Thursday, November 15, 2012
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Monday, November 12, 2012
Sunday, November 11, 2012
3BT, 11th November 2012
One. After four or five days of prevarication, I
find a suitable sentence to end a letter, using a freshly discovered story about real people who are long gone. A story that still has no proper ending but will leave my
readers’ eyebrows shooting up with a mixed note of suspense, incredulity, and
scandalized laughter.
Two. More than twenty years ago, some friends took
me up on to the roof of Painswick House on a moonlit night. You could make out distant hills and woods whilst
the polished sky was so bright. We had
explored the lovely library of the house and I had re-discovered there that slightly
scandalous poem by Edna St Vincent Millay which begins “ I being born a woman, and
distressed …” and so I showed it there
and then to a third party whose willing person I was developing a passion for
at that time, a passion that growed and growed, but has long since been set
aside.
I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn wtih pity, -- let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn wtih pity, -- let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.
A lovely moment that I had since forgotten. But, anyways,
The Loved One hath brungen home a precious and scholarly booke, Sir Roy
Strong’s The Artist and The Garden, and she placed it on the lectern by the
window after I’d hurriedly read the first two chapters. So, this morning, sleepless again, after about a week of intermittent and
aimless page-turning, I was looking at one of the less spectacular brown pictures,
printed small, and was admiring it’s decorative painted border.
It was painted by Thomas Robins in 1748 and is a poorly drawn representation of the “folly” named “Pan’s Lodge”, in the grounds of that same Painswick House, but is an imaginatively and splendidly preposterous invention on the part of the Artist. As Strong puts it, “Robins turns the grounds of Painswick House in to a rococo reverie of frolicking satyrs”. However, Robins’ value as an artist was in his talent for lively incident and he had produced a border full of birds, and even a bird’s nest, so that the border distracts the viewer from the picture's subject.
It was about five in the morning when I discovered this picture and a bright crescent moon had just appeared outside my window, next to a brilliant star. In that moment, which only lasted a few seconds, whilst my swivelling eye began to take in the details for the first time, and as I compared Robins' delineation of the two owls, so there came from the dark trees only a few feet away, the real hoot of a real owl.
It was painted by Thomas Robins in 1748 and is a poorly drawn representation of the “folly” named “Pan’s Lodge”, in the grounds of that same Painswick House, but is an imaginatively and splendidly preposterous invention on the part of the Artist. As Strong puts it, “Robins turns the grounds of Painswick House in to a rococo reverie of frolicking satyrs”. However, Robins’ value as an artist was in his talent for lively incident and he had produced a border full of birds, and even a bird’s nest, so that the border distracts the viewer from the picture's subject.
It was about five in the morning when I discovered this picture and a bright crescent moon had just appeared outside my window, next to a brilliant star. In that moment, which only lasted a few seconds, whilst my swivelling eye began to take in the details for the first time, and as I compared Robins' delineation of the two owls, so there came from the dark trees only a few feet away, the real hoot of a real owl.
Three. Later still, whilst re-reading between the lines of a
very good book that I’m “editing” about those dead persons, making some new intuitions,
joyfully, though too late in life to be of great use, about what is sensibly
called “Women’s Intuition.” A subject which should be part of the National Curriculum.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
the guardian prints an extract from an Owen Sheers poem which seems entirely appropriate for this weekend
photo from the internet .... (Reuters/USAF/Senior Airman Tyler Price)
Home to Roost (extract)
By Owen Sheers
Emai
I don't remember any of what happened.
Just those howls, like dogs, as we drove out.
The fields and trees all black and green.
Perhaps some of the very first rounds.
But nothing else.
Just those howls, like dogs, as we drove out.
The fields and trees all black and green.
Perhaps some of the very first rounds.
But nothing else.
I had to pick it all up second hand,
as my hearing came back in the chopper,
and then again in Bastion.
as my hearing came back in the chopper,
and then again in Bastion.
How when my driver had reversed
he'd hit a roadside IED.
How the explosion had hit a fuel tank, or ammo tin
right under me.
Shot me out, like a jack in the box,
60 feet. And then how it had all kicked off.
Rockets, grenades. The lot.
he'd hit a roadside IED.
How the explosion had hit a fuel tank, or ammo tin
right under me.
Shot me out, like a jack in the box,
60 feet. And then how it had all kicked off.
Rockets, grenades. The lot.
They took me straight to Rose Cottage.
A special room in the medical centre
deep among the tents and containers of Bastion.
A room for the lads or lasses who'd taken a hit,
which even the surgeons on camp couldn't fix.
A special room in the medical centre
deep among the tents and containers of Bastion.
A room for the lads or lasses who'd taken a hit,
which even the surgeons on camp couldn't fix.
It was manned, back then, by two blokes,
staff sergeants Andy and Tom. It was them
who took me in, off the ambulance,
and into their room. It smelt of sweet tea.
"That scent," Andy said to me. "It's the Eau de Toilette. Rose.
The Afghans insist we spray it on their guys."
"Don't worry though Arthur," Tom added on my other side.
"You'll soon get used to it. We did."
And then they laughed. Not for themselves
but for me, I could tell. And they carried on talking too,
chatting me through all they'd do,
as they put what they'd found of me onto a shelf,
saying "sorry it's so cold Arthur",
which it was, like a fridge.
Then they said "sleep well" before sliding it shut.
My first night of three in Rose Cottage.
staff sergeants Andy and Tom. It was them
who took me in, off the ambulance,
and into their room. It smelt of sweet tea.
"That scent," Andy said to me. "It's the Eau de Toilette. Rose.
The Afghans insist we spray it on their guys."
"Don't worry though Arthur," Tom added on my other side.
"You'll soon get used to it. We did."
And then they laughed. Not for themselves
but for me, I could tell. And they carried on talking too,
chatting me through all they'd do,
as they put what they'd found of me onto a shelf,
saying "sorry it's so cold Arthur",
which it was, like a fridge.
Then they said "sleep well" before sliding it shut.
My first night of three in Rose Cottage.
I saw them again just before I left.
When they slid me out into the light again,
still passing the time of day
as they placed me in the coffin
that would carry me home.
Always calling me by name.
"Not long now Arthur."
"You'll be back in no time."
Gently, they lowered the lid
then, like two maids making a bed,
they unfolded, smoothed and checked for snags,
before draping me in the colours of the flag.
When they slid me out into the light again,
still passing the time of day
as they placed me in the coffin
that would carry me home.
Always calling me by name.
"Not long now Arthur."
"You'll be back in no time."
Gently, they lowered the lid
then, like two maids making a bed,
they unfolded, smoothed and checked for snags,
before draping me in the colours of the flag.
• From Pink Mist, a verse drama by Owen Sheers, to be published next year by Faber. Theatre of War, a documentary about the play Sheers created with wounded soldiers, The Two Worlds of Charlie F, is on BBC2 on 13 November.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/09/poem-home-to-roost-owen-sheers?INTCMP=SRCH
Thursday, November 8, 2012
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Monday, November 5, 2012
sweet voices of reason ( part 99 ) ... oliver sacks talks about what hallucinations can tell us about human conciousness
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/oct/30/oliver-sacks-shares-hallucinations
http://www.ted.com/talks/oliver_sacks_what_hallucination_reveals_about_our_minds.html
and a subsequent book review from will self ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/08/hallucinations-oliver-sacks-review?INTCMP=SRCH
and one from new york
http://nymag.com/news/features/oliver-sacks-2012-11/
Saturday, November 3, 2012
in conversation with dev ...
i took dev by surprise for this picture, holding the camera in my lap whilst we talked on a sunny park bench
we'd been talking about kindness and tolerance and he suggested that england was a far kinder place than india
we have pensions and welfare, and he has no fear of being neglected here on account of age and infirmity
then he went on to talk about dogmatism and conformity, saying that in india a family would often expect an unmarried daughter to commit suicide if she was having a child
and then he said that although he no longer believes in heaven and hell, he'd rather go to hell in the company of a "pandit", than go to heaven with ten thousand conformists
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandit
the vulcan can no longer fly
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-19952395
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Vulcan
when i was a teenager, during the difficult times we called the cold war, one might sometimes hear a single vulcan on its way north during a still night
they were armed with atom bombs and were supposedly prepared to cross the baltic if required, on their way to bomb strategic targets in russia, if war had broken out between east and west
the idea was that they would fly in beneath the radar whilst everyone was watching the exchange of inter continental ballistic missiles far above them
the engines crackled and roared like no other plane i knew and sometimes i fancied you might glimpse the flames as the plane climbed
i often used to wonder if tonight was the night ?
but the thought only came to me some decades later that we had been living "in a moral vacuum"
Friday, November 2, 2012
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Sunday, October 28, 2012
remembering music ... blimey ... how did a choir of country boys sing this whilst unable to read music properly ?
the answer is ... we probably sang it quite badly whilst thoroughly enjoying our few short moments of pure joy and spiritual ecstasy
norman townsend, the wretch, was a great choirmaster and trotted his unruly tribe of trebles through two choir practises a week in the echoing shadows of malmesbury abbey before driving off to his night shift at the railway works in swindon
i am still grateful to him, despite my subsequent agnosticism and anti-imperialism, for bequeathing this "stately" music and this "triumphalist" language which still reside comfortably as welcome guests in sunlit attics of my memory
his good taste in church music was unerring, so this is the one in B flat and not the one in C
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbaz9T-RW-M
Saturday, October 27, 2012
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