Uncertainties

Preparing a lecture on Shakespeare, a sort of general introduction to the Bard, and struck by just how much I don't know and how fascinating it all is. What exactly was the style of acting like in 1600? How did those first audiences in the Globe behave? Just how pervasive, or otherwise, was music in performance?

I'm often puzzled by how some people really can't stand not knowing with absolute certainty. The grey areas are the places in which I seem to see most clearly.

The Bright Side

So there I was thinking the day had been distinctly ropey overall and quite disastrous in patches when I thought of those motivational chappies and how you should always seek to unravel the old silver lining from the louring clouds of discontent. Or something like that.

Which led me to consider what might be reasonably regarded as the highlight of the day. And I immediately had the answer! How could I fail on a day when the Missus had cooked up a stash of her cranberry muffins - the mini ones that fit so conveniently into their nifty cups, and the mouth?

So there you have it: living proof of the power of positive thinking. Or cranberry muffins. Whichever.

Something Cheerful

Feeling ever so slightly at a bit of a loss this afternoon, around the 5.30 pm mark, I shoved the first disk from Jeeves and Wooster, The Complete Collection into the DVD player and wallowed. A wonderfully utterly pointless way to lose an hour doing nothing of value to anyone, except oneself. I'm tempted to say I'd forgotten how good the series is, but I hadn't, in truth. That's why it makes such a good refuge in those times when you feel you're slightly losing it.

Why So Angry?

Everywhere we go these days the birds seem to be angry. Even on my niece's birthday cake. But, happy to say, they didn't spoil the festive mood.

More Words

We went down to Books Actually again the other day. I bought a number of books and magazines featuring local writers on the rather spurious grounds that: a) I would put them on the shelves round my desk at work rather than finding space at home, where there is no space to find; and b) that it's important to support any kind of local arts scene, no matter where you are. I'm not quite sure why I believe the last statement, but I do - working on intuition rather than strict rationality.

Must say, I'm impressed with the architecture in the area around the shop, and the abundance of trees. Which makes me worry that someone, somewhere is likely to be planning to knock it all down to improve the area. I feel a bit the same way about liking the bookshop. That's usually a sign a business won't last too long.

Voices

Since we moved into our current quarters (just over a year ago!) I've been storing my cassette tapes at Maison KL. There aren't that many of them, I generally wasn't a great user of tapes, and the ones that survive are for the most part in a woebegone condition, but there are a few spoken word tapes that I still have a high regard for. These include Seamus Heaney reading his collection Electric Light, and that's now gone into temporary residence in the car for those occasions when I get a chance to listen - like on the way to the mosque today.

I don't really think of Heaney as being so demonstrably a magical reader of his work in the same obvious way that applies to Ted Hughes. (Funnily enough, the Electric Light collection replaced Hughes's reading of Tales From Ovid in the car stereo.) But I've been struck this time round by just how much the poems spring to giddy life through that wonderful Irish brogue. The elegy for Brodsky - Audenesque I think it's called, I haven't got the book with me to check - sounded particularly strong today with its strangely rollicking yet restrained rhythms and gorgeous half rhymes. (Surely no living writer does them better than our Irish wizard.)

In fact, I'm now at the point at which I keenly feel I'm not getting the real poem somehow if I'm not listening to Heaney, at least as far as this collection is concerned.

And this, for some reason, puts me in mind of how keenly I find myself these days listening to the prayers at the mosque in terms of the quality of the vocal delivery. Read beautifully, as they so often are, they seem to gain a kind of weight and majesty from that alone, though there's also a strong sense that this is inherent in the fibres of the language itself, of course.

In Print

Pleased to read in today's paper that Alfian Sa'at is publishing a new collection of fiction soon. Slightly disappointed it's not a new collection of poems though. Despite all he's done as a dramatist and short story writer, I feel that's where his gift is most telling, and I mean 'gift'. I don't pretend to be any great judge of these things, but I know what I like and there's no poet here I've liked more than this young man. On his day, and he's had quite a few of them, more than capable of making the sparks fly.

22.33

Also pleased to notice, when I'd read a bit more of the Life section, that Shooshie's Photo Gambar installation at Art Stage, the piece that Noi's sister Rozana was involved in, got a more than honourable mention in a retrospective column on the fair. Finally proof that a reviewer for Life has got good taste.

Home

We'll be heading home in an hour or so as I must face the Toad work on the morrow.

Which raises the question, in our case, as to where home actually is. Like Willy Loman we are always sort of temporary, but unlike Willy I don't think either of us quite feel that way.

This puts me in mind of an old fellow at a job interview I endured more than 30 years ago - I think he was some kind of parent-governor - who challenged my desire to teach in a place far from where I was born (Rotherham!) telling me I needed roots. It's difficult to represent the astonishing avidity he managed to inject into the vowel sound of that little word, but let me tell you he almost bit it in two, such was his enthusiasm for it/them. I remember thinking that if such roots held me back as surely as they had done to him, I would choose to avoid them. Of course, in those days I didn't have the courage to say that aloud, more's the pity.

These ramblings have been prompted in part by my reading of Flannery O'Connor's essay The Regional Writer. It was clearly of some importance to her to be seen as a Georgia writer, which is particularly ironic considering her Catholic affiliations. But then, possibly not so. One of the odd benefits of a Catholic upbringing is a peculiar sense of internationalism which never seems to get in the way of where you actually are. We had a picture of Pope Paul VI on the wall when I was a little lad, and there was never any doubt he outranked Queen Elizabeth by quite a distance. Mind you, the royals were pretty low on any league table of those we regarded as our betters, so that's not saying much.

I suppose any writing worth its salt will have a sense of the local, otherwise it will feel like the unanchored observations of a tourist. Even when Shakespeare's in Illyria he's really pottering around on the south bank of the Thames, or gazing into the Avon.

Back Pages

Spent a lazy morning reading Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs and Steel) and Flannery O'Connor (Everything That Rises Must Converge), though not necessarily in that order. Found both rewarding, in their very different ways. Diamond gives one a wonderful sense of distance from it all; O'Connor shoves one's face in it. Both useful places to occupy.

Joyous Noise

One of the jollier aspects of being in KL for Chinese New Year is getting to hear the fire crackers going off through the night. I should probably disapprove of them being let off, for various grim-visaged civic-minded reasons, but I'm afraid I just can't bring myself to do so.

Another equally joyous noise accompanied us as we drove down to Alor Gajah this afternoon. I'd dug out an old Deutsche Grammophon tape of Christmas Music (bits of Bach's Christmas Oratorio for one) from the baroque earlier in the day and duly gave it an airing, unseasonal as that may have been. It put Noi to sleep but kept me happily alert. Now if only they played this kind of thing in the malls in December I might just enjoy Christmas shopping.

23.00

Got to enjoy more noise - and colourful visuals - from fireworks going off in the distance as we enjoyed a late night cuppa at Aziz's place at Rembia. Highly satisfactory as an end to the day.