with a living computer using the bases of DNA to form its core processing ability. And you would have a computer that could replicate itself. All out desktops here use the same basic processing now as they did 15 years ago. They are just faster, nothing more. Change the architecture and create something new. What then do we do when the computer is as sentient as we are? The idea of a computer is to have it do the things we do not want to do. What if the machines got bored with their lot? We have to retire them or get them to develop something better. This is ludicrous self-reference. Lets dance. Forget science. Check the grammar little ones. It is so important to not be random like this. We are not happier than when we can find some prose to pull apart. Use a long word when a short one will do. This just confuses the enemy who you can never know. They do not know you and yet they feel they must dislike you and press their buttons to try and get rid of you. 108 he was, a hero and a lion. The world never changes and wars never change. We will send men into battle until the world ends in a mess of comets and tidal waves. We will just be clouds in the galaxy by then; consciousness propelled to the stars. What if I was a beam of light? - my consciousness encoded in those photons. I would travel at lightspeed and reach everywhere instantly. I would have the whole universe in my mind and the universe would be mine. Maybe that is what God is? If God is a beam of light then he is everywhere at the same time. Einstein created God when he imagined being that beam. Man has defined the universe and we just cannot see the complexity.

Deasil and Widdershins
or a scientific attempt to compress the Village People into the smallest possible space

As you know, I am not prone to crackpot ideas about the supernatural. However, as you also know, I am quite happy to talk about such things. Today's topic has me slightly spooked. As I was driving to work this morning, I passed a very large black dog loping along the pavement. At first, I thought it was some sort of Irish Woflhound but its nose was too short. As it had the potential for more than a friendly lick, I reported it to the Police - The station is only 200 yards from where I saw the dog and it was travelling in that direction anyway. Now, even before Harry Potter and Sirius Black, I was aware of the mysterious implications of seeing black dogs; I come from a county with a very high incidence of (belief in) fairies. I can safely say that this black dog paid no attention me and simply carried on in the direction it was travelling without even looking at the car. I couldn't tell whether it was happy or angry (I would have needed first to stop the car and second to buy one of these). Lets face it; I was not trapped inside a rickety old church with the dog running widdershins about it so I think I am safe. I will convince myself of the rational explanation for this sooner or later.

Soundtrack is a various selection of the Volume CDs from the early 90s. I used to get this every time it came out. It consisted of a nice thick book with articles about all the bands on the full-length CD attached. I can't find anything about them on the web but the current one - Volume five - has the Orb, The Grid, L7, Cocteau Twins and various other bands of that ilk. Right now we have Venice Groove by The Sandals which has that ecstatic flute you get in sixties funk records. Having just searched for this record, I have found this site about Volume itself. Life falls into place eventually doesn't it?

Norman Stanley Fletcher and other soundbites

Soundtrack - Well just wait and see.

I have just had one of those weird moments of serendipity which only come along a few times. I accidentally clicked on the My Library list in Real Player and it started playing all the sound files which I have listened to on the web since I got this laptop, some 150 files. It goes from the welcome message on the Suzanne Vega website, via "And now for something completely different" from Monty Python to The Soviet National Anthem. I am currently listening to the spoof phone call sound files which I set up using the Bell Laboratories Voice Synthesizer programme. It is getting difficult to identify all of them. Now it is Philip Glass but I have just had lots of Spanish which I don't understand. Try it on your own real Player and see what you get. David Toop would be proud of me.

Aha! The Horizon Theme. Brilliant! I used to play this on my own kit at home.

I wasn't going to write anything as I am reading Mil Millington's book so this is a bonus for you.

From one mind to another

I got a whiff of a very familiar scent in the lift coming up here just now. It was exactly the same smell as there used to be in the ante-room to our Biology lab at middle school, a hint of floor polish with overtones of formaldehyde. I am not sure that children are allowed to have pickled biological specimens any more but our school, being in a rural area where many of the children would go into some form of agricultural work, was full of such things. When I left the school, there were also too bottles of ginger beer fermenting in that small room. I only remembered them half way through the summer holidays. I hope they didn't explode. We also had a rinky-dinky little circular saw with a diamond edge which could cut stones in half but on which you could place a finger without it being damaged. If only the children were allowed to spend all their time in that room. I would never have gone anywhere else. All those specimens and science books. The whole school has been demolished now, except for a small section of it which I think is the local village hall.

I feel a bit empty afetr talking about a building which no longer exists. Every place I have lived is still intact, but that school is the one building in which I spent any length of time which has gone. I'd never thought about that before. I can see why Rachel Whiteread likes to make casts of empty rooms. I apologise for the pretentious writing on that last link but it does mention the evocation of memory and association which is what I am trying to get at here. She has recently done a cast of the interior of room 101 at the BBC which reminds me, I have just ordered Orwell: The Life (on the back of three Mary Poppins books for my daughter - Mil Millington would be proud of me). Talk to me in a week after we have finished all the books.

Sountrack (late I know) - The Mix - Kraftwerk

No comment about this is necessary, I think you'll agree.

There is a wonderfully threatening sky here. There is a vogue in adverts at the moment to have the 'before' situation lit like a thunderstorm with the 'after' - the result of using the advertised product, having a warm orange glow as if the product changes your house completely, because of course an air freshener can do that can't it. My only problem is that I like the light of a thunderstorm far better than the Ikea catalogue look. I remember a very big thunderstorm when I was still in Nottingham which must have made me about four because we moved to Malvern when I was five. The light was wonderful.

Easy Tears

The heartbreak of simple music and remembrance
makes tears come like rain from nothing
and the life we had has left us empty,
passing days into the paper of our diaries.

Give us magic, blank machines of comfort,
lose loss as trees go round the seasons,
leafless in our middle age to spring long passed
and all the tears and joy of being five again.

(Click on the title for a picture which may or may not go with this poem)

Beware the Pigeon Inspectors

There have been a number of people walking across the roof of the building which we can see out of the office window here. They first look down at something on the roof and then point up at the sky. We can only imagine that they are looking at dead pigeons and wondering where they come from. Reminds me of the episode in 24 Hour Party people where Shaun Ryder and (in the film anyway) his brother poison hundreds of Manchester Pigeons using bread spiked with some controlled substance. It took a few minutes for the stuff to take effect meaning that many pigeons simply expired in mid-air and rained down on the city. Been done before of course, if only in song - Poisoning Pigeons in the Park. Tom Lehrer is of course, the writer of the Elements song but that is probably the least scandalous of all his tunes. Marilyn Manson has nothing on the Masochism Tango. It seems if you dress in a suit and have a Haaaarrrrrrvaaaaarrrrrd accent, you can get away with anything though I do think one or two of his records were banned in this country. It makes you proud to be a soldier.

The phrase "Harvard accent" reminds me that Loyd Grossman is doing a history of sculpture for Channel 5. Just to let you know of course. I am not that keen on sculpture. You don't get the variety that is possible with painting. Of course I can appreciate the beauty of some sculpture but it just does not fire me up like some medieval religious painting does. Indeed I would rank most painting over any sculpture. Even the standard purple Rothko painting has more subtlety than many so-called masterpieces of sculpture. (I have just realised that I have never had to spell the word 'subtlety' before and it was struggle.) I may still watch the Sculpture programme though even if Mr Grossman's accent could sculpt marble on its own.