Voyage to Ithaka

Pythagoras Cup

2010-01-24T11:58:00.003Z

This "Pythagoras Cup" comes from the island of Samos. If you fill it too full, you can't drink from it without spilling: and according to legend was designed by Pythagoras to ensure that all obtained equal shares. Thaks to Rosie and Stephen for this Christmas present!

Pie

2009-12-23T20:00:00.001Z

Apologies to my loyal readers for the paucity of recent posts on this blog. I will try to do better next year. For mathematical postings, see Greenwich Maths Time.

Cake

2009-04-18T14:53:00.001Z

A New Year's Day Walk

2009-01-01T20:08:00.000Z

A walk near Westerham in Kent

A churchyard in Deptford

2008-12-31T17:24:00.002Z

For my last post of the year, a melancholy memorial to a great writer, in a churchyard in Deptford where he died mysteriously. The skulls are on the gateposts of the churchyard.

A key place in the history of science

2008-10-12T19:04:00.003Z

A trip

2008-08-25T19:39:00.002Z

Coming soon - a report of a visit to Tilling-sur-Aude.

How to make up your mind

2008-07-29T14:22:00.003Z

Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,
and you're hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find,
is simply by spinning a penny.
No - not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you're passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air
you suddenly know what you're hoping.

Piet Hein (my thanks to Rob Eastaway for this)

Another gem from Private Eye

2008-06-27T05:52:00.002Z

Here's a brilliancy by Ian Baker:

A puzzle solved

2008-06-15T18:37:00.004Z

Last night I was sitting at my computer when I became aware of an occasional creaking noise coming from my right. I first of all thought it was outside but as it recurred it seemed closer.

It seemed to be becoming more frequent so I got up and walked over towards the window hoping to locate it. But it didn't recur.

This morning it was apparent again. Was the weight of my books too much and were the beams supporting the floor groaning before breaking? Again, investigating where the noise was coming from failed because I was never there when it happened.

Finally this afternoon I realised that the sound was simply my mouse cable rubbing against the edge of the table. Which is why I only heard it when I was at the computer!

Catching up

2008-05-26T21:16:00.002Z

I haven't posted for some time: my intentions haven't been matched by my achievement. I had intended to write about the Scottish writer Jeff Torrington, author of Swing, hammer, swing, who died last week after a long illness. His novel, on which he worked for 30 years, is wonderful and deservedly won the Whitbread Prize: I learned from his obituary how much he supported and influenced other writers in Glasgow.

Today I was in Cambridge, and found myself unexpectedly moved by the 50 Etchings of Christopher Le Brun on show at the Fitzwilliam. Le Brun is not an artist I've previously been drawn too, but today I found these etchings, with their references to the Forest, the Tower, the Quest, the Given, extremely powerful - I really wanted to bring them home with me to look at at my leisure.

Shark-infested woods

2008-04-22T07:11:00.003Z

Joan Hunter Dunn

2008-04-20T08:25:00.005Z

I was astonished to find in the paper an obituary for Joan Hunter Dunn, who has died at the age of 92. My surprise was because it had never occurred to me that she really existed. John Betjeman's A subaltern's love song was in the poetry anthology we used at school: I remember coming across it while reading the book in bed (somehow that was always much more enjoyable than discussing the same poems in class). It is of course the perfect example of Betjeman's verse, with its gently self-deprecatory humour and what the obituary accurately described as "sexual wistfulness". And now I discover that Joan Hunter Dunn was real, a war-time colleague of Betjeman's, although when he wrote the poem he had never spoken to her.

A Subaltern's Love Song

Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn,
Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament - you against me!

Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.

Her father's euonymus shines as we walk,
And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six-o'clock news and a lime-juice and gin.

The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,
The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path,
As I struggle with double-end evening tie,
For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.

On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts,
And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports,
And westering, questioning settles the sun,
On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

The Hillman is waiting, the light's in the hall,
The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair
And there on the landing's the light on your hair.

By roads "not adopted", by woodlanded ways,
She drove to the club in the late summer haze,
Into nine-o'clock Camberley, heavy with bells
And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
I can hear from the car park the dance has begun,
Oh! Surrey twilight! importunate band!
Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl's hand!

Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
Above us the intimate roof of the car,
And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.

And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

(taken from http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/764.html)

Maths, Borges and dance

2008-04-12T21:24:00.002Z

Just been to "The nineteenth step" at Laban. A collaboration between the composer Dorothy Ker, mathematician Marcus du Sautoy, choreographer Carol Brown and sculptor Kate Allen, taking as its starting point some of Borges's stories. Marcus danced a proof of the irrationality of the square root of three (that was the bit of dance that I could best relate to). Stimulating discussion afterwards about connections and interdisciplinary collaborations, particularly around space and dimension. An interesting evening, in the best sense.

From my kitchen window

2008-03-25T08:43:00.002Z

Hidden sexuality

2008-03-23T15:49:00.003Z

"Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia" at Tate Modern I found profoundly depressing. Surprisingly so - the first two of the featured artists have long been among my heroes. But to be confronted by work which held such an important place in my intellectual development, but which I haven't looked at recently, was perhaps always likely to be a shock. While it was fascinating to see how the three artists responded to each other, the juxtaposition didn't, for me, do the pieces any favours. I felt as if the world, and I, have moved on. Tomorrow I may feel differently.

Nice though to read in a caption that "Man Ray made a series if photographs of mathematical objects, used as teaching tools. He used dramatic lighting to enhance the hidden sexuality of these seemingly abstract sculptural forms."

But, contrarywise, after leaving that show I was uplifted by the retrospective of Juan Munoz. I felt at home here.

More far-away blossom

2008-03-16T20:40:00.002Z

(Thanks, hl)

In time of bougainvillea and jacarandas

2008-03-12T07:15:00.003Z

(who know
the goal of living is to grow)

in time of daffodils .... here

"I raise my cup and ask
The branches, heavy with flowers,
To drink with me."

(Su Tung P'o 1037-1101)

An ancient musician

2008-03-11T22:13:00.003Z

This 2,200-year-old figure of a musician, 112 cm tall, was for me one of the highlights of the British Museum's "Terracotta Warriors" exhibition. These beautiful figures, with only fragments of their lost colours, are so evocative, yet they are the relics of a regime built on ruthlessness and slavery.

In the post

2008-02-29T20:47:00.000Z

Some things were lost

2008-02-24T00:52:00.002Z

It was for love I lived
and for love I died,
a battle more thunderous
than the final nova.

Some things were lost.
Much more was gained.
All that lay quiet in the
coffin was transfigured.

And though the body is numb
and scorned with disease,
and the sense of touch has
crumbled to dust,

love knows no death or speaks
no pain nor rattles
with the bones of an empty grave
but is freed in eternity.

(Carl Cook: setting by Robert Hugill performed by FifteenB, St Peter's Eaton Place, London 23/2/2008.)

Hayward Gallery

2008-02-17T20:08:00.003Z

Morning mist

2008-02-17T20:06:00.002Z

Taken on a misty morning last week.

In memoriam 6 February 1958

2008-02-06T22:59:00.000Z

So long, Miles

2008-02-04T20:38:00.000Z

I was browsing through the newspaper on the bus to work last Thursday morning, not fully awake, when I was brought up short by the news of the death, too young, of the humorist Miles Kington. From the days when I used to read his columns in my father's copy of Punch he has been one of my favourite writers. His columns in the Times and then, for the last twenty-odd years in the Independent, have consistently brightened my days. I wouldn't have believed it was possible to write such a consistently funny column, day in, day out, for such a long time, and to hit the mark so often, up to the day of his death.

I owe much to Miles, not least through his invariably sound recommendations to investigate writers previously unknown. I remember my delight at acquiring his book of translations of Alphonse Alais more vividly than my doctoral viva the same day.

As a schoolboy I loved Punch, now long defunct. But in the last year have died the three contributors who I most enjoyed: Alan Coren, Handelsman and now Miles Kington. Whereas I hadn't seen the new work of the first two for years, my choice of newspaper meant that I have been reading Miles almost every day since my teenage years. Like so many others', my life will be poorer now.

Now playing - Eclipse

2008-01-24T22:45:00.000Z

All that you touch
All that you see
All that you taste
All you feel.
All that you love
All that you hate
All you distrust
All you save.
All that you give
All that you deal
All that you buy,
beg, borrow or steal.
All you create
All you destroy
All that you do
All that you say.
All that you eat
And everyone you meet
All that you slight
And everyone you fight.
All that is now
All that is gone
All that's to come
and everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.

(Thanks, H)

Comparison

2008-01-12T08:08:00.000Z

My radio came on as usual this morning and the first piece of music I heard was Franz Tunder's cantata "Wachet auf!" Many years ago I heard Greta de Reyghere and the Ricercar Consort singing that on a recording that came free with a magazine, which was affected me that, despite having no previous interest in German Baroque cantatas, I went out and bought the ten-CD boxed set. That old recording is still somehow totally magical - it's one of the most-played tracks on my iPod (and I'm listening to it as I write this). So it was interesting to hear a different version this morning, but I'm none the wiser as to what makes one singer merely excellent while another touches my soul.

World's strand, sway of the sea

2008-01-03T08:44:00.000Z

I lie awake. The only sound, regular loud thuds beating a steady rhythm. I'm taken back to my childhood, lying in bed listening to the sea beating against the shore. But in the quiet London night what I'm hearing, I realise, is my own blood flowing, too loud for me to sleep for a long time. Then later, I don't hear my blood any more, but instead (something of which I was previously unaware) the insistent ticking of my small bedside clock.

A New Year

2008-01-01T09:43:00.000Z

Spiritual musick

2007-12-27T22:06:00.000Z

Laudate Dominum, and The Destruction of the Father

Louise Bourgeois at Tate Modern - what a wonderful body of work. And still she's producing powerful pieces as she approaches her century - the recent work in the show was just as strong as ever. This picture, taken from the Tate Modern website, is "The Destruction of the Father", 1974.

And belatedly I want to mention London Concord Singers' pre-Christmas concert. I particularly enjoyed Martin Dalby's setting of Christopher Smart, with the powerful tenor solo of Margaret Jackson-Roberts:

For there is a mystery in numbers.
For One is perfect and good being at unity in himself.
For Two is the most imperfect of all numbers.
For everything infinitely perfect is Three.
For this was spiritual musick altogether, as the wind is a spirit.
For the praise of God can give to a mute fish the notes of a nightingale.
For the nightly visitor is at the window of the impenitent, while I sing a psalm of my own composing.

Edinburgh in December sunshine and snow

2007-12-16T17:14:00.001Z

Mourning

2007-12-10T20:34:00.001Z

Mourning a great man, Colin White (1932-2007) who I knew only through the reports of their father-figure from my now-orphaned friends, in whom he will live on.

Doves at Dawn
Memorial blog for Colin White

At the dentist

2007-12-04T21:00:00.001Z

As I walk through Greenwich Park after the best part of an hour in the dentist's chair, I am thinking of the poem I always repeat to myself while my teeth are being drilled:

I never did belong to that great sect
Whose doctrine is that each one should select
Out of the rest a mistress or a friend
And all the rest, though fair and wise, comment
To cold oblivion, though it is the code
Of modern morals, and the beaten road
Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread
Who travel to their homes among the dead
By the broad highway of the world, and so
With one sad friend, perhaps a jealous foe,
The dreariest and the longest journey go.

Is it Shelley? I no longer know whether I like the sentiment or not. But thinking of it now, I remember coming across these lines as a teenager in Forster's The Longest Journey, a book I then loved, though I doubt if I understood it. I recall lying in bed in my grandmother's house, insomniac, reading the novel and these lines to memory.

I haven't read Forster for years. And yet, every time I visit the dentist, I find myself using these lines as a distraction from the pain.

Blake's 250th birthday

2007-11-28T23:06:00.001Z

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

2007-11-25T14:28:00.000Z

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

2007-11-24T19:44:00.000Z

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

A lot of smoke

2007-11-12T19:20:00.001Z

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

Renaissance Siena and Trafalgar Square

2007-11-10T20:17:00.000Z

Totem Poles

2007-11-09T20:35:00.000Z

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

Bottom: totem pole by Diana Pooley

Les Noces

2007-11-09T20:34:00.000Z

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

2007-11-04T21:17:00.000Z

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

2007-11-04T08:19:00.001Z

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.

Westron Wynde

2007-10-28T19:43:00.001Z

Westron wynde when wilt thou blow
the small rayne down can rayne
Cryst yf my love were in my armys
and I yn my bed agayne.

"Chef calls the ratatouille Basil..."

2007-10-28T18:48:00.000Z

Just been to an excellent film which brought back to mind not only my favourite recipe from the book which sustained me when I was a student, but also the best Fawlty Towers episode of all.

Saturday evening in Hyde Park (and a foggy morning in Lewisham)

2007-10-16T20:39:00.001Z

and

Another gem from Private Eye

2007-10-15T06:48:00.000Z

Old age

2007-10-08T18:02:00.001Z

When I learned the piano as a child, I hated playing scales.

As an adult, when I tried to take it up again, I religiously practised scales whileall the time feeling resentful that this was what one should do.

And now I've just gone out and bought a whole book full of scales (and arpeggios and broken chords, but nothing else).

Piled at random

2007-10-05T20:56:00.000Z

Another fascinating obituary in the Independent: Brian Cummings on English scholar Stephen Medcalf (1936-2007):

"He was a difficult man even for his friends to know well. He was solitary and soulful, often seeming to be lost in thought. Yet he loved company, long walks and pubs, and although it was as impossible to imagine him marrying as him finishing his book on Eliot, he had many women friends and would no doubt have agreed if one of them had proposed to him. His family and friends despaired of his chaotic home life, in his little house below Lewes Castle in which clothes and 16th century books were piled at random."

There's hardly a single detail there that I share with him, yet I feel an affinity.

Remembering David Munrow (1942-1976)

2007-09-30T13:29:00.001Z

As an early music fan, I have a lot to thank David Munrow for. Although he died before I was interested in music, his influence on the early music scene and on so many of my favourite performers was profound. He had been at Pembroke College, Cambridge, a few years before me and people still talked about his astonishing college performance with a bagful of assorted pipes he'd collected on a trip to South America (indeed I've just heard Christopher Hogwood talk about that very concert on the Radio 3 programme about Munrow that provoked me to write this). Though I gather that one had to be careful in refering to him in Pembroke at the time, as he had apparently eloped with the wife of one of the dons. Even although at the time I wasn't musical, I remember the shock when I heard of his in 1976. His recordings delight me, but the interest and buzz he created have shaped my musical world so much that it's hard to imagine how much poorer my world would have been without his brief appearance, a comet flashing across the sky, for that short time 30-odd years ago.

Nasty moments

2007-09-30T08:43:00.001Z

The shocking realisation that something is wrong before the brain can work out what it is:

Putting my hand in my pocket and finding my wallet not there.

Opening my office door and seeing no laptop on the desk.

Surfing to my favourite blog and seeing, instead of the familiar screen layout, the blue "Page not found".

Patterns

2007-09-27T23:21:00.001Z

Complicite's A Disappearing Number at the Barbican. A performance centred on the Indian mathematician Ramanujan and his relationship with G.H. Hardy, set against a present-day story. It's had nothing but rave reviews. Patterns throughout: mathematics, music, theatre. If I felt that the patterns emerged more clearly during the post-performance discussion than in the performance itself, that may reflect my own theatrical obtuseness rather than a lack of coherence in the piece itself. After all, if Marcus Du Sautoy feels that this play communicates the experience of mathematical creativity, who am I to disagree?

The universe is unnecessarily complicated!

2007-09-25T21:20:00.001Z

I burnt the rice, so I undercooked the vegetables to compensate. Why didn't it taste good?

The shock of silence

2007-09-22T21:52:00.001Z

Guillermo Monroy's sculpture "The Sleeper" is currently in the Church of St James the Less, Vauxhall Bridge Road, London. It was powerful enough in his studio, but to see it in this impressive Victorian church adds another dimension. Guillermo's public talk last night discussed the literal and metaphorical power of the silent musical instruments that make up The Sleeper, in its theological context. Then members of the congregation spoke, often extremely movingly, about what the sculpture has meant to them.

When I saw this piece in Guillermo's studio a few weeks ago I thought it a masterpiece. Hearing others describe their emotional reactions confirms my judgment (not that I ever doubted it).

More Encounters

2007-09-16T21:24:00.000Z

The Encounters early music weekend at the South Bank continued today.

This afternoon: Gabrieli and Schutz.

This evening: Buxtehude and Bach.

And in between, Cranach at the Courtauld.

Voglio un casa - Convivencia

2007-09-15T23:41:00.000Z

Three extraordinary "early music" concerts today. And all forcing thoughts about colonialism, racism, the enounters / collisions between cultures, the ethics of such concerts.

Jean-Cristophe Frisch and XVIII-21 Le Baqroque Nomade playing a Baroque concert from Beijing and telling us how music was a safe topic for discussion between the Jesuits and the Chinese, when they couldn't talk about religion or politics.

The amazing L'Arpeggiata under Christina Pluhars. Don't ever miss an opportunity to hear this group. I am glad to have lived to hear the King's Singers and L'Arpeggiata performing their version of Duke Ellington's Creole Love Affair. And the performance was memorable for the exuberant, virtuosic violin of Charles Edouard Fantin and guitar of Marcelo Vitale. And the sensational Lucilla Galeazzi. Feeling the smile spread across my face as she began each number was an experience I rarely remember in concerts:

Voglio un casa, la voglio bella,
Piena di luce come una stella
Piena di sole e di fortuna
E sopra il tetto spunti la luna
Pieno di riso, pieno di pianto
Casa ti sogno, ti sogno tanto
Dididindi, Dididindi ...

Voglio un casa, per tanta gente
La voglio solida ed accogliente,
Robusta e calda, semplice e vera
Per farci musica matina e sera
E la poesia abbia il suo letto
Voglio abitare sotto a quei tetto.
Dididindi, Dididindi ...

Such was the excitement and happiness of that concert that I wasn't sure how the final one of the day, Catherine Bott, David Miller, the 'oud player and singer Abdul Salem Kheir, and Stephen Henderson's Convivencia programme, exploring Spain in the period of the Reconquista when Christians and Moors apparently showed some tolerance of each other. I needn't have worried. Bott's singing was emotional; and she had equal impact when she recited English versions of some of the songs over the accompaniment to bring out the impact of the words.

These concerts were remarkable for their presentation of beautiful music in a complicated political and moral context.

WTF ...

2007-09-15T07:22:00.000Z

"What the fuck are you doing?" (Barry Ferguson to James McFadden, Parc des Princes, 12/11/2007)

Allez les Ecossais!

2007-09-12T21:01:00.000Z

France 0 Scotland 1

Ashford, Kent (birthplace of John Wallis)

2007-09-09T20:27:00.001Z

Alberto de Lacerda (1928-2007)

2007-09-04T21:40:00.000Z

I read that the poet Alberto de Lacerda has died. His poetry had many admirers: the obituary suggests that he might have been a candidate for the Nobel Prize. Seeing his photo with the obituary, I fel I must have seen him in galleries or at concerts. "His one-bedroom flat in Battersea became an extraordinary archive of his life and times but by depressing turns unvisitable, irreparable and eventually, by common standards, uninhabitable." (John McEwen)

Aos outros levarei a felicadade
Que a mim obscuramente foi negada.

Now playing

2007-08-28T20:03:00.000Z

Gabriel Jackson's Thomas, jewel of Canterbury

Thoma nunc pro populo stimulo tempestatis caritate fervida rogatus.

(Thomas, you are beseeched with fervent love to help your people in these tempestuous times.)

Embro to the Ploy - memories of a week at the 2007 Festival

2007-08-23T18:32:00.000Z

Climbing the 124 steps up to George IV Bridge each morning (less than half shown in the photo).

Finding that the Elephant House, where I used to have coffee when I was working in the library a few years ago, is now "The birthplace of Harry Potter", with an endless queue of toursits waiting to be photographed in front of it.

First Conundrum by Remco de Fouw opposite the Usher Hall: a sculpture which refers to the neolithic polyhedral balls found in north-east Scotland.

A wonderful concert performance of Vivaldi's Orlando Furioso in the Usher Hall, with Sonia Prina and Philippe Jarousski sensational.

Alex Hartley's exhibition at the always-excellent Fruitmarket Gallery, and his instructions for climbing the building:

Richard Long at the National Gallery of Modern Art:

Phil Jupitus and Andre Vincent playing Tweedledum and Tweedledee thinking they are Vladimir and Estragon.

One dreadful Fringe play whose cast outnumbered the audience.

Walking through the grounds of the Dean Gallery:

The eloquence of Jordi Savall in his solo recital, and Savall in discussion speaking in favour of soft music ("All important communication, between man and woman, mother and child, friend and friend is quiet and gentle.")

Concerto Italiano singing Monteverdi in Greyfriars Kirk, the church in which I was christened, but which I hadn't been inside for over forty years.

Montserrat Figueras and Hesperion XXI, performing seguidillas en eco and other music associated with Don Quixote:

Yo soy la locura
la que sola infundo
plazer y dulzura
y contento al mundo.

Sirven a mi nombre
todos mucho o poco
y pero no ay hombre
que piense ser loco.

And after that concert, the greenness of George Square:

And all the time reading the witty Scots poems of Robert Garioch and enjoying his affectionate dissection of the Scottish psyche.

At the Fringe

2007-08-12T13:46:00.000Z

My first memory of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is of seeing, with my father, John Cairney's one-man show about McGonagall. in the former church at the top of George IV Bridge. Perhaps (though probably not) the production that Robert Garioch mentions in the first of his Twa Festival Sketches:

I wes passing a convertit kirk -
- Whit's that ye say?
A convertit kirk, plenty o' thaim about;
the kirks yuistae convert the sinners,
bit nou the sinners convert the kirks.
Weill oniewey, here wes this convertit kirk
wi bills stuck owre the front
and folk queuin up to git in
to hear the Po-etic Gems
o William McGonagall.
One the pavement outside
there wes a richt rammie gaun on,
folk millin about, ken?
And in the middle o this rammie
wes a man that wes gittin Moved On -
- Whit fir? -
He'd been sellin broadsheets
o poems, Gode help him!
o his ain composition.

(Robert Garioch)

Marjory Fleming goes on holiday

2007-08-11T10:37:00.000Z

It is Malancholy to think, that I hav so many talents, & many there are that have not had the attention paid to them that I have, & yet they contrive to better then me; [...] Now I am quite happy: for I am going tomorrow to a delightfull place, Breahead by name, belonging to Mrs Crraford, where their is ducks cocks hens bublyjocks 2 dogs 2 cats swine. & which is delightful;

From the journal of Marjory Fleming (1803-1811)

From The Stuffed Owl

2007-08-06T18:48:00.000Z

Browsing in D.B. Wyndham Lewis's anthology I was reminded of this masterpiece by the Reverend Cornelius Whur (1782-1853). It's unfair to ridicule such things, but irresistible.

The Female Friend

In this imperfect, gloomy scene
Of complicated ill,
How rarely is a day serene,
The throbbing bosom still!
Will not a beauteous landscape bright,
Or music's soothing sound,
Console the heart, afford delight,
And throw sweet peace around?
They may, but never comfort lend
Like an accomplish'd female friend!

With such a friend, the social hour
In sweetest pleasure glides;
There is in female charms a power
Which lastingly abides—
The fragrance of the blushing rose,
Its tints and splendid hue,
Will with the season decompose,
And pass as flitting dew;
On firmer ties his joys depend
Who has a polish'd female friend!

The pleasures which from thence arise
Surpass the blooming flower,
For though it opens to the skies,
It closes in an hour!
Its sweetness is of transient date,
Its varied beauties cease—
They can no lasting joys create,
Impart no lasting peace;
While both arise, and duly blend
In an accomplish'd female friend!

As orbs revolve and years recede,
As seasons onward roll,
The fancy may on beauties feed,
With discontented soul!
A thousand objects bright and fair
May for a moment shine,
Yet many a sigh and many a tear
But mark their swift decline;
While lasting joys the man attend
Who has a faithful female friend!

Thank you, Sarah

2007-07-27T19:27:00.001Z

Bedtime Reading

2007-07-17T19:03:00.001Z

Dieu! Qu'il la fait bon regarder!

2007-07-09T22:43:00.000Z

A concert by the French choir Accentus (conductor Laurence Equilbey) at Haberdasher's Hall. Transcriptions of Ravel and Debussy, and new pieces by Mantovani and Manoury.

O! ihr stillen Spiegel der Wahrheit.

O Bruder klimmen wir blinde Zeiger gen Mitternacht.

(Quotations from Georg Traxl, set by Manoury)

A bowl of cherries

2007-07-08T20:03:00.001Z

As I look at these cherries, in a bowl decorated with cherries which D gave to me many years ago, I remember my first visit to Leipzig in 1986. Travelling on the train from Berlin, the girl opposite me was eating cherries: I discovered the cherry season had just started, and for the fortnight I was there, everyone was eating these delicious cherries (much better than I have ever had since).

J.B. Handelsman

2007-07-05T19:31:00.000Z

I read that the cartoonist Handelsman has died. When I was a teenager his weekly "Freaky Fables" in Punch were the highlight of my week. They were idiosyncratic retellings of classical myths and similar stories: a rather off-beat and ironic humour which, I now realise, must have been a strong influence on my personality. I don't known his more recent work, but the obituary quoted this cartoon:

And it also quoted another of his captions, which captures much of what appeals to me about his work: "We are among those chosen to bear the burden of rebuilding Iraq. A thankless job, with no reward apart from obscene profits."

Now playing - "Twisted"

2007-06-24T19:02:00.000Z

(Thanks to J for, many years ago, introducing me to this wonderful Annie Ross track.)

My analyst told me that I was right out of my head
The way he described it, he said I'd be better dead than live
I didn't listen to his jive
I knew all along he was all wrong
And I knew that he thought I was crazy but I'm not.

My analyst told me that I was right out of my head
He said I'd need treatment but I'm not that easily led
He said I was the type that was most inclined
When out of his sight to be out of my mind
And he thought I was nuts, no more ifs or ands or buts.

They say as a child I appeared a little bit wild
With all my crazy ideas
But I knew what was happenin',
I knew I was a genius
What's so strange when you know that you're a wizard at three?
I knew that this was meant to be

Well I heard little children were supposed to sleep tight
That's why I drank a fifth of vodka one night
My parents got frantic, didn't know what to do
But I saw some crazy scenes before I came to
Now do you think I was crazy?
I may have been only three but I was swingin'.

They all laughed at Al Graham Bell
They all laughed at Edison and also at Einstein
So why should I feel sorry if they just couldn't understand
The litany and the logic that went on in my head?
I had a brain, it was insane
Don't you let them laugh at me
When I refused to ride on all those double decker buses
All because there was no driver on the top.

My analyst told me that I was right out of my head
The way he described it, he said I'd be better dead than live
I didn't listen to his jiveI knew all along he was all wrong
And I knew that he thought I was crazy but I'm not.

My analyst told me that I was right out of my head
But I said "Dear doctor, I think that it's you instead'
Cause I have got a thing that's unique and new
It proves that I'll have the last laugh on you'
Cause instead of one head... I got two
And you know two heads are better than one".

"... songs are sung"

2007-06-18T21:57:00.000Z

When horses die, they breathe,
When grasses die, they wither,
When suns die, they go out,
When people die, they sing songs.

Velimir Khlebnikov

(Gorecki String Quartet No 3, Op 67)

Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia (and poor audience)

2007-06-17T10:15:00.000Z

Watching Hamlet in the open air at Oxford Castle. An efective, fast-moving (and heavily but appropriately cut) production. The first half grips the audience in the early evening sunshine. But in the interval, the heavens open. We huddle under umbrellas by the castle walls, watching the rain teem down on the stage and soak into our canvas seats. The interval is extended, the rain stops, the water is swept off the stage. The play resumes: Claudius's "Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens" gets a laugh. The rain resumes: soon it is torrential. As Laertes carries Ophelia's body through the puddle that was the stage ("Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia") it is clear that we cannot continue and the actors give up the unequal struggle against the elements. I have rarely been so wet! But not one of the audence left during the ten or fifteen minutes in which the performers were struggling to be heard against the rainfall and the lights illuminated the falling sheets of water.

Sleeper

2007-06-08T21:19:00.000Z

I have just seen the most amazing sculpture, "Sleeper" by Guillermo Monroy. I've seen his work develop for some years: he sculpts with parts of defunct musical instruments and mixes visual puns about music, instruments and animals with art-historical references and his works carry remarkable power: I own a piece of his, using an old saxophone, which creates the most shocking silence imaginable.

But "Sleeper" is his masterpiece. A crucifixion: the cross is two railway sleepers and Christ's body is made from various instruments: an accordion torso, piano keys, various brass instruments. It is a real show-stopper. It speaks of the power of music, the history of art, and the weakness of humanity: it re-presents the most potent of images with truly staggering impact (and I wish I could express it better).

For me, its impact is more powerful than anything Damien Hirst has ever done (and I'm a great admirer of Hirst: I say this not in any way to play down Hirst's importance, but rather to show how powerfully this work tonight has affected me).

Red roses and red noses

2007-06-02T18:21:00.000Z

My Latin reading group today was, for some end-of-year light relief after trying to make sense of Trithemius, reading Thomas a Kempis (and some members of the group were in a particularly silly mood). Which brought to mind this poem by Lord Berners:

Some people praise red roses
But I beg leave to say
That I prefer red noses -
Red noses are so gay.

A Kempis says we must not cling
To things that fade away.
Red noses last a lifetime
Red roses but a day.

Red roses blow but thrice a year,
In June, July and May.
But those who have red noses
Can blow them every day.

Private Eye hits the spot again

2007-05-24T07:28:00.000Z

Sad morning, happier evening

2007-05-21T21:37:00.000Z

I woke this morning to the shocking news on my radio that the Cutty Sark, the great nineteenth-century tea clipper preserved at Greenwich, was on fire. A Greenwich icon, which has given her name to the local tube station, she was undergoing restoration on which my colleagues were consulting: I've recently taken classes of schoolchildren round her and told them about the contribution of mathematics to saving our national heritage. A landmark and a national treasure.

(Photo from thelondonpaper)

The aftermath - 6pm

So a very sad morning in Greenwich.

Then this evening to a sensational concert by the French group La Fenice, performing a programme of seventeenth century music based on the pilgramage to Santiago, starting at Strasbourg and moving down the Rhone, through Languedoc, across the Pyrenees and through Galicia.

I have a particular affection for the song "Une jeune fillette" in its many guises. I think I first heard it sung, in a recording, by one of my favourite singers, Montserrat Figueras (whom I have yet to hear live). Tonight it was sung in an anonymous religious contrafactum: which I found extraordinarily moving, in part perhaps because the singer, Arianna Savall, is Figueras's daughter:

Bienheureuse est une ame
ou nul vice n'a lieu.
Qui jamais ne s'enflamme
que de l'amour de Dieu.
Et d'un dédain
rejette l'artifice
de la haute malice
de tout homme mondain.

There were many other highlights: the wonderful Jean Tubéry on cornet duetting with the bassoon of Mélanie Flahaut in a piece by Bartolomé Selma y Salaverde; enchanting harp-playing by Savall, and a wonderful encore Canten dos juguerillos (Francisco Escalada) performed by all five musicians:

Canten dos jiguerillos al Sol Infante,
porque los pajaritos al nino acallen, canten suaves,
que esta noche del cielo sus voces salen.
A esta noche le llaman la noche buena,
para todos de gozo, de gusto,
de gloria y dios de pena.

And the news tonight of the Cutty Sark is better than we feared. Much of the wood had been removed for treatment, and the iron structure seems to have survived the 100-foot-high flames as she survived the waves and storms of her previous existence. May La Fenice be a good omen: may Cutty Sark re-emerge phoenix-like form the fire!

Fire and Snow

2007-05-19T21:52:00.000Z

¡Ay! ¡Andar a toto pandero!
Nadie se podrá excusar,
que donde ay mucho concurso,
¡muchos panderos habrá!

A fascinating concert by the choir Ex Cathedra tonight, of Baroque music from Bolivia, mainly by Juan de Araujo. The first time I've heard a London audience singing in Quechua, joining in the choruses of Hanac pachap cussicuinin (all 20 verses).

que arder en la nieve el fuego
de amor los efectos son.

One by Michael Donaghy

2007-05-18T21:12:00.001Z

Thanks to Erica Wagner who read this in the event at Dulwich Picture Gallery tonight.

ALAS, ALICE,

who woke to crows and woke up on the ceiling and hung
there fearing the evening's sweeping and looked down now
at her unfinished reading and loved by sleeping and slept
by weeping and called out once. The words were dust. Who
left late singing and signed up leaving and ran home slowly
afraid of sleeping and hated thinking and thought by feeling
and called out once but no one came,

who dreamt blue snow and froze in dreaming and spoke by
reading and read all evening and read by patterns of bliz-
zards drifting and dared by waiting and waited taking and
called out once and called out twice and coughed grey clouds
and carved four coffins and took by thanking and thanked
by seeking and drifted bedwards and lay there weeping and
counted her tears and divided by seven and called out once.
The words were crows.

More greenery: trees seen on my way home tonight

2007-05-14T22:26:00.000Z

Green London (Waterloo, Saturday 12 May)

2007-05-14T22:24:00.000Z

Scarlattiana

2007-05-10T21:25:00.000Z

To "Queen Anne's Footstool" (St John's, Smith Square) for music by Domenico Scarlatti in this 250th anniversary year. Carole Cerasi played harpsichord music by Scarlatti, Thomas Roseingrave, Soler, Mateo Perez de Albeniz and Manuel Blasco de Nebra: the Pastorela by the last of these had a wonderfully eccentric middle movement. Then London Baroque with Emma Kirkby and Elin Manahan Thomas (a last-minute stand-in) performed a Handel Trio sonata, and a cantata and an entertaining Arcadian duet by the two sopranos, who hammed it up beautifully. How lucky we are in London to have so many opportunities to hear interesting and unusual music by such performers.

Quanta furie ha il cieco Averno,
tante io porto in mezzo al seno.
Sento il cor che gia vien meno!
Cieli! Aita! Nice, oh dio!
Chi di me pietade avra? Chi?

No, non mi lagno della sorte,
ch'io solo, io, si non quello
che me spingo in braccio a morte,
se di me non ho pieta.

A talk about slavery

2007-05-09T21:54:00.000Z

Went to a rather disturbing talk about the attitude of missionaries to domestic slavery in West Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Almost a century after the abolition of the slave trade, missionaries and the missionary societies tolerated, to a greater or less extent, the widespread practice of domestic slavery. Pragmatically, they probably had little choice if they were to be effective in their evangelism; and of course they argued that it was better to be a cared-for slave than to be abandoned with no means of sustenance. It's hard to defend this now. Yet I find myself much more prepared to acknowledge the nuances of the situation than I would have been a few years ago, when I was much less tolerant of hypocrisy. How strange it is to grow old, and see how life makes us compromise our strongest principles.

In the garden this morning

2007-05-07T12:13:00.000Z

A concert in Pepys's Church

2007-05-05T21:24:00.000Z

To St Olave's, Hart Street, for a concert of music by Victoria, Guerrero, Esquivel and Morales, excellently sung by the Giltspur Chamber Choir.

St Olave's was Samuel Pepys's church. Three ominous skulls guard the entrance in Seething Lane to what Dickens described as the churchyard of St. Ghastly Grim. Inside the church is the bust of his wife Elizabeth, commissioned after her death by Pepys: she looks over his burial-place. There's also a memorial to Samuel (who had his own covered staircase to his pew from his workplace at the Admiralty, opposite).

A title waiting for a book

2007-04-30T18:39:00.000Z

Can the book possibly life up to the title? (It got a rave review in my newspaper on Friday.)

By the sea at Swansea

2007-04-22T13:52:00.000Z

"You're only a doll with the paint flaking off" (Serafina to the Virgin)

2007-04-09T22:41:00.000Z

Just seen an excellent production of The Rose Tattoo at the National.

An emotional note in the programme by Nicholas Hytner about the director Steven Pimlott, who died during the rehearsals, says "When [Pimlott's cancer] went into remission last autumn, it was to The Rose Tattoo that we returned. Neither of us said it, but it seemed an urgent necessity to stage one of the twentieth century's most life-affirming plays." Well, I'm an old cynic so, with all due respect to Pimlottt and Hytner, I'm afraid that reading that just before the curtain went up just made me determined not to fall for any of that "life-affirming" nonsense.

But in the event my resolution went by the board as I was quite won over by the performances of Zoe Wanamaker and Darrell D'Silva. My cynicism went the same way as Serafina's shrine to the Virgin.

Blogging stupidity

2007-04-08T09:02:00.000Z

How thoughtless of me to post last week Shelley's poem about the capricious nature of inspiration just before I had scheduled a concentrated period of writing. Talk about tempting fate!

30 hours in Birmingham

2007-04-05T20:00:00.000Z

I love snow and all the forms

2007-04-01T09:17:00.000Z

I've just read over breakfast Anthony Payne connecting this poem with Elgar, who wrote the first lines at the head of his second symphony.

Song

Rarely, rarely comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now
Many a day and night?
Many a weary night and day
'Tis since thou art fled away.

How shall ever one like me
Win thee back again?
With the joyous and the free
Thou wilt scoff at pain.
Spirit false! thou hast forgot
All but those who need thee not.

As a lizard with the shade
Of a trembling leaf,
Thou with sorrow art dismayed;
Even the sighs of grief
Reproach thee, that thou art not near,
And reproach thou wilt not her.

Let me set my mournful ditty
To a merry measure; —
Thou wilt never come for pity,
Thou wilt come for pleasure;
Pity then will cut away
Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.

I love all that thou lovest,
Spirit of Delight!
The fresh Earth in new leaves dressed,
And the starry night;
Autumn evening, and the morn
When the golden mists are born.

I love snow and all the forms
Of the radiant frost;
I love waves, and winds, and storms,
Everything almost
Which is Nature's, and may be
Untainted by man's misery.

I love tranquil solitude,
And such society
As is quiet, wise, and good;
Between thee and me
What difference? but thou dost possess
The things I seek, not love them less.

I love Love — though he has wings,
And like light can flee,
But above all other things,
Spirit, I love thee —
Thou art love and life! O come!
Make once more my heart thy home!

Shelley

Daffodils at Greenwich

2007-03-28T12:35:00.000Z

After the depressing musings of my last post, here's something cheerier:

Crossing a line

2007-03-24T15:17:00.000Z

"State Britain contains images of human suffering which some visitors may find disturbing."
[notice at Mark Wallinger's exhibition State Britain at Tate Britain]

When I was eleven years old my father took me to Greenwich where I was able to stand astride the Meridian line, one foot in the Eastern Hemisphere and one foot in the Western. Today, at Mark Wallinger's show at Tate Britain, I thought of that childhood moment, as I stood with one foot on each side of a line Wallinger has marked on the gallery floor. That line marks the boundary of the "vicinity of Parliament", the zone within one kilometre of Parliament Square, within which spontaneous demonstrations are banned by the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. Under this act one person has been convicted for reading out at the Cenotaph the names of British soldiers who have died in Iraq, another charged for carrying a placard in Whitehall reading "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" (the quote is from Blair, but the Blair who wrote under the name George Orwell, not, obviously, our present leader). A friend of mine has been arrested for merely sitting down in Parliament Square.

When I visited Greenwich as an eleven-year-old with my father, we British were proud of our freedom. Politicians on all sides compared our freedoms with the constraints faced by citizens of the Soviet Union, under constant state surveillance. Today British citizens are subject to the most intense surveillance in the world, and the government’s plans for identity cards will take that to a level the Soviet secret police could only have dreamt of. All in the interest of defending freedom and countering terrorism, of course. So we have to use the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act against a peaceful elderly lady who sits down in Parliament Square, or the Terrorism Act against an octogenarian whose offence is to shout "rubbish" during a politician's speech.

How did we cross this line?

Wallinger has reproduced the demonstration mounted by Brian Haw in Parliament Square from 2001. It is, as the warning notices say, shocking in its portrayal of the suffering being endured by so many in Iraq, about which there is nothing further I can say.

Thank you, Radio 3

2007-03-19T21:12:00.000Z

What better way to be roused from sleep than by Joyce de Donato singing Copland's setting of Emily Dickinson's "Nature the Gentlest Mother is"?

Memory

2007-03-11T17:39:00.000Z

On my way to a conference I pass a young man with a golf bag over his shoulder, and unexpectedly there comes to mind the excitement I felt as a teenager setting off to play a round: the potential for delight and disappointment, the uncertainty as to whether this might at last be the day when I played well. And the memory of the walk past the clubhouse, from the eighth tee to the ninth green, and the taste of the cheap ice-cream we'd buy, came back to me astonishingly vivid.

Daffodils in Greenwich Park

2007-03-11T17:37:00.000Z

Insomnia reading

2007-03-03T22:06:00.000Z

By my bed is a book of Borges' selected poems, which is giving me great pleasure (thanks, H, for introducing me to Borges's poetry). And a couple of nights ago, suffering insomnia and with spirits lowered because of a mild cold, I open it at the following, which does wonders for my mood:

There is a line by Verlaine that I will not remember again.
There is a street nearby that is off limits to my feet.
There is a mirror that has seen me for the last time.
There is a door I have closed until the end of the world.
Among the books in my library (I'm looking at them now) are some I will never open.
This summer I will be fifty years old.
Death is using me up, relentlessly.

[Borges attributes this to Julio Platero Haedo, Inscriptions (Montevideo, 1923), not that I believe him.]

Two sunny mornings

2007-02-25T22:51:00.000Z

A sunny morning in Lewisham (Thursday 21 February)

And Oxford in morning sunshine, 24 February

Magic

2007-02-20T21:42:00.000Z

Ken Josephson, Postcard visit, Stockholm

This photograph, perhaps more than any other, demonstrates the magic of the human visual system. We see two more or less identical patterns of ink on the page, or in this case patterns of pixels on the screen. We interpret one of them as a three dimensional object and the other as a two dimensional card. What a powerful demonstration of the power of the human brain.

And what a reminder that we use context in making every judgment, that we can never be a neutral observer.

(Image taken from the website of the Yancey Richardson Gallery)

"Little has happened in my life, but I have read a great deal"

2007-02-16T20:50:00.000Z

"Little has happened in my life, but I have read a great deal, which is to say I have found few things more memorable than Schopenhauer's ideas and the verbal music of England.

"A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Over the years he fills a given surface with images of provinces and kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fish, rooms, instruments, heavenly bodies, horses, and people. Shortly before he dies he discovers that this patient labyrinth of lines is a drawing of his own face."

Borges, 1960

That's what worries me about keeping a blog.

Bright morning

2007-02-13T22:59:00.000Z

The morning bright and green even when seen through my net curtains.