Blake's 250th birthday

On Wiliam Blake's 250th birthday, a concert by Giltspur Chamber choir of settings of his poetry and that of Auden (born 1907).

The Angel that presided o'er my birth
Said, "Little creature, form'd of Joy and Mirth,
Go love without the help of any Thing on Earth."

(Blake, set by Judith Weir)

As I listened from a beach-chair in the shade
To all the noises that my garden made,
It seemed to me only proper that words
Should be withheld from vegetables and birds.

A robin with no Christian name ran through
The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew.
And rustling flowers for some third party waited
To say which pairs, if any, should get mated.

Not one of them was capable of lying,
There was not one which knew that it was dying
Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme
Assumed responsibility for time.

Let them leave language to their lonely betters
Who count some days and long for certain letters;
We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep;
Words are for those with promises to keep.

(Auden, set by James Lavino)

Three words in one of Geoffrey Burgon's Auden settings took me back 35 years, to my grandmother singing to my infant sister, a song that at the time saddened me, a 15-year-old atheist (and the memory is no less sad).

"Oh, that'll be joyful,
Joyful, joyful, joyful,
Oh, that'll be joyful
When we meet and part no more."

London, November 2007

Catching up on the last ten days: things I should have posted at the time!

Baselitz at the Royal Academy:

A wonderfully enjoyable exhibition about painting and photography at the Hayward, The Painting of Modern Life, including artists I have long admired, like Vija Celmins, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas and Martin Kippenberger, and some new to me - Robert Bechtle, Johanna Kandl and Elizabeth Peyton amongst others.

"I have always maintained the image in order to first present a sort of illusion, and then deny it by making it flat in a way that we work to get through. I like the place in the middle where it shifts back and forth."

(Vija Celmins)

And just enjoying The Mall and Whitehall in autumn sunshine:

Late afternoon at the Barbican Centre:

And the newly refurbished St Pancras station:

At the old chocolate factory

Guillermo Monroy, untitled (in The London Group open exhibition)

A lot of smoke

12:30 this afternoon - view from Greenwich of the smoke from a fire in East London.

Renaissance Siena and Trafalgar Square

Totem Poles

Top: Totem poles in British Columbia (thanks, HL)

Bottom: totem pole by Diana Pooley

Les Noces

'No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace / As I have seen in one autumnal face.'

Millais at Tate Britain. This may cost me credibility, but I thought there were some astonishing paintings. 'Mariana', the later version of '"The Eve of St Agnes', 'Dew-drenched Furze' and some of the other late Perthshire landscapes. Quite a few to which I am indifferent, and one which I absolutely loathe. I have a violently adverse reaction every time I see 'The Blind Girl'. I don't know why - it's not the sentimentality of the subject matter because I am repulsed even before I get close to the painting. I think the pose of the girl may bring to my mind a shocking painting by Otto Dix (a great artist). But for some reason I really cannot bear to look at 'The Blind Girl'.

Since one of the late landscape took its name from the Donne quotation at the head of this post, I finish with a couple of autumnal photos taken as I left the exhibition.

The smell of croissants

Since my last post I've been aware that this one would be my 250th. I felt that the roundness of this number required a more considered post than usual, so I've been waiting for inspiration. Various possibilities have passed by - listening to Gordon Brown's surprisingly impressive and inspirational speech on education this week; the usual fascinating obituaries that I read on the bus to work each morning, such as the Loyalist paramilitary in Ulster whose day job was drag artist; Marcus du Sautoy's polished Radio 3 essays on music and mathematics that threw light on both; my football team's worst series of defeats for 46 years. But none of these drew me to the keyboard.

And now I've woken up on a beautiful autumn morning, with sunshine on the trees and bouncing off the white walls of the house opposite, and I'm off to the Tate this morning (while across the world Tabasco lies underwater and my friends worry over their out-of-contact relatives).

And as I, still half asleep, prepared breakfast, I was jolted awake by the smell of hot croissant as I opened the oven door: a smell rich with memory and promise. That moment, past almost before I was aware of it, was something I wanted to record.