The Highly Significant Birthday is approaching. I have booked the week before and after off. In case I get some uncontrollable emotions, or just don't want to get out of bed. Sometimes, though, I'm not sure I can tell what is actual emotion and what is pollen and too little sleep. So my posting is going to be a bit erratic.
In other news, I dropped Tidal. Listen, I searched for "Shoegaze" and it came back with about three entries. A colleague at work searched on Spotify, and it returned pages of the stuff. So I cancelled Tidal and signed up for Spotify.
The king of shoegaze compilations on You Tube seems to be the unlikely-moinkered Tabitha Mustang. If you've never heard any shoegaze, try this
I finally gave up on my old-school copper broadband service from Talk-Talk, and upgraded to their FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) service. Which has churned out 40Mbs down and 10Mbps up so far since. I even speed-tested it, and got pretty darn close, even though the route included the wireless-ac to my laptop. 40Mbs down by the way, is slightly more than what we old telecom folk used to call a DS3 (34Mbs). Back in the mid-1990's I am told, selling a DS3 across the Atlantic meant celebrations involving champagne and nightclubs. Now every home can have one.
And then one day my Yolt app demanded my passport number and other KYC (as we in the retail banking trade call it) details. And it would not let me get to the control panel without it. I was upset by this, because I don't like software strong-arming me, found the Contact Us email on their site, and asked them to DELETE MY ACCOUNT several times in all caps. Which they did without any fuss. My suspicion that they were about to launch actual banking services via the app was confirmed a day or so ago in the news.
And over Easter, I listened to Parsifal and Gotterdammerung on Spotify. Probably not quite CD quality, but it confirmed to me why I'm not rushing to get Wagner in my collection. The first movement of Parsifal is musically astonishing, whether you understand German or not. But the second act is a lot of singing, and the music probably means a lot more if you know what Kundry just tried to suggest to Parsifal.
Thursday, 25 April 2019
Monday, 22 April 2019
Heavenly Glory (this is a Michael Porfirio Mason in-joke)
Thursday, 18 April 2019
Longford River
I have an earlier post about the Longford river, and here's what a bit of it looks like between the DPD depot and the culvert across the Air Park. I imagine someone who knew their willow from their oak would see in a flash that this was an uncultivated mess in dire need of some sensible pruning and shaping, but... oh wait, that much is obvious, even if you don't know what kind of trees those scraggly things are.
Monday, 15 April 2019
A Baroque Binge
Towards the end of last year I read two histories of music: Burkholder et al A History of Western Music, and Sadie and Latham's Cambridge Music Guide.
A while later, thinking over what I had read, I realised that the music I really, really like comes from the Baroque period - though I dislike Baroque architecture and am not too keen on Baroque painting.
But the music… tuneful, rhythmic, complicated in an ear-catching way, endlessly creative, and clearly written for performance by near-virtuoso musicians. It is at once familiar and novel, rewards attentive listening and yet fades politely into the background when you want it to. This is because much of it was written for audiences who were often talking, dining or dancing, and so the composers could pull all sorts of musical tricks that their fellow musicians would admire but would go straight over the heads of the audience. It's musicians' music, yet still entertaining and sometimes sublime.
J S Bach, G F Handel, and Antonio Vivaldi are the Holy Trinity of the Baroque, and I have a bunch of music by them. I also have some Purcell, Monteverdi, Couperin, Rameau, Geminiani, and Hasse from earlier years. So over a few weeks I treated myself to something I knew I would like, rather than something (like Schumann symphonies) I know I should try to appreciate. This is what I picked up:
I'm so glad I did. Lovely stuff.
All from Foyles, which has a small but perfectly-formed music section. It's not as sprawling as the much-missed classical department of Tower Records, Piccadilly, but they make good choices. Once you get past the piles of compilation box sets.
A while later, thinking over what I had read, I realised that the music I really, really like comes from the Baroque period - though I dislike Baroque architecture and am not too keen on Baroque painting.
But the music… tuneful, rhythmic, complicated in an ear-catching way, endlessly creative, and clearly written for performance by near-virtuoso musicians. It is at once familiar and novel, rewards attentive listening and yet fades politely into the background when you want it to. This is because much of it was written for audiences who were often talking, dining or dancing, and so the composers could pull all sorts of musical tricks that their fellow musicians would admire but would go straight over the heads of the audience. It's musicians' music, yet still entertaining and sometimes sublime.
J S Bach, G F Handel, and Antonio Vivaldi are the Holy Trinity of the Baroque, and I have a bunch of music by them. I also have some Purcell, Monteverdi, Couperin, Rameau, Geminiani, and Hasse from earlier years. So over a few weeks I treated myself to something I knew I would like, rather than something (like Schumann symphonies) I know I should try to appreciate. This is what I picked up:
(And the first three volumes as well)
I'm so glad I did. Lovely stuff.
All from Foyles, which has a small but perfectly-formed music section. It's not as sprawling as the much-missed classical department of Tower Records, Piccadilly, but they make good choices. Once you get past the piles of compilation box sets.
Thursday, 11 April 2019
Why I Don't (Yet) Have Any Wagner on CD
Richard Wagner wrote thirteen operas, of which there are no recordings I’ve seen of the first three, Rienzi is regarded as an apprentice-piece, and The Flying Dutchman as the first where Wagner comes into his own. The Dutchman stands with any nineteenth-century opera by any of the other big names, and the remaining eight are as far beyond the rest of the operatic repertory as Shakespeare is beyond the rest of theatre. Those nine are:
Tannhauser (210 mins)
Loengrin (235 mins)
Rheingold (160 mins)
The Valkerie (235 mins)
Siegfried (250 mins)
Gotterdammerung (275 mins)
Tristan and Isolde (235 mins)
The Mastersingers of Nuremburg (275 mins)
Parsifal (245 mins)
I have seen all nine, all at the English National Opera. I got started on Wagner with Solti’s recording of Parsifal on Decca, and I borrowed that from Richmond Library because I was reading Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies, and Popper hated Wagner, so I wanted to see what the fuss was about. I was sucked in from the opening bars. Parsifal is a lot of twentieth-century music that slipped into the mid-nineteenth century.
I do not own one of his operas, and I have a boxed set of Ligeti and all of Berio’s Sequenzas. Recently I thought of buying a couple. I haven’t got round to it.
For one thing, Wagner operas cost upwards of £35 each, though there’s a recent Ring cycle for £45. For another, it really matters who is performing, especially for those of us who started with Solti. I’m not buying a live recording, because it’s just not possible to get the depth and precision of sound a studio can provide. If I’m paying that money, I want to put the headphones on and hear the details. There are not many interpretations available, since recording Wagner costs a lot more than even recording Mahler.
It’s the sheer time needed to listen to Wagner. It’s not background music to focus in and out while writing blog posts. It’s sit-down-and-listen-and-don’t-do-anything-else. So is a lot of that 19th-century orchestral stuff, and that doesn’t always suit me. Those running times, and those are without fifteen-minute breaks between acts, and in some cases, an hour for an evening meal. The Mikado clocks in around 130 minutes, and Carmen at 155 minutes. I’m pretty sure the mid-week performance of Mastersingers I went to started at 4:00PM, and a Tristan at 5:00 PM.
My life at the moment is more suited to the pleasant complexities of the Baroque. When, if, I ever stop working, I will buy Wagner’s operas and spend the whole day listening to one, as it should be.
And remember, if you're married, and there was music when she walked down the aisle to you, it was written by Wagner:
Tannhauser (210 mins)
Loengrin (235 mins)
Rheingold (160 mins)
The Valkerie (235 mins)
Siegfried (250 mins)
Gotterdammerung (275 mins)
Tristan and Isolde (235 mins)
The Mastersingers of Nuremburg (275 mins)
Parsifal (245 mins)
I have seen all nine, all at the English National Opera. I got started on Wagner with Solti’s recording of Parsifal on Decca, and I borrowed that from Richmond Library because I was reading Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies, and Popper hated Wagner, so I wanted to see what the fuss was about. I was sucked in from the opening bars. Parsifal is a lot of twentieth-century music that slipped into the mid-nineteenth century.
I do not own one of his operas, and I have a boxed set of Ligeti and all of Berio’s Sequenzas. Recently I thought of buying a couple. I haven’t got round to it.
For one thing, Wagner operas cost upwards of £35 each, though there’s a recent Ring cycle for £45. For another, it really matters who is performing, especially for those of us who started with Solti. I’m not buying a live recording, because it’s just not possible to get the depth and precision of sound a studio can provide. If I’m paying that money, I want to put the headphones on and hear the details. There are not many interpretations available, since recording Wagner costs a lot more than even recording Mahler.
It’s the sheer time needed to listen to Wagner. It’s not background music to focus in and out while writing blog posts. It’s sit-down-and-listen-and-don’t-do-anything-else. So is a lot of that 19th-century orchestral stuff, and that doesn’t always suit me. Those running times, and those are without fifteen-minute breaks between acts, and in some cases, an hour for an evening meal. The Mikado clocks in around 130 minutes, and Carmen at 155 minutes. I’m pretty sure the mid-week performance of Mastersingers I went to started at 4:00PM, and a Tristan at 5:00 PM.
My life at the moment is more suited to the pleasant complexities of the Baroque. When, if, I ever stop working, I will buy Wagner’s operas and spend the whole day listening to one, as it should be.
And remember, if you're married, and there was music when she walked down the aisle to you, it was written by Wagner:
Monday, 8 April 2019
Recovery Is A Means To Sobriety, Not Fun
When I first got sober, the task itself was a challenge and a source of excitement and discovery. After a good few years, when I had regular employment and some degree of emotional sobriety, the thrill of physical sobriety was gone. I have to remember that it’s something I do every day, and can lose any day. That’s why I still go to meetings.
The same has happened with the self-development stuff. Early nights needed for the early mornings prevent the parties and even the opera and the theatre; the careful diet discourages blow-outs and gimmick food; sobriety cuts out booze and drugs, and that has serious consequences for anyone’s sex life, let alone mine. Life has turned into a stream of comforting and bland white-food experiences.
At which point, you said all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Which is one of those things people say without really understanding it.
What is work? One answer is that it’s something we would only do if we were being paid to do it. I like that one, but that misses the essential bit. Work is anything we do that is goal-directed, rather than for the fun of the thing itself. Employment is work, because the aim is to get paid by doing whatever the boss need me to do. Shopping for food is work. The gym is work, and so is making the bed, ironing the sheets, reading a non-fiction book, tidying a room, cleaning the car, making a painting, taking photographs, networking in the pub after work, chasing girls… a lot more things are goal-directed than you might believe. Sleeping is goal-directed activity, and so work, which is why I wake up exhausted every morning.
Being dull is about being poor company, withdrawn, shy, not being funny, amusing, pleasant, not knowing how to take part in the chatter, the teasing, and the all-round bonhomie. It’s about Jack not being fun for other people rather than having fun for himself.
Being a dull boy may not be such a bad thing, if the only company you have to keep is forever getting into fights, debt, unplanned pregnancies, and going in and out of jail, or if the people you know are gossipy, back-biting, empty-headed, and don’t do much more than eat, drink, shop and get high.
What is it about work that makes Jack a dull boy? Trick question: it only makes Jack dull if it’s that kind of work. Drudgery for someone else’s benefit.
A lot of the self-improvement stuff can be habit, but habit does not mean drudgery, and it is all for oneself.
The trick is to remember that there was a time I didn’t do it, and how I felt then. I could consider that I could stop, and what the consequences of doing that would be. And sometimes, instead of saying “this is just this again”, to say “this is what I do”.
The same has happened with the self-development stuff. Early nights needed for the early mornings prevent the parties and even the opera and the theatre; the careful diet discourages blow-outs and gimmick food; sobriety cuts out booze and drugs, and that has serious consequences for anyone’s sex life, let alone mine. Life has turned into a stream of comforting and bland white-food experiences.
At which point, you said all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Which is one of those things people say without really understanding it.
What is work? One answer is that it’s something we would only do if we were being paid to do it. I like that one, but that misses the essential bit. Work is anything we do that is goal-directed, rather than for the fun of the thing itself. Employment is work, because the aim is to get paid by doing whatever the boss need me to do. Shopping for food is work. The gym is work, and so is making the bed, ironing the sheets, reading a non-fiction book, tidying a room, cleaning the car, making a painting, taking photographs, networking in the pub after work, chasing girls… a lot more things are goal-directed than you might believe. Sleeping is goal-directed activity, and so work, which is why I wake up exhausted every morning.
Being dull is about being poor company, withdrawn, shy, not being funny, amusing, pleasant, not knowing how to take part in the chatter, the teasing, and the all-round bonhomie. It’s about Jack not being fun for other people rather than having fun for himself.
Being a dull boy may not be such a bad thing, if the only company you have to keep is forever getting into fights, debt, unplanned pregnancies, and going in and out of jail, or if the people you know are gossipy, back-biting, empty-headed, and don’t do much more than eat, drink, shop and get high.
What is it about work that makes Jack a dull boy? Trick question: it only makes Jack dull if it’s that kind of work. Drudgery for someone else’s benefit.
A lot of the self-improvement stuff can be habit, but habit does not mean drudgery, and it is all for oneself.
The trick is to remember that there was a time I didn’t do it, and how I felt then. I could consider that I could stop, and what the consequences of doing that would be. And sometimes, instead of saying “this is just this again”, to say “this is what I do”.
Thursday, 4 April 2019
Dutch Apple Pie, Zandvoort
Lunchtime dessert: apple pie, vanilla ice cream, beach outside the window. Zandvoort.
Monday, 1 April 2019
Let’s Have Lots of Gun Control, But...
I’m a Brit. Brits can own guns: shotguns and light caliber rifles. No .38 snub-noses, .357 magnums, Tec-9’s, Uzi’s, AK-47’s nor any other military weapon. This has been so for a long, long time. A criminal who takes a gun to a crime will do a LOT more time than if he had slipped a knuckle-duster in his pocket. This change in the law reduced offences in which a firearm was involved from 24,094 in 2003/4 to 8,399 in 2015/6.
There has been exactly one school shooting in the UK (Dunblane, 1996), and two mass shootings (Hungerford 1987, and Cumbria 2010).
Britain has all the personal freedom you could want. People come from all over the world to our little island because they will be left alone to live their lives, as long as they leave others alone to live theirs. People may go to the USA to follow a dream of riches and fame, but they come to the UK to live their lives without onerous state interference. Surely there are bureaucrats with far too many powers, but that’s bureaucracy everywhere. But if you pay your bills and stay away from the Family Courts and Social Services, you are as free as a bird. The bureaucrats are busy enough dealing with their regulars and covering up their cock-ups, they don’t need to find trouble.
And yet we have some of the strictest gun control. On. The. Planet.
There are countries in the world where a decent man needs a practical firearm to defend himself. New Zealand is not one of them, but it has an organisation called the New Zealand Shooters’ Association, and until recently ordinary civilians who weren’t criminals or taking psychiatric medication were allowed to have semi-automatic weapons and even assault rifles.
I know guns don’t kill people, people kill people. But if the people who have a yen to kill people can’t get the guns, they will let the urge go un-acted upon. Because killing people without guns is messy, bloody, up close, and more likely to go wrong for the killer.
The gun control nuts use their right to have a loaded semi-automatic AK-47 in the house as the touchstone of individual liberty. Listen to them and it feels like it is the only thing they care about, and the only things that matters. Meanwhile, in the USA, the Police can seize anything they want without a Court Order on suspicion of criminal activity. Focussing on gun control means you miss all the other stuff the bureaucrats are taking away. In the name of not letting a crisis go to waste, the New Zealand censor banned Jordan Peterson’s unreadable best-seller 12 Rules For Life because it might encourage more right-wing nuts. No legal possession of semi-automatics, no crisis to hide heavy-handed ideological censorship.
I say let’s have lots and lots of gun control.
But Governments have to take the guns from the Bad Guys - the criminals, drug cartels, organised terrorist groups and guerrilla forces - first. Then they can disarm the civilians. And then they have to disarm (most of) the Police.
The only people who should ever be able to get their hands on anything more than a shotgun or a light-gauge rifle are trained, uniformed soldiers. They have to had it back in at the end of the day. I don’t even want to see British policeman with those Heckler and Koch semi-automatic rifles.
There has been exactly one school shooting in the UK (Dunblane, 1996), and two mass shootings (Hungerford 1987, and Cumbria 2010).
Britain has all the personal freedom you could want. People come from all over the world to our little island because they will be left alone to live their lives, as long as they leave others alone to live theirs. People may go to the USA to follow a dream of riches and fame, but they come to the UK to live their lives without onerous state interference. Surely there are bureaucrats with far too many powers, but that’s bureaucracy everywhere. But if you pay your bills and stay away from the Family Courts and Social Services, you are as free as a bird. The bureaucrats are busy enough dealing with their regulars and covering up their cock-ups, they don’t need to find trouble.
And yet we have some of the strictest gun control. On. The. Planet.
There are countries in the world where a decent man needs a practical firearm to defend himself. New Zealand is not one of them, but it has an organisation called the New Zealand Shooters’ Association, and until recently ordinary civilians who weren’t criminals or taking psychiatric medication were allowed to have semi-automatic weapons and even assault rifles.
I know guns don’t kill people, people kill people. But if the people who have a yen to kill people can’t get the guns, they will let the urge go un-acted upon. Because killing people without guns is messy, bloody, up close, and more likely to go wrong for the killer.
The gun control nuts use their right to have a loaded semi-automatic AK-47 in the house as the touchstone of individual liberty. Listen to them and it feels like it is the only thing they care about, and the only things that matters. Meanwhile, in the USA, the Police can seize anything they want without a Court Order on suspicion of criminal activity. Focussing on gun control means you miss all the other stuff the bureaucrats are taking away. In the name of not letting a crisis go to waste, the New Zealand censor banned Jordan Peterson’s unreadable best-seller 12 Rules For Life because it might encourage more right-wing nuts. No legal possession of semi-automatics, no crisis to hide heavy-handed ideological censorship.
I say let’s have lots and lots of gun control.
But Governments have to take the guns from the Bad Guys - the criminals, drug cartels, organised terrorist groups and guerrilla forces - first. Then they can disarm the civilians. And then they have to disarm (most of) the Police.
The only people who should ever be able to get their hands on anything more than a shotgun or a light-gauge rifle are trained, uniformed soldiers. They have to had it back in at the end of the day. I don’t even want to see British policeman with those Heckler and Koch semi-automatic rifles.
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