Bother

Bother, bother, bother. Another 21st-century lesson to learn. I'm in the middle of reading John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman - completely wrapped up in the book is probably more accurate than saying I'm merely reading it. It's one of those books that convinces you other dimensions in the universe must exist, because you're carrying around a 445-page book of evidence to prove the case. I digress, as I also did when checking my email just now. I succumbed to googling 'John Fowles' to find out more about his life (oh dear, I hear you say), and accidently ruined the ending of the book. Or the two endings, as one article informs me. Bother, bother, bother. Moral of the story: Professor Google often has too many answers. Alternative moral of the story: don't waste time on google.

Christmas post

Mind you, however fast the postman or postwoman walks, if I don't put my Christmas cards in the postbox, it's unlikely - but reasonable- that they won't reach their destination on time. I've been acting as if cards in envelopes are a substitute for email - I blame the 21st century. My excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

Signs of the times

Every day I walk to work, probably at less than 4.2mph. Today I was passing the corner of the square, when I happened upon a postwoman, who was standing with her trolley full of letters of all shapes and sizes. Up comes a man, clearly a friend as he addresses her by name, who asks: 'So how fast are you walking then?' I continued, but wondered if the postwoman had then to run to balance out that moment of stillness and meet Royal Mail targets?

Preludes III

You tossed a blanket from the bed,

You lay upon your back, and waited;

You dozed, and watched the night revealing

The thousand sordid images

Of which your soul was constituted;

They flickered against the ceiling.

And when all the world came back

And the light crept up between the shutters

And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,

You had such a vision of the street

As the street hardly understands;

Sitting along the bed’s edge, where

You curled the papers from your hair,

Or clasped the yellow soles of feet

In the palms of both soiled hands.

From Preludes by TS Eliot

11 December, 2008: a milestone

Happy Birthday to American composer Elliott Carter, who today reaches 100 years of age, and has one of the best smiles in music. Find out about his centenary celebrations; his life; and hear some of his music; or read about what it feels like to have been part of a century of music here.

Crazy Christmas Steps

Preludes: II

The morning comes to consciousness

Of faint stale smells of beer

From the sawdust-trampled street

With all its muddy feet that press

To early coffee-stands.

With the other masquerades

That time resumes,

One thinks of all the hands

That are raising dingy shades

In a thousand furnished rooms.

From Preludes, by TS Eliot

Enduring Love

For years I've been putting off reading Ian McEwan's book Enduring Love. Don't get me wrong: I love his books, but mention this one to someone who's read it and I'll bet you their reaction will be a grimace and a wince. Ah yes, that opening scene. The one with the hot air balloon. But I've always wanted to go in a hot air balloon, I'd say. You won't after you've read this, would come the ominous reply. Oh. Drifting around the skies in a hot air balloon is one of my lifelong ambitions, but then so was flying on concorde - scratch that - and going to Antarctica. Sadly I have a suspicion Antarctica will be a drop in the ocean by the time I get round to that. So deciding whether to take Enduring Love off my shelves comes down to a question of effort. It seems I'm fundamentally lazy. Or maybe just pragmatic. I've decided it's easier to read the book than to organise to go up in the hot air balloon. So now I've read that opening. Yes, that one with the hot air balloon. Oh, you'd like to do that? Trust me, you won't after you've read this.

Still on the same book. Still on the opening (the only part I've read so far). Has anyone else been struck between the similarity of the scene in the arrivals hall at Heathrow described by Ian McEwan and that which opens the film Love Actually? In Ian McEwan's words: 'If one ever wanted proof of Darwin's contention that the many expressions of emotion in humans are universal, genetically inscribed, then a few minutes by the arrivals gate of Heathrow's Terminal Four should suffice. I saw the same joy, the same uncontrollable smile, in the faces of a Nigerian earth mama, a thin-lipped Scottish granny and a pale, correct Japanese businessman as they wheeled their trolleys in. ... the variety was in private dramas ... but mostly it was smiles and hugs, and thirty-five minutes I experienced more than fifty theatrical happy endings.'

And in the words of scriptwriter Richard Curtis:

'Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspision love actually is all around.'

The language and style may differ, but the sentiment's identical. Intriguing.

No more viola jokes

A couple of Saturdays ago I heard this quartet - the Jerusalem Quartet - performing at the Bath MozartFest. Wow. For sheer exuberance you can't beat them, nor for true musical mastery. Their Mozart was joyous, their Smetana* memorable. Especially for the outstanding viola solo in the first movement - I'd refer anyone dining out on viola jokes to Amichai Grosz, the Jerusalem's player. Enjoy their Dvorak Quintet (3rd movement) performed here with pianist Stefan Vladar.

*Smetana's autobiographical First Quartet - subtitled 'From My Life' - is a four-movement look back at his life from 1876. That viola solo - impossible to miss - was, in the then deaf Smetana's own words 'a kind of warning of my future misfortune' - during the last years of his life both his physical and mental health declined. The viola theme returns at the end of the quartet as the composer marshals together all the thematic loose ends.

Eagle eyes

 

Le grand duc d'Europe

Bristol has a new resident - an eagle owl. Living in a tree opposite the university's School of Biological Sciences, it seems content to perch high on a branch in solitary splendour. But however content this handsome owl is in his new home, he wasn't willing to act up for the camera! So here's a picture in which you can actually see what you're meant to be looking at:

Preludes (1)

The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.

TS Eliot

Quick quotes

He loved the appalling London weather, its foggy, watery softness, in which one can sink as low as the temperature in solitude and spleen.
'In London November isn't a month,' he said, 'it's a state of mind.'

In the words of Mihaly, narrator of Antal Szerb's novel Journey by Moonlight. How true!

Winter tree

 

Who Has Seen the Wind?

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.

Christina Rossetti

Universal Laws

Fantastic Mr Fox. Times two. I haven't seen a single fox in a whole year in Bristol (I used to have one living in my back garden in London), and last night I saw in two within ten minutes in different parts of the city (I was in a car). Foxes must, I thereby deduce, obey the law of buses.

Westonbirt Arboretum

 

Three cheers

And it's Obama who storms through the finish line. Only to discover that it's the starting line of a new marathon. Good luck!

Decision time

Now I don't often, if ever, write about politics. But, understatement of the century, tonight's events are too big to miss. If you can't wait to know what the fate of the US, and hence to some extent the world, here's a newsfeed that'll help control the suspense: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/us_elections_2008/7700298.stm Obama or McCain. Heads or tails?

Impalination

And on a similar theme - this is a post I've been meaning to write for a few days - surely no other politician has been mimicked more than Sarah Palin. In her short sejourn in the spotlight, Sarah Palin has become a YouTube star after falling prey to US comedian Tina Fey. The Sarah Palin impersonation - henceforth to be known as the 'impalination' - reached its height last Friday. Why, you might ask? The answer lies in the date: Halloween. Yes, leave behind your zombified, torn-up glad-rags, jettison the witch's hat and broomstick - the only costume to be seen in this year was suit, heels, rimless glasses and beehive hair. At the party I went to there were two Sarah Palins. How many can there have been across the West? And, without fail, while people struggled to distinguish between vampire, evil fairy and witch, Sarah Palin was met with, 'Now that really is an evil costume.' What does this mean? Not for me to say - this isn't a libellous blog. I'm just observing; I'm just saying...

Bristol in black and white

 

Today starts well

Good news from the Today programme on Radio 4. No it's not to do with the credit crunch, Russian oligarchs or Sarah Palin impersonators. Much more exciting than that. It's the return of Snoopy and Charlie Brown! Hurrah! The comic strip is being republished, so get ready to make friends with Charlie Brown and the gang again. Here's a taster of what's in store:

Beautiful music

Brahms

And then there was Brahms. In summer mood, drunk on the Rhine and flirtation. Probably kept on the edge of tipsiness by a little Reisling. It's hard to not to drink Reisling in the Rheingau , the small wine-growing region that Brahms visited in the summer of 1883. The composer had gone there to follow a young, vivacious singer who had caught his eye earlier that year: Hermine Spies. My 'Rhinemaiden', Brahms called Hermine, who in return described herself as being in a 'Johannes Passion' (a pleasing, if unintentional link back to the Bach Prom post). Their romance came to nothing, but throughout that summer Brahms worked on his Third Symphony. And after I visited the Rheingau this summer, hearing the Berlin Philharmonic play the piece conjured up nothing more strongly than the river itself. The waves; the surge and repose, its eddys and currents running through the strings and wind, emphasised by the synchronised sway of the orchestra's players. I've never seen so many musicians moving at once, and moving together. Like waves making up a river.

By candlelight

 

Catch up time

Over the past few months I've been to some fantastic concerts, none of which I've managed to write about here, and all of which I've wanted to share. So I'll try to give you a flavour of the concerts in my next few blog posts. First up were two Prom evenings in the Royal Albert Hall. Bach's St John Passion, performed in a huge unbroken sweep,was like a grand tapestry being woven in front of our eyes by the Monteverdi Choir under Sir John Eliot Gardiner. It might not be on the same epic scale as it's younger brother, the St Matthew Passion, but the St John manages to pack all the drama into around two hours of chorales, choruses, arias and recitatives. For a flavour, take a look at the video below (well actually ignore what you see, and just listen!):

Up and away

 

ps

ps I'm trying to deny the coming of winter. Watch this space for more.

Winter Warmer 1

 

And something... !

So: the loudest picture, well at least a bold combination of yellow, orange, and brown with large type across the front. Then nothing. More of what was going on in that blog-shaped void later, but now the reason for putting up a picture of the book cover. Though I suppose it's pretty obvious: run out to a bookshop or click a few pages away from here and buy this book. A collection of beautifully crafted short stories, this book moves from nineteenth-century France to a a remote Scottish island, from the teenage girl testing her power over men, to the man who's lost his family. Sounds and smells escape from the pages; every sense and sight is captured on paper. And the voices of the characters who live and breathe in the book speak strongly, living out their daily lives. But each of those lives and the encounters that occur within them circle round dark centres: something missing, an unfulfilled desire, an unwelcome memory, an unchangeable situation, helplessness against the encroaching world. And all conjured with an economy of language and mastery of length, form, style and character that make this a darkly beautiful collection.

The Loudest Sound...

and nothing...

Perils of the gym

Gyms are really little more than 21st-century torture chambers. The weights machines are ominously reminiscent of medieval racks. People run nowhere on treadmills lining the room - that's right folks, there's no way off once you're on. (Although a man trying to escape did fall off the one behind me the other day, before standing up and trying to look nonchalant. Ha!) The world's most irritating music blots out your hearing, while the mirror opposite reflects back bright red, sweaty versions of all the people around you. Torture is the only word. But all of these trials pale into significance in comparison with, wait for it... the changing room. More particularly with the TV innocently nestled in the corner between wood-clad lockers. Now if, like me, you're in the gym before work, and you start work at 9.30am, take a deep breath. Until about 9.25am, breakfast TV bubbles along without too much bother - a weather forecast here, a fashion report there. Even the 33-stone woman who appeared on screen did little more than send a ripple of renewed motivation round the room. But at 9.25am people stop changing to try to cover their ears. Onto the TV flickers the Jeremy Kyle show. Described by ITV's website as one of Britain's 'most-loved' shows, this is a truly tortuous parody of a talk show. Somehow I've managed to insulate myself from it ever since it started three years ago; perhaps you haven't been so lucky. I dread to think what confrontational diatribe from Jeremy Kyle, what angry, broken people, and what twisted stories I've missed. Even catching five minutes of it while I blow dry my hair is torture. Please, please. No more!

Maestra

Interesting. BBC Two's Maestro features one male and two female conductors. Interesting because the proportion is almost certainly the reverse in the real world.

To blog or to clog?

This blog breaks one of the main rules of blogging: it has no theme. Well no discernible theme. In a rather solipsistic manner my blog flits from observations of the everyday to news items that have caught my attention, from pictures to poems, all the while padded out with bubble-wrap writing, which would quickly disappear into nothingness with a satisfying pop if you prodded it too much. Ah well, apologies to all. Maybe one day I'll stick to one topic and be a proper blogger, but for now I'm quite happy to be a clogger and add my tuppence worth to the ever increasing number of words on the internet.

Big Bang Day

Tomorrow is, drum roll please, 'Big Bang Day'. Under the ground in Geneva rumbles the Large Hadron Collider, which will send proton streams whizzing around a 27km race-track, blasting them together in four different locations around the ring. Here, scientists hope, the conditions just after the Big Bang will be recreated, allowing questions about the start and composition of the universe to be answered. (And it's unlikely they'll come up with the number 42. Sorry Douglas Adams.) For those who aren't so into physics, perhaps the strange beauty of the technical language involved could be of interest. Who could fail to love words and phrases such as muons, solenoid magnets,the Higgs boson,quark-gluon plasma,or the beauty quark?

South-west connections

Bristol has suddenly become a very topical place. It's twinned with Tbilisi in Georgia, in fact it's the 20th anniversary of that alliance this year. Turns out too that Bristol has the dubious distinction of being the first name of Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter. Maybe a British politician should consider bestowing an Alaskan place name on one of their children to return the favour. There are plenty of choice names to choose from: Juneau, Ketchikan, Wasilla, Bethel, Dillingham, or my personal favourite - Barrow.

Dust Motes Dancing in the Sunlight

The Poetry of Silence

In a world of 'now', in which talking, communicating, writing, emailing, texting,and phoning fill our lives, taking time to stop and be silent often has to be enforced. Vilhelm Hammershoi is a silence enforcer, a painter whose canvases are acute observations of not the everyday, but the backdrop to the everyday. He paints the settings and scenes of daily life - a spartan house with pictures hung in unusual arrangements here, an empty interior disturbed only by a shaft of light there. Dust caught in sunlight, a solitary figure turning away from the painter. Hammershoi, not to get too philosophical, appears to be a man trying to bottle time, painstakingly capturing an instant before pouring it out onto a stretched white canvas. Hammershoi's paintbrush silences a London street as it takes shape on the canvas, there are no bustling figures here.Only a palette of muted colours, everything tinged with grey.A suspicion that Hammershoi might have been happy watching paint dry is never far away, that he might have uttered no more than five words in a day is a thought that speaks loudly. His view of the world, slow to reveal itself, unsettles.But it makes you stop, makes you stare. His paintings make audible the poetry of silence.

Bristol symbols

Clifton Suspension Bridge is often held up as the iconic image of Bristol. Isambard Kingdom Brunel's impressive creation spans the craggy Avon Gorge. A gateway to the gorge beyond, the two Pennant-stone towers at either end are linked by fairy-lit iron chains, the road hanging over what can only be described as a long way down. It's a masterpiece in engineering that has lasted nearly 150 years. But for me, the bridge is superseded by a different Bristol symbol. The hot air balloon. Yes, in the battle of the 'Bs' there's a strong case for the balloon as the true image of Bristol. Sitting at breakfast, eating my shreddies, I often look out of my kitchen window. Over the past few days, my view of the leafy-green Ashton Court has been interrupted by a red balloon, peeking over the treetops. Slowly, slowly, like the sun rising, the full balloon emerges. Gently gliding, drifting, escaping, that balloon is a symbol of hope, possibility and wonderful freedom. And that, for me, is everything Bristol should aspire to be.

Germania

Threads of thought

Cornwall: pasties, cream teas, freezing ('invigorating') water, heather-clad cliffs, mossy pathways, hidden beaches, smell of seaweed, stinking stale water, fish and chips, seagull attacks, stripy sunburn, the end of the world at the end of the land, a theatre tucked into a cliff, aqua marine rock pools, first-gear-only hills, skies spread thickly with stars.

Cycling city

Don't get me wrong, I love cycling. In Cambridge I happily zipped about on my bike, though perhaps cycling into a lamp post there means that the city witnessed some of my less glorious manoeuvres. Lyon, home to the solid Velo'v, was ideal for two-wheeled transport: flat, full of neatly labelled, empty bike paths, and with a compact city centre. But in Bristol, oh dear, in Bristol. Much as I like cycling, much as I like Bristol, and much as I'd like to think this is a good idea, I've got just one problem with the attempt to make Bristol the UK's top cycling city. The hills. Yes, flying down the hills one way is exhilarating, but the other way? It's not just tiring, it's red-face and out-of-breath-tiring, not to mention you'll probably go so slowly as to almost be going backwards. Bristol: the cycling city. An oxymoronic concept if there ever was one.

Suspension Bridge

 

My next door neighbour.

Sunflakes

If sunlight fell like snowflakes,
gleaming yellow and so bright,
we could build a sunman,
we could have a sunball fight,
we could watch the sunflakes
drifting in the sky.
We could go sleighing
in the middle of July
through sundrifts and sunbanks,
we could ride a sunmobile,
and we could touch sunflakes—
I wonder how they'd feel.

Frank Asch

A poem for 1 July. A children's poem, but what do such distinctions matter anyway?

Ceilings, Poland

 

The third of my favourite odd things in Poland. 3D ceiling legs.

Wroclaw residents

 

Another top three favourite from the odd things I saw in Poland collection. No. 2: one of Wroclaw's resident gnome population

Wroclaw, Poland

 

One of my top three of strange things I saw in Poland.

Unfinished tea post...

After two days of soul-searching and tea-tasting, I've come to an important conclusion. Life-changing really. And that is that the teabag is a good thing. On the occasion of the teabag's 100th birthday, which took place on Friday, I was moved to think about tea. An important part of my life, I only drank my first cup of the delicious stuff three years ago. Before that sociable glasses of water were my beverage of choice, which, let's be honest, isn't quite the same as a proper cup of tea. But although I love tea, I'm not always so sure about teabags. They float around in the cup in a rather off-putting manner, it's rather hit and miss as to whether it tastes any good, and really, there's nothing quite like leaf tea brewed in a teapot.

How did I know?

Funny how your choice of words at one point can seem uncomfortably prescient in retrospect. In my last post I described my old house as a 'minty moment amongst chocolate and sugar mice', before wondering what the 'quirk' of my new house would be. Well, my answer was already there, written across this blog in fanciful, sweet-related terms: mice.

Bristol Landmarks

At some point in Bristol's past, someone had fun with some paint. Lots of paint. In lots of colours. Lines of candy-coloured houses brighten up Bristol's hillsides - from the streets of Hotwells next to the water's edge, up to the top of Clifton next to the Downs, and back down the other side of the hill through Cotham into Montpelier. Ice-cream coloured houses fade away into the distance, too, on the hill the other side of Temple Meads station. For the past six months I've lived in a peppermint house. Kept in good company by blue, pink, green, cream and brown houses, the peppermint house freshens up the road - a minty moment amongst chocolate and sugar mice. But next week I'm moving out of my peppermint palace into a rather more conservatively decorated building. Let's hope this new flat has some other quirk to make up for the loss of a house-front that automatically cheers you up in the morning. Or I might just have to join Bristol tradition and buy a can of paint...

Bristol balloons

 

Chopin's Funeral

Only one photograph of Chopin is known to exist. Taken around 1846, the photo depicts a taken aback Chopin, flinching from the camera. Why Chopin sat for the portrait, no one knows. The identity of the photographer, too, remains a mystery. It's probably safe to say that Chopin didn't embrace the new medium. Intriguingly though, the end of Chopin's life dovetailed with the birth of a new breed of spectator fathered by the camera. The paparazzi. Moments after the composer died in Paris, two photographers were found attempting to move his body into better light so they might take a photo of the famous man, presumably to sell on. Interrupted mid-move, the pair fled. Having recently visited Chopin's grave at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris - definitely an expedition to be followed up with a pick-me-up coffee - this anecdote, as recounted in Benita Eisler's biography of Chopin, jumped out at me. Perhaps it's pushing the point too far to suggest Chopin disliked the camera - though anyone facing the lens for the first time in the nineteenth century must surely have been wary - but it seems a shame that so many of those clustering round his grave felt it necessary to take a photo. Is it just me, or is it a bit strange to take a photo of a grave, however famous the person? Stick to placing vividly coloured flowers on the memorial instead.

A little humour

I don't normally endorse (anti-)viola jokes, but this latest, by the violinst Simon Hewitt Jones, gets a giggle and a thumbs up!

Q: Why don’t violists make good policemen (or women)?

A: They can’t stay on the beat!

Thoughts on stations

8am St Pancras. A burst of sky blue. The roof arches strain from their earthings, trying to merge with the true sky above. Small suitcases on wheels roll smoothly across dark brown wooden floors in this unexpected haven.
12 noon Gare du Nord. Golden globe-shaped street lamps line the platforms, and set this Parisian scene. Rows of trains lie dormant - no last minute train panic here. Pigeons hunting for scraps, clustering in grimy corners, make the space under the shed-like roof no different from outside.
7pm Paddington. Tableaux vivantes around the station - the people watching departure boards like hawks - spring into life when the last-minute platform announcement is made. Like a huge flock of birds falling on a single crumb of food, they head to the ticket barriers, desperate to get there first.
9.30pm Bristol Temple Meads. Brunel's echoing train shed, where choirs of announcers apologise for the late arrival of trains from Weston-super-Mare, London, Cardiff in polyphonic chorus.

Images of Bristol

Before the bridge, and above the Giant's Cave, sits one of Bristol's quirkiest and most intriguing attractions. The camera obscura. Installed in 1828 by William West in a former mill, this magical device allows you to view the surrounding world in stunning detail. People happily stroll across the grass. Seagulls wing their way across the sky, and cars cross from one side of the gorge to the other. The mud flats at low tide ooze: you can almost hear the squelches as the brown mud breathes. And all this captured in a darkened circular room, this miniature version of Sunday afternoon in Bristol.

Piper in Clifton

A little excursion to a recital given on a newly restored 100-year-old Broadwood piano led me to stumble on these beautiful stained glass windows by John Piper. Well, not literally stumble on the windows of course - they are still whole. John Egerton Christmas Piper, born in 1903 and probably one of the only people to have Christmas as a middle name, was a twentieth-century artist who created some of the most glowing stained glass windows in England and some of the most vibrant opera set designs - most famously for Benjamin Britten. The vivd blues and warm oranges of the windows in an angular, grey Church made it feel rather like sitting in a kaleidoscope.

Bristol Voices

The city where I went to university was built on tobacco and slave trade wealth. Vast, lavish and crumbling, it teetered on the edge of a gorge, its curlicued terraces spilling down towards the river and the docks.

Though some insisted that street names such as Whiteladies Road and Black Boy Hill had nothing to do with the slave trade, still just their very existence constantly brought Bristol’s queasy and terrifying history to mind. Some days the angles of the buildings didn’t look quite right. Other days I’d walk down the street in bright sunshine and be sure I heard voices.

Writer Julie Myerson's evocative sketch of Bristol as it began her Financial Times column last week.

A turn about Bath

She [Catherine ] hoped to be more fortunate the next day; and when her wishes for fine weather were answered by seeing a beautiful morning, she hardly felt a doubt of it; for a fine Sunday in Bath empties every house of its inhabitants, and all the world appears on such an occasion to walk about and tell their acquaintance what a charming day it is.

Jane Austen's description of a Sunday in Bath in the late 18th-century could apply to a Saturday in the same town in the 21st. Despite the biting cold, today's sun drew crowds of people out into the Georgian town to admire the Abbey, Royal Crescent, Pump Room and the rugby match...

And back again...

On Inhabiting an Orange

All our roads go nowhere.
Maps are curled
To keep the pavement definitely
On the world.

All our footsteps, set to make
Metric advance,
Lapse into arcs in deference
To circumstance.

All our journeys nearing Space
Skirt it with care,
Shying at the distances
Present in air.

Blithely travel-stained and worn,
Erect and sure,
All our travels go forth,
Making down the roads of Earth
Endless detour.

By Josephine Miles

Why this poem? Well the observant might notice that this poem oh-so cleverly ties together themes of recent posts. Travel, footsteps, flying, arcs (of the Clifton Bridge), the meaning of life, and orange for Easyjet (so the latter's a bit tenuous). Phew, how's that for reading what you want into a text! Back from Amsterdam now, so back to Bristol blogging...

Off to Amsterdam...

A Pair of Shoes
Vincent van Gogh, 1886

Though I'm going to Amsterdam by plane rather than on foot...

Philosophical Beethoven

It's been a Beethoven week this week. Last Monday pianist Daniel Barenboim embarked on his complete cycle of Beethoven's 32 sonatas, which is taking place at the Royal Festival Hall. In the opening concert the 65-year-old pianist outlined a quasi A to Z of Beethoven's sonatas, beginning with Sonata No. 1 in F minor, passing through No. 18 in E flat and ending with the epic Sonata No. 29 in B flat. With his unfailing musical wisdom, and despite a few slips of the hand, Barenboim turned the sonatas into discussions about the world - of philosophy, of human nature, of our struggles, failures, efforts and desires. Themes that author Milan Kundera weaves with similar mastery into his The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Kundera's meditation on Beethoven's variations - a musical form opposite in nature to sonata form - is thought-provoking and strangely beautiful. Perhaps something is lost by quoting out of context, but here's a short extract:
Variation form is the form in which concentration is brought to its maximum; it enables the composer to speak only of essentials, to go straight to the core of the matter. A theme for variations often consists of no more than sixteen measures. Beethoven goes inside these measures as if down a shaft leading to the interior of the earth.

Clifton Suspension Bridge

 

42

As I hurried up the hill today back from work, an earnest looking man stopped me. 'Do you have a moment now to find out about the meaning of life?' Unfortunately I didn't. 'Do you think you might have some time soon to find out the meaning of life?' my questioner continued. Hmm, think I'll have to check my diary about that one.

Weir and wonderful

A lovely concert of Scottish composer Judith Weir's music tonight on Radio 3 at 10:35, as part of the Weir festival Telling the Tale. Take a listen...

Lyon Abroad

Lyon is city of doubles. Not just one river running through it, two. Not just one hill overlooking the centre, two. And now Lyon itself is to be duplicated. Not just one Lyon, two. Buti Saeed Al Gandhi, an entrepeneur in Dubai, plans to build another Lyon out east. As well as a second Lyon-2 university, a small-scale city based on Lyon, with a hotel school run by Paul Bocuse, museums, and an Olympique Lyonnais football training centre are to be created there. But buildings without history? Msueums displaying artefacts without meaning? How can that feel anything but false? On the other hand, a Lyon in the sunshine sounds rather wonderful. But surely rebuilding a city without any of the problems of the original - I presume the Dubai version won't include graffiti and social division - will end up with a sanitised theme-park version of a wonderfully diverse and, so far, completely unique, city. And, really, a Lyon without the French? Impossible.

Bourges Cathedral

 

Cycling Creatures

Every city has its own breed of cyclist. In London cyclists are a cross between thoughtless sheep, brave lions and nimble gazelles. They nip through the traffic, braving road rage, pedestrian rage, black cab rage and bus rage. In Cambridge, cyclists are like a herd of cows, trampling over pedestrians as they thunder along the cobbled streets on the way to lectures. In Lyon, velo'V-ists resemble tourists riding elephants, looking slightly taken aback at the bulky means of transport they've ended up on. In Bristol, it is the continually rolling hills that determine the breed of cyclist. Think mountain goat or mule. Or perhaps an animal that is more red in the face, having puffed and panted its way up the unforgiving slopes, would be more suitable? Maybe Bristol cyclists are like red-faced monkeys?

Martha Argerich plays Chopin

Chopin's Polonaise No. 6

Lift off

The lift is a never-ending source of comment in our office. Not only because the voice announcing the imminent closing of the doors bears an uncanny resemblance to Judi Dench's Dame-worthy voice, but as a result of the temperemental nature of its movements. Up? Was that the button you pressed? Are you sure you wouldn't prefer down? Well, as I'm an adolescent lift testing my independence, I'll take you down rather than up anyway. When one of the two lifts is playing this favourite trick, prepare yourself for a trip around the floors which you never normally visit. Oh yes, the lift will happily deposit you on all those empty floors between the ones to which you actually want to go. So don't be surprised if the person you've just met getting into the lift you've got out of reappears two minutes later in the second lift after an enforced detour. Or perhaps they are just avoiding work...

At the Piano

Pianist Susan Tomes writes in the introduction to her book Beyond the Notes, 'In my experience, pianists tend to read and study more than many other players... It's true that their relative isolation within the world of musicians gives them plenty of time to think.' The truth of Tomes's observation is underlined in Radio 3's At the Piano - five programmes forming a pianistic treasure trove. Five pianists select and discuss performances by those they admire, with the articulate explanations of each choice suggesting that if pianists are isolated beings, their thinking is put to good use. Take a listen at the Radio 3 website.

Happy 2008!

New Year’s morning—
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.

A huge frog and I
staring at each other,
neither of us moves.

Blossoms at night,
like people
moved by music[.]

Extracts from After the Gentle Poet Kobayashi Issa
by Robert Hass