in the hall of mirrors

Cooler heads

Over the past couple of days the temperature has been dropping; today it is actually cold – raining, gray. Not miserable though; there's a light behind the clouds, and it all just feels cool, refreshing; the mild autumn chill (yes, I know, in August? – well, this is northern Europe, near the North Sea) is a fine change.

And my emotional temperature has cooled – from yesterday's anger and panic at how I've been living my life, to actually getting some things organized. What a list of things to do in the next two months! – is it really possible to do all of that research, and with that the administration that people keep nagging me about? The only way is, I suppose, doing things. Things of any size – small things that need to be done, parts of larger projects, and of course the always salutary things that involve deciding something doesn't need handling or can get given to someone else. And one must do Things, frequently.

Especially tricky because of my tendency towards passive procrastination: not looking for other things to do, exactly, but merely thinking, well I don't need to do this right now – and no one's watching me to keep me working. An gradually worsening problem over the years of living around, from the mid-1990s; living with John in Australia helped for a bit, but just as I started to feel comfortable, the government kicked me out....

A music track that I downloaded three months ago, then bought the CD: the final track on Peter Gabriel's soundtrack for Rabbit-Proof Fence, called 'Cloudless'. I finally saw the film on television the other night – or parts of it at least (as should be no surprise, given my general tendency towards avoidance these days, the fact that it was a film of a tragedy enacted by the Oz government made it both interesting and far too intense for me to be happy watching it). It was good, though; a very focused, but very passionate fable, very linear, with few surprises but excellent and brave work, especially by the actors. Interesting to see the Wikipedia entry on the Stolen Generations – it talks about the conservative critique of the whole protest, and then gives enough facts to completely undermine that critique, making it sound like a sort of poor man's Holocaust denial.

The music to the film was good, and helped to interpret the action as a good film score should; but that final track didn't, apparently, make it into the film as such – a shame, because it is a glorious Gabrielesque synthesis of native Australian chanting, building and overlapping lines (always my favorite kind of music climax), and subtle, shimmering electronic support.

The sheer passion, and grief, of the piece – beautiful, naturally and strongly colored voices, falling lines – is perhaps why I have played it over and over, in the past few months. Such a powerful catalyst: almost inevitably brings tears to my eyes....

Indulgences

No, not Catholic ones. (Always amusing to note: although my father was brought up Catholic, and my mother Orthodox, they got married and became Presbyterian – which here, close to Scotland, is a tale that brings in a lot of incredulous looks. I suspect they want to know: why on earth would one become Presbyterian if one didn't have to? And didn't care about predestination?...)

[LATER ADDENDUM: My eldest sister checked some of the stories I told below, when she was at a cousin's wedding – seems that there are some inaccuracies in what I was told about who changed religions and when – more details later.]

I'm finally recovering from feeling overwhelmed over the past few weeks, although I know there's a mass of research and administration waiting for me; today I was reading an e-book (Emma Bull's Bone Dance, which was pretty good from the beginning, and is getting markedly more interesting in the middle); then went out for a relaxed antipasto with Tess, while discussing plans for a writing workshop (which didn't require that much discussion, but she wanted reassurance that we were on the same page; and we had fun, flirting with Italian waiters). Then went to a movie with P– (Pirates 2, of course – fun if rather gloopy – there's an amazing amount of slime in it, I hope I don't dream of squids and such). Then we went for a pint (really three drinks, but knowing me the middle one was mango juice) to the Head of Steam, which is always a nice compromise among bars/pubs – not really gay but with gay guys casually dotted here and there, and many surprisingly cute straight ones; sort of alternative but not aggressively so; and they have Belgian Frambozenbier, which is a big plus. Although I still get fairly bored by the bars of northern England, P– could convince me (with my admitted collusion) to stay for two hours – just the prospect of looking at cheerful lads, and talking to My Buddy, seemed enough. Lots of indulgences....

P– was talking about Angela Carter's short stories, which he's been reading; some he doesn't like at all. I was defending them, generically and without specifics, which is of course a pretty weak position to take; but I suspect P–'s scientific background is causing him to miss the interesting bits of some of her more experimental stories, or at least not to enjoy them as they're meant to be enjoyed. They may be a bit edgy and formalist, but that makes sense – it's of a piece with British experimentation of the 1960s and 1970s; from my angle they would compare to, say, early Maxwell Davies, when he did all those short pieces with aggressively traditional roots and equally aggressively experimental surface textures. I'm not thinking so much of Eight Songs for a Mad King, or Vesalii icones, although those are exactly in this style/genre; but instead of the short choral works that are so utterly startling – that ruthless Ave Maria that is made up of unadulterated medieval monody, served straight up, but then set in an almost unbelievably intense a capella texture of major sevenths and minor seconds. The piece is made even more beautifully, artistically edgy by being notated almost entirely in sharps, in a way that is both hard to sightread and very clear in intention – there's no way it can soften into something casual or unproblematic; it always feels like a knife dance, and one that needs to be carefully negotiated if the singers are to reach the end without wounds.

And that reminds me of Mr Punch: my post on Gaiman's comic reminded me of what is still my favorite piece by Birtwistle, also written when he was young (and, I think, a close friend and colleague of Maxwell Davies – a Brit composer was gossiping to me last week on the train about when they split up, and how they refused to talk to each other after a certain point, but I'm pretty sure it was after this). It's the opera Punch and Judy (1967), which, like those Maxwell Davies pieces, is constructed in short, easily (structurally) graspable pieces, which are nevertheless so, well, sharp-edged, that in grasping them you cut yourself (and how's that for a bizarrely extended metaphor). Amazingly shrill and savage, but all in short, easy-to-hear pseudo-traditional quatrains and such; it's a remarkably powerful work. Unlike the Gaiman comic, which refers atmospherically to children's memories of Mr Punch, it actually creates those emotions, and in adults – the length (hmm, according to my CDs it's about... uh, I'm adding in my head here... an hour and three quarters) with the rapid repetitions of short phrases, plus the shrill, familiar-but-twisted instrumentation, make it a powerful, almost a psychotic experience. And in an unexpected way, too: one doesn't get any impression that the composer is psychotic, but that in a strange way the music itself is psychotic – as, of course, is Mr Punch.

(Afterthought: does this compare to that cynicism that I so dislike in a lot of British postwar novels? – Martin Amis, or even those Byatt novels with miserable endings... no, this seems different to me: it's more formal, more self-consciously artistic – which saves it, as far as I'm concerned: so much elegant artifice  implies that something is worth doing, unlike the trashier approach of Amis and such.)

Hmm, maybe, despite its second paragraph, this post isn't about indulgences: it's about indulgences and flagellations – since that is sort of what these works are like.... How very Catholic.

Or maybe I'm just dithering – not a surprise, after two beers (and a juice). Hey, don't sneer! – one of them was a Belgian beer – higher alcohol content... it's a relief to get rid of this shirt, though, which smells of bar smoke....

Signal to noise

Awakened by the bass from that rather inane dance track that the girl downstairs has suddenly taken a liking to... or more probably it's her ungracious Glaswegian boyfriend who likes, and plays, it. Good thing he's rarely around.

I know enough of apartment life in a variety of contexts to know that I'm lucky here; my lovely, sweet-tempered, tall blond Valkyrie of a downstairs neighbor, and the attentive, helpful landlord. As for noisy students on either side, since these attached houses have brick walls between them, it's rare that I hear much. The last two transients downstairs, roommates for the Valkyrie, have been the only ones to play music, and they did so rarely, for which I am most thoroughly grateful.

However, the relatively quiet space I live in – a flat alone, lots of light and air, amplified by the extended summer days of these high latitudes – makes even those rare bursts of drum'n'bass feel remarkably interruptive, as though they damage some sort of connection that is normally, silently, maintained. Or perhaps they damage the agreement I have made with the quiet....