When I was growing up, there were two things that I didn't believe could really be blue. The first was the sea. Sure, it was always blue on maps and in illustrations, but since I was only familiar with the greyish Atlantic that I saw from the beaches of Florida and South Carolina, I thought that this must be an artistic fancy. It wasn't until I visited Greece and saw the Aegean that I realised just how blue water could be.
The second was the human eye. I'm at a loss to explain how I could have believed this for so long, but as a child I was sure that people with "blue" eyes merely had grey or hazel eyes with a tinge of blue. Perhaps I knew a lot of vain grey-eyed people, or perhaps I was too shy to look many people in the eye. Maybe my thinking was influenced by my own eye colour, which was greyish-hazel until adolescence, when my eyes became a definite green. Whatever it was, I don't think it was until I met Chris and spent a lot of time looking into his eyes that I understood that all those songs and poems about blue eyes weren't romantic exaggerations.
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Tuesday, 29 September 2009
Blue 1
The sky was a brilliant clear blue when we went to Tate Britain on Saturday. Chris and I went by ourselves, but as often happens when I go into London, there was someone else with us in my mind: my best friend, who lives too far away to come in person. When I take pictures -- as I do constantly these days -- it's often of things he might be interested in; the protests in Parliament Square for example. A demonstration about Sri Lanka was next to one about Iraq and Afghanistan, which was, curiously, next to one protesting against Freemasonry (I couldn't photograph that last one properly).
Much of the Houses of Parliament seemed too obvious a subject for photography, but I couldn't resist a picture of one of the slightly silly-looking lions, tongue protruding below a fanged grin, hoisting a gold pennant.
After the exhibition we walked through Victoria Tower Gardens and passed the Buxton Memorial Fountain, which I hadn't known existed. This drinking fountain, surrounded by elaborate stonework and covered with a tile canopy, was erected in 1865 to commemorate the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire some 30 years before. In 1957 it was moved to the Gardens from Parliament Square, although the Minister of Works admitted it was impossible to clean it of all the soot that had accumulated on it. Fifty years later it was restored more thoroughly.
From a distance I couldn't imagine what this structure was or when it had been built. The spire looked like a Ukrainian Easter egg, covered in a filigree of pink, lavender, green, yellow and blue; near its base was a row of five-petaled blue flowers with protruberant round centres. It was strange to think that it came from an era I associated with staid, colourless monuments, and I remembered my friend writing about how Greek and Roman statues had originally been brightly painted.
Elsewhere in the Gardens was a cast of Rodin's Burghers of Calais, one of twelve original casts permitted by the French Government after Rodin's death. Whoever put the statue up went against Rodin's wishes by placing the defeated figures on an elevated pedestal, rather than presenting them on the same level as the viewer.
I also took a photo of a Black-Headed Gull -- in non-breeding plumage now, with just a dark smudge behind its ear -- walking along a wall near the riverbank, with the buildings on the other side of the Thames in the background.
But my pictures rarely come out as I want them to. On sunny days my subjects melt, ghostlike, into the brilliant light; on overcast days they fade dully into the background. I'm told I need a better camera, but sometimes I feel as if reality itself were trying to elude my attempts to capture it.
Much of the Houses of Parliament seemed too obvious a subject for photography, but I couldn't resist a picture of one of the slightly silly-looking lions, tongue protruding below a fanged grin, hoisting a gold pennant.After the exhibition we walked through Victoria Tower Gardens and passed the Buxton Memorial Fountain, which I hadn't known existed. This drinking fountain, surrounded by elaborate stonework and covered with a tile canopy, was erected in 1865 to commemorate the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire some 30 years before. In 1957 it was moved to the Gardens from Parliament Square, although the Minister of Works admitted it was impossible to clean it of all the soot that had accumulated on it. Fifty years later it was restored more thoroughly.
From a distance I couldn't imagine what this structure was or when it had been built. The spire looked like a Ukrainian Easter egg, covered in a filigree of pink, lavender, green, yellow and blue; near its base was a row of five-petaled blue flowers with protruberant round centres. It was strange to think that it came from an era I associated with staid, colourless monuments, and I remembered my friend writing about how Greek and Roman statues had originally been brightly painted.
Elsewhere in the Gardens was a cast of Rodin's Burghers of Calais, one of twelve original casts permitted by the French Government after Rodin's death. Whoever put the statue up went against Rodin's wishes by placing the defeated figures on an elevated pedestal, rather than presenting them on the same level as the viewer.I also took a photo of a Black-Headed Gull -- in non-breeding plumage now, with just a dark smudge behind its ear -- walking along a wall near the riverbank, with the buildings on the other side of the Thames in the background.
But my pictures rarely come out as I want them to. On sunny days my subjects melt, ghostlike, into the brilliant light; on overcast days they fade dully into the background. I'm told I need a better camera, but sometimes I feel as if reality itself were trying to elude my attempts to capture it.
Monday, 28 September 2009
Baby loris!
Exciting news from London Zoo's slender lorises, who, despite being hassled by some of the less bright human visitors, have produced their first offspring. A brief press release on PRLog tells us the baby's sex isn't known yet; there's nothing on the zoo's own web site at the time of writing.
Sunday, 27 September 2009
Turner at Tate Britain
The strapline for Tate Britain's exhibition Turner and the Masters seems silly and sensationalistic: "Rivalry, obsession, jealousy... the story of Turner's battle to outdo all other artists". But the actual premise behind it is interesting. The exhibition explores Turner's work in the light of his relationship with other artists: the old masters who influenced him, and the contemporaries with whom he sometimes cooperated and sometimes competed. It achieves this simply by hanging Turner's paintings next to the works that inspired them.
I'll admit to not previously having been familiar with a lot of the paintings in the exhibition, whether by Turner or by others. But I found that even when two works depicted very similar subjects (a landscape, seascape or stone ruins), it was easy to tell which was Turner's simply by his extraordinary use of light. (He was in fact known as the "Painter of Light"; fortunately, he died before Thomas Kinkade could sue him.) A striking early example was "St Vincent's Tower", painted when Turner was 17 and based on a detail from an aquatint by Paul Sandby. Where Sandby's picture was purely documentary, Turner creates a touching and evocative scene.
Turner's work doesn't always stand up so well against its inspiration, though. His "Venus and Adonis" looked simply wooden next to Titian's "Death of St Peter Martyr". I'm not a great fan of Rembrandt, and my main thought on seeing "Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery" was "How's Jesus supposed to write with his finger on those stone steps?" But next to the Rembrandt, Turner's "Pilate Washing His Hands" looked like a chaotic mess. It's actually a very interesting painting in some ways, but if Turner's aim was to beat Rembrandt at his own game, he failed.
Further into the exhibition, we got a look at the wonderfully acerbic world of Georgian artists and art critics. (Turner's "Jessica" was described by one contemporary reviewer as "a lady getting out of a large mustard-pot".) Many reviews of the show have mentioned Turner's upstaging Constable by painting a single red buoy, but I was equally fascinated by a nasty trick he played on his friend George Jones (not that one). Shortly before an exhibition, Turner asked Jones what subject he had painted for the show, and in what size. Then he turned up with a painting the same size and depicting the same subject -- "Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the Burning Fiery Furnace", which hung next to Jones's "The Burning Fiery Furnace".
The painting that will stick in my mind most, though, is Turner's astonishing "Battle of Trafalgar". With the violence of battle thrust into the foreground and the sails drooping from the broken masts like injured tissue, it made de Loutherberg's "Glorious First of June" look almost prim.
I'll admit to not previously having been familiar with a lot of the paintings in the exhibition, whether by Turner or by others. But I found that even when two works depicted very similar subjects (a landscape, seascape or stone ruins), it was easy to tell which was Turner's simply by his extraordinary use of light. (He was in fact known as the "Painter of Light"; fortunately, he died before Thomas Kinkade could sue him.) A striking early example was "St Vincent's Tower", painted when Turner was 17 and based on a detail from an aquatint by Paul Sandby. Where Sandby's picture was purely documentary, Turner creates a touching and evocative scene.
Turner's work doesn't always stand up so well against its inspiration, though. His "Venus and Adonis" looked simply wooden next to Titian's "Death of St Peter Martyr". I'm not a great fan of Rembrandt, and my main thought on seeing "Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery" was "How's Jesus supposed to write with his finger on those stone steps?" But next to the Rembrandt, Turner's "Pilate Washing His Hands" looked like a chaotic mess. It's actually a very interesting painting in some ways, but if Turner's aim was to beat Rembrandt at his own game, he failed.
Further into the exhibition, we got a look at the wonderfully acerbic world of Georgian artists and art critics. (Turner's "Jessica" was described by one contemporary reviewer as "a lady getting out of a large mustard-pot".) Many reviews of the show have mentioned Turner's upstaging Constable by painting a single red buoy, but I was equally fascinated by a nasty trick he played on his friend George Jones (not that one). Shortly before an exhibition, Turner asked Jones what subject he had painted for the show, and in what size. Then he turned up with a painting the same size and depicting the same subject -- "Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the Burning Fiery Furnace", which hung next to Jones's "The Burning Fiery Furnace".
The painting that will stick in my mind most, though, is Turner's astonishing "Battle of Trafalgar". With the violence of battle thrust into the foreground and the sails drooping from the broken masts like injured tissue, it made de Loutherberg's "Glorious First of June" look almost prim.
Saturday, 26 September 2009
Abusive teachers
A big news story in Britain yesterday concerned a Welsh primary-school teacher, Joanna Hyde, who was found guilty of professional misconduct for insulting, shouting at and throwing objects at her pupils:
I know from experience the terror that teachers like this can cause: I met more than one specimen during my school days.
There was a first-grade teacher at my elementary school (I thought I'd finally forgotten her name, but it just popped into my head again: Mrs Neal) with tightly curled black hair and a mouth buried in wrinkles. I met her at lunchtime on my first day of school. The cafeteria served milk in little cartons, which I'd never had at home, and I couldn't open mine. I was intimidated by my move from kindergarten to "big school", and would probably have been too shy to ask for help in any case, so I just sat there after I'd finished my food and most of the other children had gone to the playground.
Then Mrs Neal came over -- to help with the milk carton, or so I thought.
"Are you done eating?" she said.
"Yes." (I was always literal-minded.)
"Then take your tray up and get out of here, or I'll smack you."*
Fortunately, since my elementary school had open classrooms (don't ask me how that idea got put through in Barbour County, West Virginia), Mrs Neal was one of three teachers in charge of us, and I never had to deal with her for a full day. But the time I spent with her was bad enough. She didn't smack as many kids as she threatened to, but she smacked enough for the danger to be real. I can remember once desperately crossing my legs in her class, and then bursting into tears when I finally had to ask permission to go to the toilet.
Eventually I realised that all the other kids were just as frightened of her, although we only ever dared discuss it in whispers. Somehow that made it easier to bear.
Of course, in Philippi in the early 1980s, children had no defence against teachers like that. Bullying -- whether by fellow children or by adults -- was simply considered part of growing up, something we had to learn to cope with. I'm very glad that attitudes are different now and that schoolchildren are no longer expected to suffer such abuse.
Unfortunately, there will always be those who think that because they suffered, all future generations should too -- who moan about "political correctness gone mad" (does anyone ever talk about "political correctness being perfectly sane"?) and claim society has gone soft because we now view children as human beings with a right to be treated civilly.
The Daily Mail's comments section is always a sure place to find these people. Some of the remarks posted there remind me of the old line from Monty Python: "When I was at school, I was beaten regularly every 30 minutes, and it never did me any harm, except for psychological maladjustment and blurred vision".
* This was still -- just about -- legal when I started school.
One pupil was so intimidated he asked his mother to dye his red hair brown so he would be less noticeable to Hyde.
Another pupil was found clinging on to railings outside the school, unwilling to go inside to face Hyde, a panel from the general teaching council of Wales heard. ...
[The school's headteacher] said one parent told her that her daughter was having nightmares about school and she was afraid of Hyde, who taught year five pupils, aged nine and 10.
Other parents, she said, told her their children had started bed-wetting, had lost confidence and had become withdrawn and upset since starting in Hyde's class. ...
Reading documentary evidence, the presenting officer for the general teaching council, Louise Price, said one pupil's mother said their child started going straight to their bedroom and putting on their pyjamas after school because they "didn't want to be around noise".
That pupil, she said, told their parents Hyde shouted at the children throughout the day and they could not understand why she was shouting.
I know from experience the terror that teachers like this can cause: I met more than one specimen during my school days.
There was a first-grade teacher at my elementary school (I thought I'd finally forgotten her name, but it just popped into my head again: Mrs Neal) with tightly curled black hair and a mouth buried in wrinkles. I met her at lunchtime on my first day of school. The cafeteria served milk in little cartons, which I'd never had at home, and I couldn't open mine. I was intimidated by my move from kindergarten to "big school", and would probably have been too shy to ask for help in any case, so I just sat there after I'd finished my food and most of the other children had gone to the playground.
Then Mrs Neal came over -- to help with the milk carton, or so I thought.
"Are you done eating?" she said.
"Yes." (I was always literal-minded.)
"Then take your tray up and get out of here, or I'll smack you."*
Fortunately, since my elementary school had open classrooms (don't ask me how that idea got put through in Barbour County, West Virginia), Mrs Neal was one of three teachers in charge of us, and I never had to deal with her for a full day. But the time I spent with her was bad enough. She didn't smack as many kids as she threatened to, but she smacked enough for the danger to be real. I can remember once desperately crossing my legs in her class, and then bursting into tears when I finally had to ask permission to go to the toilet.
Eventually I realised that all the other kids were just as frightened of her, although we only ever dared discuss it in whispers. Somehow that made it easier to bear.
Of course, in Philippi in the early 1980s, children had no defence against teachers like that. Bullying -- whether by fellow children or by adults -- was simply considered part of growing up, something we had to learn to cope with. I'm very glad that attitudes are different now and that schoolchildren are no longer expected to suffer such abuse.
Unfortunately, there will always be those who think that because they suffered, all future generations should too -- who moan about "political correctness gone mad" (does anyone ever talk about "political correctness being perfectly sane"?) and claim society has gone soft because we now view children as human beings with a right to be treated civilly.
The Daily Mail's comments section is always a sure place to find these people. Some of the remarks posted there remind me of the old line from Monty Python: "When I was at school, I was beaten regularly every 30 minutes, and it never did me any harm, except for psychological maladjustment and blurred vision".
* This was still -- just about -- legal when I started school.
Friday, 25 September 2009
I am Spartacus
Occasionally a debt collector or private investigator traces a debtor to a Gypsy or Traveller site. On visiting the site, however, the agent often finds that everyone there of the appropriate gender claims to be the wanted person, thus making it impossible to identify the correct one and forcing the stranger to go away empty-handed.
Interestingly, everyone I know who has heard about an incident like this -- including those who pursue debts for a living -- has responded with a kind of awed admiration. This despite the fact that Gypsies and Travellers in Britain are usually subjected to vicious bigotry and abuse.
Interestingly, everyone I know who has heard about an incident like this -- including those who pursue debts for a living -- has responded with a kind of awed admiration. This despite the fact that Gypsies and Travellers in Britain are usually subjected to vicious bigotry and abuse.
Thursday, 24 September 2009
All the leaves are brown, etc. etc.
For me, the Mamas & the Papas embody everything that was wrong with a certain type of late-'60s rock: grotty, strung-out white Californians and wannabe-Californians striving to make music as shallow and dull as their own drug-addled psyches. I'm not going to claim "California Dreamin'" isn't a great song, but Bobby Womack's version is far better, and that's no accident.
So I'm not personally disillusioned by the news that John Phillips was an abusive father in multiple ways, and I have trouble believing the Independent's claim that the revelation "has clouded the reputation of 1960s sunshine pop". (It's interesting, by the way, that they claim his daughter has damaged the music's reputation by making the abuse public, rather than blaming Phillips for committing the abuse in the first place.) Did anyone really think that just because some of the songs mentioned sunshine, the music somehow embodied innocence? Surely everyone knows that heavy drug use was the rationale for the entire genre's existence.
At least since Phillips is dead, there's no dilemma about whether to consume his work. I can understand why people are reluctant to put money in the pocket of a living abuser (although in the case of a musician, this also hurts any innocent people who were involved in making the records). And there are cases where an artist's behaviour was so objectionable that his or her work can no longer be considered suitable for certain purposes -- depending on how you look at it, the inclusion of Eric Gill's Stations of the Cross in Westminster Cathedral is either hideously inappropriate or hideously appropriate.
But Phillips can't profit from his music now, and no one with any sense is using it for any higher purpose. So I can keep listening to Womack's recording without guilt.
So I'm not personally disillusioned by the news that John Phillips was an abusive father in multiple ways, and I have trouble believing the Independent's claim that the revelation "has clouded the reputation of 1960s sunshine pop". (It's interesting, by the way, that they claim his daughter has damaged the music's reputation by making the abuse public, rather than blaming Phillips for committing the abuse in the first place.) Did anyone really think that just because some of the songs mentioned sunshine, the music somehow embodied innocence? Surely everyone knows that heavy drug use was the rationale for the entire genre's existence.
At least since Phillips is dead, there's no dilemma about whether to consume his work. I can understand why people are reluctant to put money in the pocket of a living abuser (although in the case of a musician, this also hurts any innocent people who were involved in making the records). And there are cases where an artist's behaviour was so objectionable that his or her work can no longer be considered suitable for certain purposes -- depending on how you look at it, the inclusion of Eric Gill's Stations of the Cross in Westminster Cathedral is either hideously inappropriate or hideously appropriate.
But Phillips can't profit from his music now, and no one with any sense is using it for any higher purpose. So I can keep listening to Womack's recording without guilt.
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
I joined for the birds, not the kids
Yesterday the RSPB sent me a petition -- a "Letter to the Future" -- that they want me to sign and return to them so they can send it to unspecified "political leaders". I'm never sure how much good this kind of thing actually does, but OK. They're paying for the postage, after all.
The letter asks politicians to take various measures to conserve wildlife, and makes clear that the main reason for doing this is Our Children:
Next to the space for signatures is a blank box headed, "We'd love to know your reasons for signing". Presumably the RSPB wants to gather some quotations from supporters that it can use in its publicity, as it has in the past. One of their adverts a few years ago featured a member's claim that "I didn't join for the birds, I joined for my kids" (am I a bad person because that makes me nauseous?).
I wrote: "I'm not signing because of Our Children -- I have none -- but because wildlife has an inherent value and right to exist, which does not depend on its usefulness or interest to humans, either present or future".
But I don't know if they can fit that on a poster.
The letter asks politicians to take various measures to conserve wildlife, and makes clear that the main reason for doing this is Our Children:
I’m writing this now to make sure our children have a chance of growing up in a world worth living in. ...
If we act now, our children may yet be able to share their world with sparrows and polar bears, eagles and tigers. There’s still a chance that they’ll inherit a world where the engines of life – the air, seas, rivers and forests – are healthy. Where bluebell woods and rainforests won’t be lost forever. ...
I’m signing this letter to show that I care deeply about nature and the world we are creating for our children. In years to come I hope they’ll be able to see that their world is a richer one because of the action we took today.
Next to the space for signatures is a blank box headed, "We'd love to know your reasons for signing". Presumably the RSPB wants to gather some quotations from supporters that it can use in its publicity, as it has in the past. One of their adverts a few years ago featured a member's claim that "I didn't join for the birds, I joined for my kids" (am I a bad person because that makes me nauseous?).
I wrote: "I'm not signing because of Our Children -- I have none -- but because wildlife has an inherent value and right to exist, which does not depend on its usefulness or interest to humans, either present or future".
But I don't know if they can fit that on a poster.
Tuesday, 22 September 2009
Auden on hell
As a child I knew, with calm certainty, that I was going to hell -- not through heathenism or wickedness, but through sheer bad luck. The same forces that had landed me in school and in the midst of bullies would ensure that I had a similarly unpleasant deal in the afterlife, which I pictured as being roughly modelled on my elementary school: an eternity of orange-carpeted corridors, filled with the smell of tinned ravioli and the thwacks and shrieks of a nearby dodgeball game.
When I came to think about these things more thoroughly, hell became more of a problem. I tend to think that nobody ends up there without trying pretty bloody hard, but I'm aware that this may not be what most Christians believe, and it certainly isn't what most people think most Christians believe. Even now, my least favourite part of being a Christian is having to explain to nonbelieving friends that I don't think they're going to burn for eternity.
I'm relieved that while, as a Catholic, I'm required to believe in the existence of hell, I'm not required to believe that anyone has gone or ever will go there (though many Catholics seem happy to believe just that). Teilhard de Chardin apparently said that this was the greatest comfort of his faith, and that alone is enough to make me forgive him for Piltdown Man.
None of this necessarily makes it any easier for me to understand what Auden's talking about in his poem "Hell", but I like the poem anyway:
When I came to think about these things more thoroughly, hell became more of a problem. I tend to think that nobody ends up there without trying pretty bloody hard, but I'm aware that this may not be what most Christians believe, and it certainly isn't what most people think most Christians believe. Even now, my least favourite part of being a Christian is having to explain to nonbelieving friends that I don't think they're going to burn for eternity.
I'm relieved that while, as a Catholic, I'm required to believe in the existence of hell, I'm not required to believe that anyone has gone or ever will go there (though many Catholics seem happy to believe just that). Teilhard de Chardin apparently said that this was the greatest comfort of his faith, and that alone is enough to make me forgive him for Piltdown Man.
None of this necessarily makes it any easier for me to understand what Auden's talking about in his poem "Hell", but I like the poem anyway:
Hell is neither here nor there,
Hell is not anywhere,
Hell is hard to bear.
It is so hard to dream posterity
Or haunt a ruined century
And so much easier to be.
Only the challenge to our will,
Our pride in learning any skill,
Sustains our effort to be ill.
To talk the dictionary through
Without a chance word coming true
Is more than Darwin’s apes could do.
Yet pride alone could not insist
Did we not hope, if we persist,
That one day Hell might actually exist.
In time, pretending to be blind
And universally unkind
Might really send us out of our mind.
If we were really wretched and asleep
It would be then de trop to weep,
It would be natural to lie,
There’d be no living left to die.
Monday, 21 September 2009
If Auden were on a message board, he'd be thrown off
I'd been warned that my copy of Auden's Collected Poems contained only his final revisions, and that these were sometimes inferior to the original published versions. But I didn't realise the full effect of this until today, when I came to my favourite poem of his, "In Memory of W.B. Yeats". Or, at least, some version of it is my favourite. The version in this volume leaves out some of the lines I love best:
This doesn't entirely ruin the poem -- Part I remains astonishing, as do some of the surviving stanzas from Part III ("Intellectual disgrace/Stares from every human face/And the seas of pity lie/Locked and frozen in each eye"). But I do wonder if it would have become one of my favourites if I'd read this version first. And it also makes me wonder what I might be missing as I read poems less familiar to me.
Revising a poem that's already been published has always struck me as pointless and unfair. It reminds me a bit of the habit some bloggers and message board users have of going back and substantially editing old posts, thus rendering absurd or irrelevant any responses they've received in the meantime. So annoying is this practice that the administrators of some message boards disable editing or block members who abuse it.
I'm told there's no collection that includes both Auden's originals and his revised versions. Perhaps we'll have to wait till his work goes out of copyright.
Time that is intolerant
of the brave and innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,
Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honours at their feet.
Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.
This doesn't entirely ruin the poem -- Part I remains astonishing, as do some of the surviving stanzas from Part III ("Intellectual disgrace/Stares from every human face/And the seas of pity lie/Locked and frozen in each eye"). But I do wonder if it would have become one of my favourites if I'd read this version first. And it also makes me wonder what I might be missing as I read poems less familiar to me.
Revising a poem that's already been published has always struck me as pointless and unfair. It reminds me a bit of the habit some bloggers and message board users have of going back and substantially editing old posts, thus rendering absurd or irrelevant any responses they've received in the meantime. So annoying is this practice that the administrators of some message boards disable editing or block members who abuse it.
I'm told there's no collection that includes both Auden's originals and his revised versions. Perhaps we'll have to wait till his work goes out of copyright.
Sunday, 20 September 2009
In which I get the chefs of two cultures to hate me at once
Since going veggie, I've been frustrated by the number of Thai recipes I have that are completely vegetarian except for a small amount of fish sauce. They just don't taste the same if you leave it out, so for the past few years I've been trying to find a good vegetarian substitute.
In her excellent cookbook The Asian Vegan Kitchen Hema Parekh has a recipe for vegetarian nước chấm -- but much as I usually enjoy her recipes, I find that this one just doesn't do it for me. It's also relatively complicated to make and doesn't keep for very long. I needed something I could just pull off the shelf and throw into the pot.
Over the years, I've realised the key to finding vegetarian substitutes for non-veggie ingredients isn't to try to replicate the taste exactly. Rather, it's to find something that hits roughly the same notes as the original. In the case of fish sauce, this means something salty, pungent and somewhat acrid. The fishiness, surprisingly, isn't that important, since you generally can't taste it in the finished dish.
Soya sauce was salty, but didn't have a strong enough flavour to be a wholly satisfactory substitute. Hijiki replaced some of the fishy taste, but nothing else (and there's the added complication that it might kill you).
By coincidence, last month when we were recreating Sebald's walk from Vertigo, we passed a shop selling Australian food. In the window was a big display of Vegemite, and having recently discussed this yeast-extract spread with an Australian friend, I decided to try it out.* I turned out to have a taste for it and have been eating it on toast pretty much every day.
This evening I was making a Thai noodle dish when my eye fell upon the jar of Vegemite in the cupboard. Salty, pungent, slightly bitter ... hmmm ....
It actually works pretty well. Vegemite is quite thick, so it needs to be dissolved in the other liquid ingredients, and I found I needed to increase the liquid slightly as well. But the finished dish tasted fine -- even Chris liked it, and he's not as fond of Vegemite in its pure form as I am. It's just as well Ocado sells the stuff.
* Our visit to this shop turned out to be doubly fortuitous, because they also sold Canadian foods, many of which were actually American brands that are popular in Canada. I was finally able to buy some Cream of Wheat, which I'd given up hope of finding in the UK.
In her excellent cookbook The Asian Vegan Kitchen Hema Parekh has a recipe for vegetarian nước chấm -- but much as I usually enjoy her recipes, I find that this one just doesn't do it for me. It's also relatively complicated to make and doesn't keep for very long. I needed something I could just pull off the shelf and throw into the pot.
Over the years, I've realised the key to finding vegetarian substitutes for non-veggie ingredients isn't to try to replicate the taste exactly. Rather, it's to find something that hits roughly the same notes as the original. In the case of fish sauce, this means something salty, pungent and somewhat acrid. The fishiness, surprisingly, isn't that important, since you generally can't taste it in the finished dish.
Soya sauce was salty, but didn't have a strong enough flavour to be a wholly satisfactory substitute. Hijiki replaced some of the fishy taste, but nothing else (and there's the added complication that it might kill you).
By coincidence, last month when we were recreating Sebald's walk from Vertigo, we passed a shop selling Australian food. In the window was a big display of Vegemite, and having recently discussed this yeast-extract spread with an Australian friend, I decided to try it out.* I turned out to have a taste for it and have been eating it on toast pretty much every day.
This evening I was making a Thai noodle dish when my eye fell upon the jar of Vegemite in the cupboard. Salty, pungent, slightly bitter ... hmmm ....
It actually works pretty well. Vegemite is quite thick, so it needs to be dissolved in the other liquid ingredients, and I found I needed to increase the liquid slightly as well. But the finished dish tasted fine -- even Chris liked it, and he's not as fond of Vegemite in its pure form as I am. It's just as well Ocado sells the stuff.
* Our visit to this shop turned out to be doubly fortuitous, because they also sold Canadian foods, many of which were actually American brands that are popular in Canada. I was finally able to buy some Cream of Wheat, which I'd given up hope of finding in the UK.
Friday, 18 September 2009
What's a computer? Eat y'self fitter!
From the BBC, news of a freshly recycled frightening new threat from cyberspace:
Since obesity kills many more people than anorexia or bulimia, I assume the RC Psych thinks the authors of "size acceptance" and "fat liberation" sites should also have their right to free speech curtailed. Of course, both types of site are stupid and destructive -- but people in a free society have the right to be stupid and self-destructive. The last thing I need is a combination of Alan Johnson and The Daily Mail deciding which ideas are good for me.
By the way, on Radio 1 this morning there was an interview with a young anorexic woman who said she started visiting "pro-ana" sites because she felt no one she knew in real life was willing to listen to her or try to understand why she was starving herself. I would have hoped that an organisation of psychiatrists might try to learn something from that, rather than launching straight into moral panic.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists (RC Psych) is calling for urgent action to protect vulnerable young people from eating-disorder websites.
It says the number of websites promoting eating disorders has soared with the growth of social networking.
The RC Psych wants the government's Child Internet Safety Council (UKCCIS) to mark such sites as harmful and raise awareness among parents and teachers. ...
The Royal College of Psychiatrists says the government must do more to address the dangers of pro-eating disorder websites and keep young people safe online.
It has called on UKCCIS, which was established a year ago, to expand its definition of harmful web content to include what it calls pro-ana (anorexia) and pro-mia (bulimia) websites.
Since obesity kills many more people than anorexia or bulimia, I assume the RC Psych thinks the authors of "size acceptance" and "fat liberation" sites should also have their right to free speech curtailed. Of course, both types of site are stupid and destructive -- but people in a free society have the right to be stupid and self-destructive. The last thing I need is a combination of Alan Johnson and The Daily Mail deciding which ideas are good for me.
By the way, on Radio 1 this morning there was an interview with a young anorexic woman who said she started visiting "pro-ana" sites because she felt no one she knew in real life was willing to listen to her or try to understand why she was starving herself. I would have hoped that an organisation of psychiatrists might try to learn something from that, rather than launching straight into moral panic.
Thursday, 17 September 2009
Classical music at the blood centre
Usually when I go to give blood they're listening to Magic FM, which provides quite a fitting soundtrack when one is growing weak from blood loss. Someone new has obviously taken over the radio, though, because at my session today it was Classic FM. When I walked in they were playing Leonidas Kavakos's recent recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto -- only the first movement, of course.
"Oh", said the nurse who checked my haemoglobin level, "we can't have this music, can we?"
"We've got a bit of culture today", said the man who swabbed my arm for the needle. "Bet no one will be able to stand it after 10 minutes".
But then another attendant related how she used to play the violin as a girl, and soon staff and donors alike were laughing and recalling their childhood music lessons -- "My dad stuffed cotton wool in his ears to block out the squeaking". "I travelled all over East Anglia with my church's bell-ringing group; I was the smallest girl and I rang the biggest bells!"
Of course, this being Classic FM, the Mendelssohn was followed by something from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. Then came an excerpt from The Rite of Spring, the plot of which the DJ coyly declined to discuss "before the watershed" (there is no watershed on radio). But no one had demanded a change in stations by the time I left.
"Oh", said the nurse who checked my haemoglobin level, "we can't have this music, can we?"
"We've got a bit of culture today", said the man who swabbed my arm for the needle. "Bet no one will be able to stand it after 10 minutes".
But then another attendant related how she used to play the violin as a girl, and soon staff and donors alike were laughing and recalling their childhood music lessons -- "My dad stuffed cotton wool in his ears to block out the squeaking". "I travelled all over East Anglia with my church's bell-ringing group; I was the smallest girl and I rang the biggest bells!"
Of course, this being Classic FM, the Mendelssohn was followed by something from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. Then came an excerpt from The Rite of Spring, the plot of which the DJ coyly declined to discuss "before the watershed" (there is no watershed on radio). But no one had demanded a change in stations by the time I left.
Wednesday, 16 September 2009
Pottos united
I must repeat yesterday's praise for London Zoo, because they've now answered my question about the whereabouts of the Pottos. It seems a new male was brought in from mainland Europe earlier this year, and, according to the usual rules, has to spend six months in quarantine in the Zoo's hospital. The two Pottos the Zoo already had, which are both female, were taken to live with the male, because Pottos are happier living in social groups (and also, as the keeper politely put it, to "encourage breeding behaviour"). All three should be back on display in a newly-built enclosure soon.
Tuesday, 15 September 2009
Loris update
A few weeks ago, I posted about some idiots who were teasing the slender lorises at London Zoo. The sight upset me enough that shortly after writing my post, I sent an e-mail to the Zoo describing what happened and suggesting they put a member of staff in the nocturnal section to keep visitors under control.
Today I received a nice e-mail from one of the senior keepers in the nocturnal section. It says, in part:
Full marks to the Zoo for taking my letter seriously and trying to do something about the situation. (Now let me see if I can get them to tell me what they've done with the pottos ....)
Today I received a nice e-mail from one of the senior keepers in the nocturnal section. It says, in part:
Unfortunately our staff numbers are limited and therefore we have to prioritize which areas are constantly manned. The Night-zone is regularly patrolled by the keeping staff but unfortunately, as you have observed, when they are not present some individuals can cause disturbance to the animals. I will pass your comments on to my managers and hopefully this may allow us to justify getting a member of staff based in this area.
With regard to the Slender Loris, we have observed the behavior that you described although the public tend to stop doing it as soon as we arrive. [Ha! - LB] We are planning on constructing a raised flower bed or similar in front of this enclosure that should hopefully stop the public being able to touch the glass without obstructing the view of these amazing animals. Again I will pass on your comments as they will hopefully enable us to get this bed in place faster.
Full marks to the Zoo for taking my letter seriously and trying to do something about the situation. (Now let me see if I can get them to tell me what they've done with the pottos ....)
Monday, 14 September 2009
Counting sheep
For much of my adult life I've had trouble sleeping. I've followed all the old wives' tales to cure insomnia, but have found that none works consistently; the only sure cure is patience.
One old remedy that has always puzzled me is counting sheep. I don't know when or where this practice originated or how it was ever supposed to work. The notion always seemed too comical to induce sleep.
At about three o'clock one morning, it occurred to me that maybe, in becoming divorced from our rural roots, we had misunderstood the original method. Perhaps the idea wasn't to picture bleating cartoon sheep leaping merrily over a fence, but to imagine yourself wandering among a peacefully grazing flock and counting the indistinguishable animals that surrounded you.
I tried this, but soon found myself noticing little differences between the sheep. One had slightly thicker wool than those beside it, and one had a nicked ear. There were black sheep, white sheep, multicoloured sheep, ewes with lambs. As I studied them I found myself growing more and more anxious about how I would look after them all -- did I have enough supplies? Enough knowledge?
Eventually I became vaguely aware that I was dreaming all this, and I gradually slipped into deeper sleep. The trick has only worked once, though.
One old remedy that has always puzzled me is counting sheep. I don't know when or where this practice originated or how it was ever supposed to work. The notion always seemed too comical to induce sleep.
At about three o'clock one morning, it occurred to me that maybe, in becoming divorced from our rural roots, we had misunderstood the original method. Perhaps the idea wasn't to picture bleating cartoon sheep leaping merrily over a fence, but to imagine yourself wandering among a peacefully grazing flock and counting the indistinguishable animals that surrounded you.
I tried this, but soon found myself noticing little differences between the sheep. One had slightly thicker wool than those beside it, and one had a nicked ear. There were black sheep, white sheep, multicoloured sheep, ewes with lambs. As I studied them I found myself growing more and more anxious about how I would look after them all -- did I have enough supplies? Enough knowledge?
Eventually I became vaguely aware that I was dreaming all this, and I gradually slipped into deeper sleep. The trick has only worked once, though.
Sunday, 13 September 2009
Grierson can buy it
I've been reading Auden's Collected Poems (which unfortunately, it seems, contains only Auden's final revisions, not the earlier versions that some consider to be superior). I hadn't realised just how young he was when he started publishing -- I just finished "Letter to Lord Byron", arguably his first really good poem, and realised he was still only 29 when he wrote it.
I enjoyed reading Auden's allusions to his contemporaries in "Lord Byron" -- T.E. Lawrence, A.A. Milne, etc. -- but there was a reference at the beginning of Part IV I didn't get:
Who was Grierson? I looked it up and realised I should've known already. He was the filmmaker -- "the father of British and Canadian documentary film", according to his unusually well-written Wikipedia entry -- with whom Auden and Benjamin Britten worked on the famous documentary Night Mail, released in 1936, the same year as "Lord Byron". It's still not clear to me why he could've bought the Atlantic, though.
All of Night Mail is available on YouTube, in three parts. Auden's bit is in part 3 if you want to jump straight to it.
(This look back at the history of the British postal service reminds me that Royal Mail apparently had a strike last week, and I didn't even notice. How times have changed.)
I enjoyed reading Auden's allusions to his contemporaries in "Lord Byron" -- T.E. Lawrence, A.A. Milne, etc. -- but there was a reference at the beginning of Part IV I didn't get:
A ship again; this time the Dettifoss.
Grierson can buy it; all the sea I mean,
All this Atlantic that we've now to cross
Heading for England's pleasant pastures green.
Who was Grierson? I looked it up and realised I should've known already. He was the filmmaker -- "the father of British and Canadian documentary film", according to his unusually well-written Wikipedia entry -- with whom Auden and Benjamin Britten worked on the famous documentary Night Mail, released in 1936, the same year as "Lord Byron". It's still not clear to me why he could've bought the Atlantic, though.
All of Night Mail is available on YouTube, in three parts. Auden's bit is in part 3 if you want to jump straight to it.
(This look back at the history of the British postal service reminds me that Royal Mail apparently had a strike last week, and I didn't even notice. How times have changed.)
Saturday, 12 September 2009
And the angels left her: a story
Sarah was 17 when her life was transformed by angels. There were two of them, colleagues with clipboards and cold accents, who conferred over her head as she walked home from school. They confirmed to each other that Sarah's blood was steadily turning black, contaminated by the bitterness and squalor of the world. Her only hope was to open her veins and let the tainted blood out.
Like many of the prophets of old, Sarah resisted her calling. Her mind had trouble working out the logistics, and her hands grew damp whenever she looked at the kitchen knives in their magnetic holder. Meanwhile, her blood grew blacker and blacker, and her heart puckered and shuddered when it passed through.
One night, as she stared into the blackness surrounding her and pondered her predicament, a half-forgotten chemistry lesson came into her head.
"Osmosis", she thought. "The darkness in my blood is very dense, much more concentrated than the darkness that surrounds me. If I just stop holding it inside, it will flow out of me and back into the universe."
And so it was: she unclenched herself, and the blackness flowed out of her. Thus scientific rationalism once again led to the rejection of heavenly authority.
Like many of the prophets of old, Sarah resisted her calling. Her mind had trouble working out the logistics, and her hands grew damp whenever she looked at the kitchen knives in their magnetic holder. Meanwhile, her blood grew blacker and blacker, and her heart puckered and shuddered when it passed through.
One night, as she stared into the blackness surrounding her and pondered her predicament, a half-forgotten chemistry lesson came into her head.
"Osmosis", she thought. "The darkness in my blood is very dense, much more concentrated than the darkness that surrounds me. If I just stop holding it inside, it will flow out of me and back into the universe."
And so it was: she unclenched herself, and the blackness flowed out of her. Thus scientific rationalism once again led to the rejection of heavenly authority.
Friday, 11 September 2009
I predict a riot
Sometimes at work we get messages warning us of traffic problems or road closures on the way home. Today we got one warning us to beware of the fascists.
Although my workplace isn't particularly near the Central Mosque, the streets outside are filling with police. One of my colleagues popped into a pub at lunchtime and was confronted with a little group of BNP* supporters, refreshing themselves for the afternoon's activity.
Part of me wants to go and check out the protest so I can report on it for the blog, but I've been told in no uncertain terms that I won't be doing that, so you'll have to content yourselves with my account of any aftermath. I'm a bit concerned about Chris, who would ordinarily walk home that way, but he's promised me he'll find a different route.
* So he says. The BNP aren't officially participating in this demonstration, but I suspect there's quite a bit of overlap between them and the groups that are taking part.
Although my workplace isn't particularly near the Central Mosque, the streets outside are filling with police. One of my colleagues popped into a pub at lunchtime and was confronted with a little group of BNP* supporters, refreshing themselves for the afternoon's activity.
Part of me wants to go and check out the protest so I can report on it for the blog, but I've been told in no uncertain terms that I won't be doing that, so you'll have to content yourselves with my account of any aftermath. I'm a bit concerned about Chris, who would ordinarily walk home that way, but he's promised me he'll find a different route.
* So he says. The BNP aren't officially participating in this demonstration, but I suspect there's quite a bit of overlap between them and the groups that are taking part.
Thursday, 10 September 2009
Have fair fallen
Radio 3 tells me that today is probably Purcell's birthday (though no one knows for sure). This seems like a good enough excuse to post Hopkins' dense but lovely poem "Henry Purcell", complete with the poet's introductory explanation:
Some of the motives behind this poem are rather queasy -- as Hopkins explained in a letter to Robert Bridges, the first stanza expresses his hope that "Purcell is not damned for being a Protestant" -- but it's the imagery and language that impress me. The comparison of Purcell to a "great stormfowl" shaking his wings to reveal the full brilliance of his plumage takes some deciphering, but the image Hopkins creates is astonishing and original. As for the second stanza, in which Hopkins says he values Purcell's music not for the moods it creates, but for its intrinsic qualities, it's as good a piece of musical criticism as any I've read.
There's an intriguing bit of linguistic trivia in Hopkins' explanation of the opening phrase "have fair fallen". In the same letter to Bridges, he says:
The phrase "Have had your dinner beforehand" seems to have gone out of use since Hopkins' day -- does anyone still say it?
The poet wishes well to the divine genius of Purcell and praises him that, whereas other musicians have given utterance to the moods of man’s mind, he has, beyond that, uttered in notes the very make and species of man as created both in him and in all men generally.
HAVE fair fallen, O fair, fair have fallen, so dear
To me, so arch-especial a spirit as heaves in Henry Purcell,
An age is now since passed, since parted; with the reversal
Of the outward sentence low lays him, listed to a heresy, here.
Not mood in him nor meaning, proud fire or sacred fear,
Or love or pity or all that sweet notes not his might nursle:
It is the forgèd feature finds me; it is the rehearsal
Of own, of abrupt self there so thrusts on, so throngs the ear.
Let him Oh! with his air of angels then lift me, lay me! only I’ll
Have an eye to the sakes of him, quaint moonmarks, to his pelted plumage under
Wings: so some great stormfowl, whenever he has walked his while
The thunder-purple seabeach plumèd purple-of-thunder,
If a wuthering of his palmy snow-pinions scatter a colossal smile
Off him, but meaning motion fans fresh our wits with wonder.
Some of the motives behind this poem are rather queasy -- as Hopkins explained in a letter to Robert Bridges, the first stanza expresses his hope that "Purcell is not damned for being a Protestant" -- but it's the imagery and language that impress me. The comparison of Purcell to a "great stormfowl" shaking his wings to reveal the full brilliance of his plumage takes some deciphering, but the image Hopkins creates is astonishing and original. As for the second stanza, in which Hopkins says he values Purcell's music not for the moods it creates, but for its intrinsic qualities, it's as good a piece of musical criticism as any I've read.
There's an intriguing bit of linguistic trivia in Hopkins' explanation of the opening phrase "have fair fallen". In the same letter to Bridges, he says:
Have is the sing. imperative (or optative if you like) of the past, a thing possible and actual both in logic and grammar, but naturally a rare one. As in the 2nd pers. we say "Have done" or in making appointments "Have had your dinner beforehand", so one can say in the 3rd pers. not only "Fair fall" of what is present or future but also "Have fair fallen" of what is past.
The phrase "Have had your dinner beforehand" seems to have gone out of use since Hopkins' day -- does anyone still say it?
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
It's not against any religion to want to dispose of a pigeon
Since I started carrying a camera around, I've felt compelled to photograph anything even slightly out of the ordinary. Like this pigeon sitting on a fire escape at work yesterday:
It must have been ill, because it stayed there all afternoon. I had to take the photo through the glass of the fire door, resulting in a rather ghostly image. Normally even I find it hard to feel much sympathy for feral pigeons, but when they sit placidly like that -- with their semi-comical expressions never quite capable of showing pain -- it's easier than usual to think of them as doves.
Unfortunately, while I was kneeling in the stairwell to take the photo, a large group of co-workers arrived back from lunch.
"Oh", said one, looking over my head, "she's taking a picture of a dead bird."
"It's not dead", I said, wanting to preserve some vestige of pride, and the bird obligingly lifted its head.
Eventually a grandmotherly woman from Customer Service arrived and decided the pigeon must be hungry. Intending to give it a packet of biscuits from her immense handbag, she began fumbling with the door, which was marked with the strangely anthropomorphic warning THIS DOOR IS ALARMED. I was ever so slightly tempted to let her go ahead, but decided that causing the building to be evacuated would be more than my employers could put up with.
It must have been ill, because it stayed there all afternoon. I had to take the photo through the glass of the fire door, resulting in a rather ghostly image. Normally even I find it hard to feel much sympathy for feral pigeons, but when they sit placidly like that -- with their semi-comical expressions never quite capable of showing pain -- it's easier than usual to think of them as doves.
Unfortunately, while I was kneeling in the stairwell to take the photo, a large group of co-workers arrived back from lunch.
"Oh", said one, looking over my head, "she's taking a picture of a dead bird."
"It's not dead", I said, wanting to preserve some vestige of pride, and the bird obligingly lifted its head.
Eventually a grandmotherly woman from Customer Service arrived and decided the pigeon must be hungry. Intending to give it a packet of biscuits from her immense handbag, she began fumbling with the door, which was marked with the strangely anthropomorphic warning THIS DOOR IS ALARMED. I was ever so slightly tempted to let her go ahead, but decided that causing the building to be evacuated would be more than my employers could put up with.
Tuesday, 8 September 2009
Larkin and the loblolly-men
For a long time I resisted reading Philip Larkin's poetry, being put off by his well-publicised attitude toward women and other unsavoury characteristics. Of course I knew and liked "This Be the Verse" -- I memorised it without even meaning to -- but it seemed quite possible that it was the poetic equivalent of a novelty record, and it didn't spur me on to read the rest of his work.
But I finally gave in early this summer, mainly at Nick's prompting, and bought his Collected Poems. And I'm happy to admit it: I was wrong. After reading poems like "Home is So Sad", "Dockery and Son", "Love Songs in Age" and "MCMXIV", I felt slightly annoyed with myself for having remained willfully ignorant of them for so long.
Now that this blog can, at least in theory, reach a worldwide audience, I thought I'd pose a question that has stumped me and the other Larkin fans of my acquaintance. It's about the third stanza of the brilliant "Toads", a poem that I can perhaps identify with too well:
It's the term "loblolly-men" that interests me. At last, my hours spent poring over the Aubrey-Maturin series have paid off, because I do know exactly what a loblolly-man (or, more often, loblolly-boy) was. He was the assistant to a ship's surgeon, performing menial tasks such as dishing out the patients' gruel (known as "loblolly"). But what I don't understand is why Larkin includes him in the list of folk who "live on their wits" and have refused to "let the toad work/ squat on [their lives]". The loblolly-boy may have been low-ranking, but he undeniably had a steady job, and in the old days of the Navy he may very well have been pressed into service.
Does the phrase have another meaning I'm not aware of? Was Larkin somehow using it metaphorically? Or did he just like the way it sounded?
But I finally gave in early this summer, mainly at Nick's prompting, and bought his Collected Poems. And I'm happy to admit it: I was wrong. After reading poems like "Home is So Sad", "Dockery and Son", "Love Songs in Age" and "MCMXIV", I felt slightly annoyed with myself for having remained willfully ignorant of them for so long.
Now that this blog can, at least in theory, reach a worldwide audience, I thought I'd pose a question that has stumped me and the other Larkin fans of my acquaintance. It's about the third stanza of the brilliant "Toads", a poem that I can perhaps identify with too well:
Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts --
They don't end as paupers ...
It's the term "loblolly-men" that interests me. At last, my hours spent poring over the Aubrey-Maturin series have paid off, because I do know exactly what a loblolly-man (or, more often, loblolly-boy) was. He was the assistant to a ship's surgeon, performing menial tasks such as dishing out the patients' gruel (known as "loblolly"). But what I don't understand is why Larkin includes him in the list of folk who "live on their wits" and have refused to "let the toad work/ squat on [their lives]". The loblolly-boy may have been low-ranking, but he undeniably had a steady job, and in the old days of the Navy he may very well have been pressed into service.
Does the phrase have another meaning I'm not aware of? Was Larkin somehow using it metaphorically? Or did he just like the way it sounded?
Monday, 7 September 2009
A love-hate* relationship
We all had bizarre childhood fears -- the dark, the vacuum cleaner, going down the bathtub drain -- but I may have been the only kid in history who was afraid of footnotes. I had what they called an "advanced reading age" (which has given me no advantage whatsoever in later life) and hence was often given editions of children's classics that were intended for a somewhat older audience. A number of these books had notes that had either been added by later editors or (as in the case of The Prince and the Pauper) included by the author in the original text.
This scared the hell out of me. Who were these strangers intruding on my reading? There I was happily lost in the story when an ugly asterisk jerked me back to reality and made me look at the bottom of the page for the commentary of some anonymous know-it-all. I suppose I felt the way other children did when they thought they were being observed by the monsters under the bed while they dreamt.
Later on, when my emotional maturity caught up with my vocabulary, I fell in love with footnotes, endnotes, annotations and commentary of all sorts. I seek out annotated editions of my favourite books. I follow every note in my reading, and feel a twinge of disappointment when it leads me to a mere citation rather than additional comment.
Of course, the Internet has turned us all into annotators, and perhaps it was inevitable that (as The New York Times reports) a publisher would eventually invite readers to submit footnotes for a one of its books via the web. Unfortunately, the parenting book they've chosen for this experiment sounds deadly dull (or is that just because I'm not a parent?), but maybe this will lead to more interesting projects in future.
* I also find it annoying when an asterisk doesn't lead anywhere.
This scared the hell out of me. Who were these strangers intruding on my reading? There I was happily lost in the story when an ugly asterisk jerked me back to reality and made me look at the bottom of the page for the commentary of some anonymous know-it-all. I suppose I felt the way other children did when they thought they were being observed by the monsters under the bed while they dreamt.
Later on, when my emotional maturity caught up with my vocabulary, I fell in love with footnotes, endnotes, annotations and commentary of all sorts. I seek out annotated editions of my favourite books. I follow every note in my reading, and feel a twinge of disappointment when it leads me to a mere citation rather than additional comment.
Of course, the Internet has turned us all into annotators, and perhaps it was inevitable that (as The New York Times reports) a publisher would eventually invite readers to submit footnotes for a one of its books via the web. Unfortunately, the parenting book they've chosen for this experiment sounds deadly dull (or is that just because I'm not a parent?), but maybe this will lead to more interesting projects in future.
* I also find it annoying when an asterisk doesn't lead anywhere.
Sunday, 6 September 2009
Art at Kew
I admit to not having heard of the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition until I went to an exhibition of the 2009 winners at Kew Gardens. It turns out that "garden" is defined fairly loosely, to include, for example, a stretch of road in Northern Ireland. I was also slightly disappointed to learn that entries could be previously published, which meant that, especially in the edible plant section, we got some pictures that had already appeared in books or magazines.
But these are quibbles, and there was some great photography in the exhibition. I was particularly taken with two pictures of insects: Jason Smalley's close-up of the wings of a newly emerged dragonfly, and Olegas Kurasovas's astonishing photo of dew clinging to a butterfly's "fur". Elsewhere, Rachel Warne's portfolio "Autumn Study" found surprising beauty in dead plants, and Christina Bollen's picture of frosted sweet gum leaves captured the feeling of a crisp autumn day. Dee Fish's "Freshly picked sweet basil leaves" will almost certainly end up hanging on the walls of a hundred Italian restaurants, but that's no reason to dismiss it. It's beautifully composed and lit -- to me it looks almost like a painting.
The oddest thing to be found in the exhibition was a spoof article someone had stuck to one of the display boards, claiming that the trustees of Kew were going to allow gold mining in the Gardens. I don't know who put it there, but no one rushed to remove it.
Meanwhile, Kew's Shirley Sherwood Gallery is hosting an exhibition called The Art of Plant Evolution. The Gallery, a relatively new addition to the Gardens, serves to display one of the world's largest collections of botanical art -- combining work from Kew's own archives with the paintings collected by Sherwood over a 20-year period. Most of what goes on show there is from the 20th or 21st centuries; most is by women, and a large proportion is by artists from Australia or New Zealand (I don't know whether this reflects Sherwood's particular interests, or wider trends within botanical art).
The new exhibition arranges plants (and fungi) in the likely order in which they first appeared on Earth, according to a new evolutionary tree based on DNA evidence. For each plant family, the Gallery displays prehistoric fossils (on loan from the Natural History Museum) and paintings of the family's modern representatives.
Plants are probably not the first thing people think of when they think of evolution. Similarly, botanical art perhaps has not always got the respect it deserved -- the Sherwood Gallery is, in fact, the first gallery in the world devoted to it. It's sometimes been thought of merely as scientific illustration, its aesthetic elements ignored. But many of the paintings in the exhibition were strikingly beautiful, with the lovingly detailed plants set against a plain background. Viewers were forced to look thoroughly at something they might have seen countless times before, yet without ever really seeing it.
A few paces behind us in the Gallery were a pair of Australian women who kept stopping at every illustration of an Australian plant and reminiscing about how they used to see it during their childhoods.
But these are quibbles, and there was some great photography in the exhibition. I was particularly taken with two pictures of insects: Jason Smalley's close-up of the wings of a newly emerged dragonfly, and Olegas Kurasovas's astonishing photo of dew clinging to a butterfly's "fur". Elsewhere, Rachel Warne's portfolio "Autumn Study" found surprising beauty in dead plants, and Christina Bollen's picture of frosted sweet gum leaves captured the feeling of a crisp autumn day. Dee Fish's "Freshly picked sweet basil leaves" will almost certainly end up hanging on the walls of a hundred Italian restaurants, but that's no reason to dismiss it. It's beautifully composed and lit -- to me it looks almost like a painting.
The oddest thing to be found in the exhibition was a spoof article someone had stuck to one of the display boards, claiming that the trustees of Kew were going to allow gold mining in the Gardens. I don't know who put it there, but no one rushed to remove it.
Meanwhile, Kew's Shirley Sherwood Gallery is hosting an exhibition called The Art of Plant Evolution. The Gallery, a relatively new addition to the Gardens, serves to display one of the world's largest collections of botanical art -- combining work from Kew's own archives with the paintings collected by Sherwood over a 20-year period. Most of what goes on show there is from the 20th or 21st centuries; most is by women, and a large proportion is by artists from Australia or New Zealand (I don't know whether this reflects Sherwood's particular interests, or wider trends within botanical art).
The new exhibition arranges plants (and fungi) in the likely order in which they first appeared on Earth, according to a new evolutionary tree based on DNA evidence. For each plant family, the Gallery displays prehistoric fossils (on loan from the Natural History Museum) and paintings of the family's modern representatives.
Plants are probably not the first thing people think of when they think of evolution. Similarly, botanical art perhaps has not always got the respect it deserved -- the Sherwood Gallery is, in fact, the first gallery in the world devoted to it. It's sometimes been thought of merely as scientific illustration, its aesthetic elements ignored. But many of the paintings in the exhibition were strikingly beautiful, with the lovingly detailed plants set against a plain background. Viewers were forced to look thoroughly at something they might have seen countless times before, yet without ever really seeing it.
A few paces behind us in the Gallery were a pair of Australian women who kept stopping at every illustration of an Australian plant and reminiscing about how they used to see it during their childhoods.
Saturday, 5 September 2009
Come one, come all
The response to my little reader consultation was, technically, unanimous, so I've decided to take the leap and open this blog up to the public.
Regular readers should take care not to get trampled in the stampede.
Regular readers should take care not to get trampled in the stampede.
Friday, 4 September 2009
Sir John Soane's Museum
On Sunday, while doing our Sebald-inspired walk, we passed a little building in Lincoln's Inn Fields marked "Sir John Soane's Museum". Neither of us had ever heard of this place. It was shut when we found it, but a few days later, looking for something to do indoors on a rainy day, we decided to pay it a visit.
Sir John Soane was a well-respected neo-Classical architect (he designed a major extension of the Bank of England) who devoted his spare time to collecting art and antiquities. From 1794 onward, he set about transforming his home into a museum to display his collections (while still living in portions of the house). When he died in 1837, having become estranged from his only surviving son, he left his museum to the nation on the condition that the public would be allowed to visit for free. Among the hundreds of objects in the house are the sarcophagus of Seti I (which Soane bought when the British Museum balked at the price); the world's largest collection of Chinese tiles; stones from the 14th-century House of Lords; a hatpin dropped by Charles I at the battle of Naseby; Sir Robert Walpole's desk; three Canaletto paintings; and two of Hogarth's "moral" series of paintings, A Rake's Progress and An Election.
Visiting the museum is an unusual experience. Only a limited number of people are allowed into the house's tiny nooks and narrow passageways at any one time, so new arrivals wait outside the gate until someone else leaves. Visitors have to put handbags and rucksacks into clear plastic carrier bags -- no bags can be carried on the shoulders. Once inside we were asked to sign the visitors' book and then left on our own to explore the house.
Most individual items in the museum aren't labelled, and only a few rooms have placards giving a general overview. However, there are plenty of staff on hand, who seem happy to answer visitors' questions. One Cockney guide gave us a humorous synopsis of the events in A Rake's Progress (I hadn't realised that Handel makes a cameo appearance in the second painting).
In addition to the areas designed to house Soane's collections, the museum also preserves the rooms he lived in. I found these as fascinating as the collections themselves. The more you looked, the more there seemed to be: statues in niches, little stained-glass panels in ceiling domes, and books everywhere. The museum also has an exhibition space, which when we visited was showing a series of photographs taken in Rome by an English priest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
I found myself wondering whether Sebald himself, in his wanderings around London, ever visited this museum; it seems like exactly the sort of thing that would have appealed to him.
Sir John Soane was a well-respected neo-Classical architect (he designed a major extension of the Bank of England) who devoted his spare time to collecting art and antiquities. From 1794 onward, he set about transforming his home into a museum to display his collections (while still living in portions of the house). When he died in 1837, having become estranged from his only surviving son, he left his museum to the nation on the condition that the public would be allowed to visit for free. Among the hundreds of objects in the house are the sarcophagus of Seti I (which Soane bought when the British Museum balked at the price); the world's largest collection of Chinese tiles; stones from the 14th-century House of Lords; a hatpin dropped by Charles I at the battle of Naseby; Sir Robert Walpole's desk; three Canaletto paintings; and two of Hogarth's "moral" series of paintings, A Rake's Progress and An Election.
Visiting the museum is an unusual experience. Only a limited number of people are allowed into the house's tiny nooks and narrow passageways at any one time, so new arrivals wait outside the gate until someone else leaves. Visitors have to put handbags and rucksacks into clear plastic carrier bags -- no bags can be carried on the shoulders. Once inside we were asked to sign the visitors' book and then left on our own to explore the house.
Most individual items in the museum aren't labelled, and only a few rooms have placards giving a general overview. However, there are plenty of staff on hand, who seem happy to answer visitors' questions. One Cockney guide gave us a humorous synopsis of the events in A Rake's Progress (I hadn't realised that Handel makes a cameo appearance in the second painting).
In addition to the areas designed to house Soane's collections, the museum also preserves the rooms he lived in. I found these as fascinating as the collections themselves. The more you looked, the more there seemed to be: statues in niches, little stained-glass panels in ceiling domes, and books everywhere. The museum also has an exhibition space, which when we visited was showing a series of photographs taken in Rome by an English priest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
I found myself wondering whether Sebald himself, in his wanderings around London, ever visited this museum; it seems like exactly the sort of thing that would have appealed to him.
Thursday, 3 September 2009
Prom 63
The Albert Hall's arena had an unfamiliar look when we arrived for the BBC Symphony Orchestra's concert last night. The usual crowd of Promenaders was nowhere to be found -- even the little pool filled with inflatable animals had vanished -- and instead the space was filled with music stands and instruments. Iannis Xenakis's piece Nomos Gamma calls for "98 musicians distributed among the audience". Since placing them in the seats would presumably have been too difficult to arrange, this was the organisers' way of solving the problem.
The downside of this was that less than a third of the usual number of Promenaders could be allowed into the arena. But perhaps they didn't miss much. Heaven knows I try not to be the sort of person who splutters "A kindergarten class could do better than that" upon hearing any new music, but honestly, this really was a painful experience. It's not often I hear a classical work that manages to be both annoying and dull at the same time; the programme assured us Nomos Gamma was only 15 minutes long, but it seemed to go on for four times that. The only entertainment was watching how David Robertson managed to conduct in the round.
Despite this, I was still looking forward to the second Xenakis piece on the programme, Aïs, a setting of texts from Homer and Sappho. Being an ancient-Greek anorak, I was curious about whether the singer would use Erasmian pronunciation (as most scholars in Britain still do), or modern Greek pronunciation (as Xenakis himself presumably would have done). In the event, my question went unanswered, since the singing is so bizarre and extreme -- ranging from falsetto yelps to sepulchural growls -- that it's impossible to make out the words. The piece must take tremendous range and control, and I had to admire baritone Leigh Melrose for rising to the challenge, but I can't say this is something I'd rush to hear again. Still, unlike Nomos Gamma, it did hold my interest till the end.
In between the two Xenakis pieces was Rachmaninov's The Isle of the Dead. In the past, when hearing a work unfamiliar to me, I occasionally used to close my eyes and see what picture formed in my mind. There was no need for me to do so on this occasion, since the programme included a copy of the Arnold Böcklin painting on which Rachmaninov's symphonic poem was based, but I think I would have come up with something similar anyway.
The final piece of the evening, Shostakovich's Ninth Symphony, had been played at the Proms only five times before. It's the lightest of Shostakovich's symphonies (or, as Chris puts it, "the only one you can imagine a monkey dancing to"), and at its premiere it shocked both Soviet and Western critics, who had been expecting a monumental, Beethovenian work in honour of the USSR's victory over Hitler. The BBCSO nicely conveyed the symphony's sardonic humour; I particularly enjoyed the moment in which the comic theme of the Allegretto comes sneaking into the seriousness of the Largo.
With the arena nearly empty of Promenaders, and many seats unsold as well, this Prom just didn't have the atmosphere of the previous ones we attended this season -- there weren't even enough Prommers to hold the usual collection for musical charities. On the other hand, the half-empty hall did mean that we could change seats before the Shostakovich to escape the idiots behind us who had carried on a conversation throughout the previous three works.
The downside of this was that less than a third of the usual number of Promenaders could be allowed into the arena. But perhaps they didn't miss much. Heaven knows I try not to be the sort of person who splutters "A kindergarten class could do better than that" upon hearing any new music, but honestly, this really was a painful experience. It's not often I hear a classical work that manages to be both annoying and dull at the same time; the programme assured us Nomos Gamma was only 15 minutes long, but it seemed to go on for four times that. The only entertainment was watching how David Robertson managed to conduct in the round.
Despite this, I was still looking forward to the second Xenakis piece on the programme, Aïs, a setting of texts from Homer and Sappho. Being an ancient-Greek anorak, I was curious about whether the singer would use Erasmian pronunciation (as most scholars in Britain still do), or modern Greek pronunciation (as Xenakis himself presumably would have done). In the event, my question went unanswered, since the singing is so bizarre and extreme -- ranging from falsetto yelps to sepulchural growls -- that it's impossible to make out the words. The piece must take tremendous range and control, and I had to admire baritone Leigh Melrose for rising to the challenge, but I can't say this is something I'd rush to hear again. Still, unlike Nomos Gamma, it did hold my interest till the end.
In between the two Xenakis pieces was Rachmaninov's The Isle of the Dead. In the past, when hearing a work unfamiliar to me, I occasionally used to close my eyes and see what picture formed in my mind. There was no need for me to do so on this occasion, since the programme included a copy of the Arnold Böcklin painting on which Rachmaninov's symphonic poem was based, but I think I would have come up with something similar anyway.
The final piece of the evening, Shostakovich's Ninth Symphony, had been played at the Proms only five times before. It's the lightest of Shostakovich's symphonies (or, as Chris puts it, "the only one you can imagine a monkey dancing to"), and at its premiere it shocked both Soviet and Western critics, who had been expecting a monumental, Beethovenian work in honour of the USSR's victory over Hitler. The BBCSO nicely conveyed the symphony's sardonic humour; I particularly enjoyed the moment in which the comic theme of the Allegretto comes sneaking into the seriousness of the Largo.
With the arena nearly empty of Promenaders, and many seats unsold as well, this Prom just didn't have the atmosphere of the previous ones we attended this season -- there weren't even enough Prommers to hold the usual collection for musical charities. On the other hand, the half-empty hall did mean that we could change seats before the Shostakovich to escape the idiots behind us who had carried on a conversation throughout the previous three works.
Wednesday, 2 September 2009
Prom 62
The programme of last night's concert by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra had a political theme, though not everyone may have immediately seen the connection between Haydn's hundredth symphony and Shostakovich's Tenth (I know I didn't). The Shostakovich symphony, of course, was premiered soon after Stalin's death and is frequently interpreted as a commentary on his rule. Similarly, Haydn's symphony -- nicknamed the "Military" -- was written in response to the 18th century's own Terror, the bloodshed and repression in revolutionary France.
I've said before that we no longer appreciate what a frightening and confusing time the late 18th century was in Europe. We may remember the phrase "Reign of Terror", but the period it refers to now seems almost picturesque; it makes me wonder if in 150 years' time women will be reading trashy romance novels set in the Gulag. It's possible, too, that we can no longer hear Haydn's compositions in quite the same way that his original audience did. The musical idiom of his time has become too familiar to us -- it's all too easy to stick his music in the box labeled "Viennese Classical" and forget about it. So I found it helpful to be reminded of the impression the "Military" made at its first performance:
Haydn's way of expressing "horrid sublimity" wasn't quite the same as ours, but Mariss Jansons and the orchestra did a good job of bringing out the menace in the second movement. The percussion entered quietly at first, but ominously like the ticking of a clock, and slowly built up to a full assault -- perhaps not a "hellish roar" by the standards of later music, but it was easy to imagine what the effect would have been on an 18th-century listener.
Following this movement several of the percussionists slipped out. At the symphony's finale they reentered, kitted out in drums and cymbals, and marched up and down the stage. For some reason this cheered me up enormously.
Then it was on to more modern musical language, expressing horrors that are fresher in our minds. This actually turned out to be the third time I'd heard the Tenth at the Proms. It formed the first half of a concert by Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón BolÃvar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela in 2007, but to be honest my memories of that Prom are all of the exuberance of the second half (I've never experienced an atmosphere like that in the Albert Hall before or since). The second time was last year with the Berlin Philharmonic. My impressions of that performance are a year old now, but I think I preferred last night's. The tension of the first movement was exquisitely expressed; the "Stalin scherzo" was perhaps a bit more restrained than in other performances I've heard, and the subsequent movements a bit harsher, with the darkness behind the official cheer of the finale brought to the fore.
The woodwind section played exceptionally well. I also found myself noticing, of all things, the triangle. Despite the old jokes about the triangle player in an orchestra having the easiest job in the world, he got quite a workout in this piece, proving that the triangle can be quite an assertive little instrument when a composer wants it to be.
The orchestra played not one, but two encores -- I didn't recognise either, though the second was tantalisingly familiar. I wish more conductors would announce their encores for the benefit of philistines like me.
I've said before that we no longer appreciate what a frightening and confusing time the late 18th century was in Europe. We may remember the phrase "Reign of Terror", but the period it refers to now seems almost picturesque; it makes me wonder if in 150 years' time women will be reading trashy romance novels set in the Gulag. It's possible, too, that we can no longer hear Haydn's compositions in quite the same way that his original audience did. The musical idiom of his time has become too familiar to us -- it's all too easy to stick his music in the box labeled "Viennese Classical" and forget about it. So I found it helpful to be reminded of the impression the "Military" made at its first performance:
It is the advancing to battle; and the march of men, the sounding of the charge, the thundering of the onset, the clash of arms, the groans of the wounded, and what may well be called the hellish roar of the war increase to a climax of horrid sublimity!
Haydn's way of expressing "horrid sublimity" wasn't quite the same as ours, but Mariss Jansons and the orchestra did a good job of bringing out the menace in the second movement. The percussion entered quietly at first, but ominously like the ticking of a clock, and slowly built up to a full assault -- perhaps not a "hellish roar" by the standards of later music, but it was easy to imagine what the effect would have been on an 18th-century listener.
Following this movement several of the percussionists slipped out. At the symphony's finale they reentered, kitted out in drums and cymbals, and marched up and down the stage. For some reason this cheered me up enormously.
Then it was on to more modern musical language, expressing horrors that are fresher in our minds. This actually turned out to be the third time I'd heard the Tenth at the Proms. It formed the first half of a concert by Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón BolÃvar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela in 2007, but to be honest my memories of that Prom are all of the exuberance of the second half (I've never experienced an atmosphere like that in the Albert Hall before or since). The second time was last year with the Berlin Philharmonic. My impressions of that performance are a year old now, but I think I preferred last night's. The tension of the first movement was exquisitely expressed; the "Stalin scherzo" was perhaps a bit more restrained than in other performances I've heard, and the subsequent movements a bit harsher, with the darkness behind the official cheer of the finale brought to the fore.
The woodwind section played exceptionally well. I also found myself noticing, of all things, the triangle. Despite the old jokes about the triangle player in an orchestra having the easiest job in the world, he got quite a workout in this piece, proving that the triangle can be quite an assertive little instrument when a composer wants it to be.
The orchestra played not one, but two encores -- I didn't recognise either, though the second was tantalisingly familiar. I wish more conductors would announce their encores for the benefit of philistines like me.
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
My first metapost
I've been wondering whether it would be a good idea to open this blog up to the public. The obvious advantage would be that other people might enjoy my writing (or maybe I'm just being egotistical), and that I might get valuable feedback from some of the other Shostakovich/Hopkins/potto fanatics out there (I can't be the only one, right?). Potential disadvantages include getting the wrong kind of feedback from trolls and nutters; and, perhaps, certain people finding the blog and recognising themselves in some of my old posts.
What do you think? Do you want to invite the world in, or do you prefer being part of an exclusive club? Your opinions are very welcome in the comments section.
* In my hemisphere.
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