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8 June
Who's mad here*?:
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Commenting on http://www.nhs.uk/news/2012/06june/Pages/exercise-may-not-ease-depression.aspx ('Exercise 'still valid depression treatment')
“Exercise doesn't help depression,” according to The Guardian. The paper said that patients advised to exercise fare no better than those who receive only standard care.
Exercise is among the treatments for depression currently recommended by the NHS, with many patients 'prescribed' a course of physical activity as an alternative to antidepressant medication or therapy. Despite what several headlines have suggested, new research has not re-examined the effect of exercise on depression, but instead looked at whether giving depressed patients additional support to encourage exercise proved beneficial.
During the research, 361 adults with depression were randomly allocated to receive either standard treatment or standard treatment with additional encouragement and advice on exercise. Standard treatment can include medication, therapy and physical activity. This means that all participants could take up prescribed exercise, but some had greater encouragement to do so.
The research found that encouraging activity increased physical activity levels but did not reduce depressive symptoms more than standard care alone. This is a useful finding for NHS staff wishing to know the best way to help patients with depression. However, given that the study did not test the general effect of exercise, the results do not support the view that exercise is 'useless' for treating depression, as some news sources have suggested.
Exercise has a host of benefits for physical and mental health, which may help patients with depression in ways other than reducing their immediate depressive symptoms. These include reducing the risks of other diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
Where did the story come from?
The study was carried out by researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Exeter, and the Peninsula Medical School. It was funded by the Department of Health as part of the National Institute for Health Research’s Health Technology Assessment programme.
The study was published in the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal.
Media reports of this story were slightly misleading, and may have given the impression that the researchers specifically tested the effect of exercise. This was not the case, as the research compared two groups of people who were offered the same range of treatments, but with one group receiving additional support and advice designed to encourage exercise. This meant that all participants had access to exercise-based treatments, but some received some additional encouragement.
The Metro newspaper went too far in saying that the study showed exercise “had no positive benefits on mental health”. The study in question looked at the effect of one particular exercise intervention programme on depression symptoms, so did not directly address other mental health problems or other exercise programmes.
What kind of research was this?
This UK-based multi-centre randomised controlled trial (RCT) looked at whether a specific exercise support programme helped reduce symptoms of depression in adults more than standard care alone. The study was 'pragmatic' in nature, which means it tested interventions in a real-world setting rather than in the highly artificial environment of many trials. For example, patients were prescribed the most appropriate form of treatment from a range currently used in clinical practice, rather than a set treatment that might not have been ideal for them. As such, the study was well designed to assess how the exercise programme would work in reality.
The authors say previous evidence suggests that exercise is beneficial for people with depression, but that this evidence has come from small, less well-designed studies using interventions that may not be practical for use by the NHS. Therefore, this latest research aimed to investigate whether depression symptoms could be reduced by an activity programme that could be practically implemented by the NHS if deemed effective.
This type of study is one of the most effective at demonstrating whether a particular health programme, or 'intervention', has a measurable benefit in patients.
What did the research involve?
The researchers recruited 361 patients, aged 18 to 69 years old, who had recently been diagnosed with depression by their GP. Participants were randomly divided into two groups, who received either usual care methods from their GP or usual care plus a physical activity intervention.
Participants were recruited if they were not taking antidepressant medication at the time of initial diagnosis or if they had been prescribed antidepressants but had not taken these for at least four weeks before their diagnosis. Patients with depression who had failed to respond previously to antidepressants were excluded from the study, as were people aged 70 or over.
Participants in both groups were asked to continue to follow the healthcare advice of their GP for their depression. This was classed as 'usual care' by the researchers. Both groups were, therefore, free to access any treatment usually available in primary care, including antidepressants, counselling, referral to 'exercise on prescription' schemes or secondary care mental health services. However, those in the physical activity group were also offered up to three face-to-face sessions and 10 telephone calls with a trained physical activity facilitator over eight months. The intervention aimed to provide individually tailored support and encouragement to help participants engage in physical activity.
Depression was measured before enrolment and then at four, eight and 12 months after the intervention to measure any changes. Depression was initially diagnosed using standard, recognised assessments, including the 'clinical interview schedule-revised' and the 'Beck depression inventory'. Subsequent changes in depression symptoms were based on self-reported symptoms of depression, as assessed by the Beck inventory score.
During a trial, researchers should aim to conceal, if possible, which treatments participants receive. This is known as 'blinding' and avoids the risk of bias from participants knowing which treatment they are getting. This study was a 'single blinded' RCT as treatment allocation was concealed from the study researchers. It was not feasible to blind the participants to which group they’d been allocated to.
The analysis of this study was appropriate and based on an 'intention to treat principle'. This means that everyone who was allocated to a group was included in the final analysis, irrespective of whether they followed the intervention or dropped out. This is good way of analysing the 'real world' effects of an intervention.
What were the basic results?
At month four, there were no statistically significant improvements in mood among participants encouraged to exercise compared to those in the usual care group. Similarly, there was no evidence that the intervention group had significantly improved mood at the 12-month follow-up compared to those receiving usual care only.
There was no evidence that the exercise intervention led to a statistically significant reduction in the use of antidepressants compared to usual care.
Using data from all three follow-up points combined (four months, eight months and 12 months), the participants in the intervention group reported significantly more physical activity during the follow-up period than those in the usual care group, which was maintained at 12 months. This suggested the activity-support intervention was successful at increasing activity levels. Importantly, the participants stuck with the intervention well and completed on average 7.2 sessions with their exercise advisor. By four months, 102 (56%) participants had at least five contacts with the advisors.
How did the researchers interpret the results?
The researchers concluded that adding an intervention to usual care that encouraged physical activity did not reduce symptoms of depression or the use of antidepressants compared to usual care alone, despite the exercise intervention significantly increasing physical activity levels.
Conclusion
This well-designed randomised control study provides strong evidence that adding an exercise-promoting support programme to standard care did not significantly reduce symptoms of depression compared to standard care alone.
While this study has many strengths, including its large size and randomised design, it is important to bear in mind its limitations.
This study assessed just one type of exercise intervention that involved facilitating greater activity levels. Therefore, this study does not tell us whether other types of support or exercise programme may have a positive effect on depression. Consequently, the study’s findings do not mean that no exercise interventions can reduce symptoms of depression, especially as there is some evidence from systematic reviews that certain types of exercise intervention may be therapeutic.
Also, there are other benefits of exercise beyond those related to mental health. The Daily Mail quoted an expert as saying: “It is important to note that increased physical activity is beneficial for people with other medical conditions such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease and, of course, these conditions can affect people with depression.” The trial did not assess whether exercise prevents depression.
Exercise has a host of benefits for physical and mental health that may help patients with depression in ways other than reducing their immediate symptoms. However, the finding that this exercise support intervention doesn’t seem to reduce depressive symptoms is very useful to NHS staff wishing to know what interventions may help patients with this condition.
So far so good?
The Agent Apsley said on 07 June 2012
OK, so what we seem to learn is that those experiencing depression, if encouraged, will tend to exercise and go on exercising, as against those with just access to information and a lower level of advice from their GP.
Well, any good habit needs to be fostered, and the best of us needs encouragement - I write something, show it to you, and, although you have suggestions for improvement, you say that it is good, and that I should write more. If I trust my judgement or yours, thinking you sincere, I might do some more writing.
Depression is marked by benefiting from prompting or encouragement for many who experience it, though the reality is that they may all too often be alone, having no partner, and can only look to friends and maybe understanding neighbours to offer words of encouragement or reminders. This quite apart from the disabling and debilitating effect of losing or not being in employment (or in employment under pressure), with the resultant likelihood of the additional stress of low income.
Obviously, then, the always rather dubious-sounding claim that, by exercising and releasing endorphins, one may imrove one's prognosis for recovery should not be the only reason for all to be encouraged to exercise. This study seems to show that the specific intervention of encouragement used did tend to give rise, if the participants are truthfully reporting their 'exercise levels' (and not just to second guess that they are supposed to say so), to the establishment of regular exercise in daily life.
Depression's not unique amongst mental-health disorders in that another's insight - 'You might feel better, if you have a shower and change your clothes' - can be a useful intervention, clearly a programme, based on GPs' surgeries and the long-overdue task of properly assessing the physical-health profile and needs of such patients, is needed to give them the kind of prompting to look to the needs of the body that those able to afford personal trainers get.
Comments welcome - here, or via Twitter®!
End-notes
* Postscript (as at 9 June)
I rather wonder whether I am: I took what had been written to me at face value, and believed that my comment had been removed, but, when I go there to see anyone else's comments, mine is still there...
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Friday 8 June 2012
Dolmio® branches out?
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8 June
Some may know the connection - which, as most connections are, may all be in the mind* - or even the history of the connection between Italy and good coffee: they are invited to add an informative comment.
All that I know is that when, at a friend's place, I went to make (sadly, instant) coffee just now, it was in a small jar whose lid suggested that it must formerly have contained pasta sauce (or, maybe, really rich tomato puree).
From this, the brand being (or purporting to be**) from Italy, sprang the thought: this patently isn't it, but do these people sell coffee (anywhere) under that name***?
Answers to that one, please, solely via Twitter, where I have - what Leonora urges me to call - the same John Henry (q.v.).
End-notes
* After all, unless I haven't had the real stuff (when what is available is expensive enough), there isn't actually anything very remarkable about Belgian chocolates, or Swiss ones.
** My fridge and freezer - separates - bear a German trade name that belies Italian manufacture. No matter, as I was interested in the energy-rating of A, not the provenance.
*** By the way, if these good people do not, but want to thank me for the observation of what might be a gap in the market****, I shan't decline a payment - in dollars, to be on the safe side.
**** A nonsensical phrase, as, when one is in a physical market-place, buying a pitch (not least in these times of trouble) is not necessarily difficult or a betrayal of one's business cunning, and the gaps that exist, welcome though they are to find, are for navigating into, around and out of the market.
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8 June
Some may know the connection - which, as most connections are, may all be in the mind* - or even the history of the connection between Italy and good coffee: they are invited to add an informative comment.
All that I know is that when, at a friend's place, I went to make (sadly, instant) coffee just now, it was in a small jar whose lid suggested that it must formerly have contained pasta sauce (or, maybe, really rich tomato puree).
From this, the brand being (or purporting to be**) from Italy, sprang the thought: this patently isn't it, but do these people sell coffee (anywhere) under that name***?
Answers to that one, please, solely via Twitter, where I have - what Leonora urges me to call - the same John Henry (q.v.).
End-notes
* After all, unless I haven't had the real stuff (when what is available is expensive enough), there isn't actually anything very remarkable about Belgian chocolates, or Swiss ones.
** My fridge and freezer - separates - bear a German trade name that belies Italian manufacture. No matter, as I was interested in the energy-rating of A, not the provenance.
*** By the way, if these good people do not, but want to thank me for the observation of what might be a gap in the market****, I shan't decline a payment - in dollars, to be on the safe side.
**** A nonsensical phrase, as, when one is in a physical market-place, buying a pitch (not least in these times of trouble) is not necessarily difficult or a betrayal of one's business cunning, and the gaps that exist, welcome though they are to find, are for navigating into, around and out of the market.
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Wednesday 6 June 2012
Passing through Pimlico
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6 June
* Contains a wealth of spoilers *
Although I cannot think of a time (perhaps six months?) when I did not know the title of Passport to Pimlico (1949), and convince myself that it must have been on t.v. in my youth (although I was expecting Peter Sellers to be in the cast-list, because I was also thinking of I'm All Right, Jack (1959)), a screening yesterday convinces me that I did not really know the film at all. (And I had little conception of where Pimlico was until 30 years ago and an initiation to what, before it became Tate Britian, was The Tate Gallery.)
Not, at any rate, beyond the basic tenet - implied by the title - that Pimlico (actually, just a small part of it) becomes a separate domain. What follows is informed both by seeing it (again?), and by a review at New Empress Magazine, the work of one Ben Sheppard.
As you might have gathered from reading Ben’s review (if you have done so), Passport is not the best of the so-called Ealing comedies, and it is a little patchy: it would be interesting to research into how it was edited into its circulated form, whether Pimlico was merely chosen for euphony (and, in any case, what the name derives from, which has to be more plausible than the alleged origins of Elephant and Castle!), and how the idea was first hit upon. Maybe some day…
Essentially, the scope of the film episodically, dictated by the to and fro between the residents, the British Cabinet Ministers, and all those, such as the spivs, who would exploit the situation, divides into (in no particular order) the actions of :
* The bullish, even belligerent*, Arthur Pemberton (Stanley Holloway), fronting and furthering this series of stand-offs and stalemates between HM Government and the occupants of what appears to be part of Burgundy
* His daughter Connie (Betty Warren) as a siren, initially yielding to the fishmonger, but finding herself preferring the attentions of the Duke of Burgundy (Paul Dupuis)
* Margaret Rutherford, who, with convincingly scatty eccentricity as Professor Hatton-Jones, propounds the territorial claim, and then, at a key moment, approves the rather unlikely Duke's credentials
* The fishmonger's female employee, whose attentions he has overlooked in favour of buttering up Connie, and who (by leaving the tap on before the water-supply, which has been cut off, comes back on floods the pub basement) loses Pimlico its stockpile of provisions
* The character of Edie Randall (Hermione Baddeley) as a lady of lingerie
* The bank manager, Mr Wix (Raymond Huntley), as the Nick Leeson of his time, and, with Pemberton, part of the brains behind the outfit (although not often in agreement about the tactics)
Much is good value, with a sense of exhilaration when, for example, the Pimlico crew halt and board an Underground train that they have climbed down to intercept passing beneath their territory, or when the local constable (Philip Stainton) creeps out and reinstates the water, whilst Connie and others lure the attention of guards on the barbed-wire boundaries.
As Ben rightly says, the Berlin air-lift, which began midway before the year of release (and ended almost 11 months later), must have been a major source for the idea, and there is quite an uneasy feeling to the comedy in places, when, for all the tricks that the Burgundians try (the blockade is busted by air-drops, including a pig on a parachute), the aim of Whitehall is wilfully to starve them into submission.
By contrast with a better Ealing film from the same year, Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), where the idea of a man taking revenge on and systematically murdering his mother's snobbish relatives (who had either cut her off when she married for love, or stood by when it happened) is deliciously wicked and cleverly executed, this tense and awkward feeling means that one cannot really enjoy the stand-off in Passport to Pimlico and how the game plays out, because it is just that little bit too close to home to seem like sheer fun.
End-notes
* Or, in its genuine meaning, ‘feisty’.
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6 June
* Contains a wealth of spoilers *
Although I cannot think of a time (perhaps six months?) when I did not know the title of Passport to Pimlico (1949), and convince myself that it must have been on t.v. in my youth (although I was expecting Peter Sellers to be in the cast-list, because I was also thinking of I'm All Right, Jack (1959)), a screening yesterday convinces me that I did not really know the film at all. (And I had little conception of where Pimlico was until 30 years ago and an initiation to what, before it became Tate Britian, was The Tate Gallery.)
Not, at any rate, beyond the basic tenet - implied by the title - that Pimlico (actually, just a small part of it) becomes a separate domain. What follows is informed both by seeing it (again?), and by a review at New Empress Magazine, the work of one Ben Sheppard.
As you might have gathered from reading Ben’s review (if you have done so), Passport is not the best of the so-called Ealing comedies, and it is a little patchy: it would be interesting to research into how it was edited into its circulated form, whether Pimlico was merely chosen for euphony (and, in any case, what the name derives from, which has to be more plausible than the alleged origins of Elephant and Castle!), and how the idea was first hit upon. Maybe some day…
Essentially, the scope of the film episodically, dictated by the to and fro between the residents, the British Cabinet Ministers, and all those, such as the spivs, who would exploit the situation, divides into (in no particular order) the actions of :
* The bullish, even belligerent*, Arthur Pemberton (Stanley Holloway), fronting and furthering this series of stand-offs and stalemates between HM Government and the occupants of what appears to be part of Burgundy
* His daughter Connie (Betty Warren) as a siren, initially yielding to the fishmonger, but finding herself preferring the attentions of the Duke of Burgundy (Paul Dupuis)
* Margaret Rutherford, who, with convincingly scatty eccentricity as Professor Hatton-Jones, propounds the territorial claim, and then, at a key moment, approves the rather unlikely Duke's credentials
* The fishmonger's female employee, whose attentions he has overlooked in favour of buttering up Connie, and who (by leaving the tap on before the water-supply, which has been cut off, comes back on floods the pub basement) loses Pimlico its stockpile of provisions
* The character of Edie Randall (Hermione Baddeley) as a lady of lingerie
* The bank manager, Mr Wix (Raymond Huntley), as the Nick Leeson of his time, and, with Pemberton, part of the brains behind the outfit (although not often in agreement about the tactics)
Much is good value, with a sense of exhilaration when, for example, the Pimlico crew halt and board an Underground train that they have climbed down to intercept passing beneath their territory, or when the local constable (Philip Stainton) creeps out and reinstates the water, whilst Connie and others lure the attention of guards on the barbed-wire boundaries.
As Ben rightly says, the Berlin air-lift, which began midway before the year of release (and ended almost 11 months later), must have been a major source for the idea, and there is quite an uneasy feeling to the comedy in places, when, for all the tricks that the Burgundians try (the blockade is busted by air-drops, including a pig on a parachute), the aim of Whitehall is wilfully to starve them into submission.
By contrast with a better Ealing film from the same year, Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), where the idea of a man taking revenge on and systematically murdering his mother's snobbish relatives (who had either cut her off when she married for love, or stood by when it happened) is deliciously wicked and cleverly executed, this tense and awkward feeling means that one cannot really enjoy the stand-off in Passport to Pimlico and how the game plays out, because it is just that little bit too close to home to seem like sheer fun.
End-notes
* Or, in its genuine meaning, ‘feisty’.
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Tuesday 5 June 2012
Civic amenities - a far cry from the locus amoenus?
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5 June
It could be urban myth, but, then, urban myth itself could just be urban myth. In any case, it started being stated in parks and gardens where ducks foregather that they should not be fed bread (whatever they should be fed, they crap a lot, and, if not feeding them bread made the result more like rabbits' pellets, so much the better), as, although Donland was unaware of the fact, in his eagerness to eat it, it is not good for him.
Extrapolating from what may or may not be true about what ducks shouldn't eat, and knowing that koi keepers and specialists have all sorts of elaborate methods and diets (maybe for the fish as well), I was surprised, in Salmon-Fishing in the Yemen, by Dr Alfred* Jones (alias Ewan boy from Perth McGregor), whose predication for being in the story is that he is a fisheries expert, feeding broken-off pieces of what seems ordinary white bread to his own specimens (koi, that is, not ducks).
Now, I think that we are given an insight, catch it if we may, into his (largely inner) turmoil, for although he is mouthing about his wife, his feelings for her and how he views their marriage (and he says more later to the Emily Blunt character), I believe that the key indicator at this moment of how upset he is lies in the fact that his fish, which I would guess are prized, are being fed this bread:
Now, it may not harm them, but maybe, in koi circles, it would be the equivalent of giving a toddler free access to two tubes of Rolos.
If so, then Jones, in the vicarious form of his fish, is venting feelings of self-harm: the fish are his pride and prize, and he is subtly hurting them with this sacrament of what may represent his own body (since he repeatedly professes no belief in the conventional sacrament such that, as ever, one questions whether he protests too much).
Plus the other Biblical overtones: casting bread on the water, and the loaves and fishes of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, etc., etc.
End-notes
* The name doubtless would come from the now, but, I think, not particularly Scottish?
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5 June
It could be urban myth, but, then, urban myth itself could just be urban myth. In any case, it started being stated in parks and gardens where ducks foregather that they should not be fed bread (whatever they should be fed, they crap a lot, and, if not feeding them bread made the result more like rabbits' pellets, so much the better), as, although Donland was unaware of the fact, in his eagerness to eat it, it is not good for him.
Extrapolating from what may or may not be true about what ducks shouldn't eat, and knowing that koi keepers and specialists have all sorts of elaborate methods and diets (maybe for the fish as well), I was surprised, in Salmon-Fishing in the Yemen, by Dr Alfred* Jones (alias Ewan boy from Perth McGregor), whose predication for being in the story is that he is a fisheries expert, feeding broken-off pieces of what seems ordinary white bread to his own specimens (koi, that is, not ducks).
Now, I think that we are given an insight, catch it if we may, into his (largely inner) turmoil, for although he is mouthing about his wife, his feelings for her and how he views their marriage (and he says more later to the Emily Blunt character), I believe that the key indicator at this moment of how upset he is lies in the fact that his fish, which I would guess are prized, are being fed this bread:
Now, it may not harm them, but maybe, in koi circles, it would be the equivalent of giving a toddler free access to two tubes of Rolos.
If so, then Jones, in the vicarious form of his fish, is venting feelings of self-harm: the fish are his pride and prize, and he is subtly hurting them with this sacrament of what may represent his own body (since he repeatedly professes no belief in the conventional sacrament such that, as ever, one questions whether he protests too much).
Plus the other Biblical overtones: casting bread on the water, and the loaves and fishes of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, etc., etc.
End-notes
* The name doubtless would come from the now, but, I think, not particularly Scottish?
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Sunday 3 June 2012
Shakespeare in a Tweet
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4 June
Yes, cousin Marmaduke and I have had to leave out a few things in our attempts to give you a play in no more than 140 characters, and maybe the wrong ones.
See what you think with my most recent one (from Twitter® - Marmaduke's there, too):
Two men mistrust the wrong offspring, and the others take power: one man goes mad, one's blinded. Both are healed and reunited before death.
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4 June
Yes, cousin Marmaduke and I have had to leave out a few things in our attempts to give you a play in no more than 140 characters, and maybe the wrong ones.
See what you think with my most recent one (from Twitter® - Marmaduke's there, too):
Two men mistrust the wrong offspring, and the others take power: one man goes mad, one's blinded. Both are healed and reunited before death.
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Saturday 2 June 2012
The last days of Yayoi Kusama's Tate show
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2 June
I need another hour to finish looking at this exhibition, as I am not in the league of two ladies who once, in this very members' room at Tate Modern, declared that they had 'done' one in an hour and a half, because they had graduated from a course in history of art - and I think that they intended to polish off the other one in a similar span. I have no notion of what they did or not absorb or how quickly, but thirteen or so rooms is too much for me, so I work within my limits, and skulk off for a coffee - or something stronger, maybe even food at London prices - when I need to, and, if I have time to go back and want to, I do.
My viewing, then, is incomplete, but I am already sure of two things: that Yayoi Kusama sometimes has a distinctive voice (and then tends to demonstrate her extremely great capacity for creativity), but sometimes does not, and that work, to me, then seems pretentious, and not imbued with the same sure artistic sense. Her friendship with Joseph Cornell, for example, clearly brought out a prodigious talent for collage, which is visible in the pieces exhibited in the corridor that is room 9 (and we are lucky enough that Kusama has allowed three of Cornell's works that she owns to be shown).
I am also insufficiently convinced that what are eagerly called phalli are any more than potatoes or their tubers (as the appearance of the Phallic Shoes of room 8 amply testify), and someone has therefore not been entirely trustworthy, given the scope for Freudian and other interpretation, in applying this deliberate description. Yes, there may be a generative principle (there had been an organic, yet cosmic, quality to Kusama's works in watercolour and gouache in room 2), and the Yellow Trees of room 11, for example, writhe with an energy that, my own psychoanalytic profile apart, is a burgeoning, even threatening (as the coils of serpents have the power to crush), power of nature. Other canvases in that room and from the same period, such as the triptych of Weeds, have a more benign quality of reproducing and filling space.
At some point, we will be faced by the question (and some curatorial interpretation) What does all this filling mean? We are told that it is Kusama's obsessional side (which came out in the series of Infinity Nets), but, although it doesn't prove that she hasn't got one, is it different from or more or less creative than Damien Hirst's Medicine Cabinets (1997), with its ten bought cabinets (each named after a track from Never Mind the Bollocks...) filled with empty medicine packaging, which is supposedly arranged according to some medical curatorship or taxonomy.
Is Kusama's filling of a canvas, whether in the mid-1950s or since, really ridden with angst? Somehow, I doubt it any more than there is really any collecting in procuring the preservation (or, more likely, arranging for others to procure it) of empty tubs and packets of medication:
If one did question that proposition on my part, then, with the display-cabinets full of stainless-steel (assumed) surgical implements (some surely are not!), can one believe that Hirst did much more than get a rep to bring around a good range of samples, which, with no real regard to anything other than entertainingly (and aestehtically) fitting multiples of them in the cabinet in question, he tried on the shelves and then ordered as many as he needed. (A task probably best delegated to an assistant, even, whose judgement would be sufficiently good, as would the willingness of the rep to supply on a sale-or-return basis, that minimal rearrangement would be necessary to perfect the work.)
'You can't sell art like hot dogs or ice cream cones at the Venice Biennale', they said. But I believe them to be wrong. I think that art should be within the price range for the masses rather than a few wealthy individuals.
This comment, made (I think) contemporaneously, refers to what appeared to be the constituent elements, akin (as far as I can tell) in appearance to Magritte's alleged stylized cow-bells, from the arrangement of which Kusama's installation had been made. She was selling them off for two dollars apiece, which would have been a real bargain (until she was stopped). Compare this with Hirst's going directly to the market with the huge auction of his works a few years back...
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2 June
I need another hour to finish looking at this exhibition, as I am not in the league of two ladies who once, in this very members' room at Tate Modern, declared that they had 'done' one in an hour and a half, because they had graduated from a course in history of art - and I think that they intended to polish off the other one in a similar span. I have no notion of what they did or not absorb or how quickly, but thirteen or so rooms is too much for me, so I work within my limits, and skulk off for a coffee - or something stronger, maybe even food at London prices - when I need to, and, if I have time to go back and want to, I do.
My viewing, then, is incomplete, but I am already sure of two things: that Yayoi Kusama sometimes has a distinctive voice (and then tends to demonstrate her extremely great capacity for creativity), but sometimes does not, and that work, to me, then seems pretentious, and not imbued with the same sure artistic sense. Her friendship with Joseph Cornell, for example, clearly brought out a prodigious talent for collage, which is visible in the pieces exhibited in the corridor that is room 9 (and we are lucky enough that Kusama has allowed three of Cornell's works that she owns to be shown).
I am also insufficiently convinced that what are eagerly called phalli are any more than potatoes or their tubers (as the appearance of the Phallic Shoes of room 8 amply testify), and someone has therefore not been entirely trustworthy, given the scope for Freudian and other interpretation, in applying this deliberate description. Yes, there may be a generative principle (there had been an organic, yet cosmic, quality to Kusama's works in watercolour and gouache in room 2), and the Yellow Trees of room 11, for example, writhe with an energy that, my own psychoanalytic profile apart, is a burgeoning, even threatening (as the coils of serpents have the power to crush), power of nature. Other canvases in that room and from the same period, such as the triptych of Weeds, have a more benign quality of reproducing and filling space.
At some point, we will be faced by the question (and some curatorial interpretation) What does all this filling mean? We are told that it is Kusama's obsessional side (which came out in the series of Infinity Nets), but, although it doesn't prove that she hasn't got one, is it different from or more or less creative than Damien Hirst's Medicine Cabinets (1997), with its ten bought cabinets (each named after a track from Never Mind the Bollocks...) filled with empty medicine packaging, which is supposedly arranged according to some medical curatorship or taxonomy.
Is Kusama's filling of a canvas, whether in the mid-1950s or since, really ridden with angst? Somehow, I doubt it any more than there is really any collecting in procuring the preservation (or, more likely, arranging for others to procure it) of empty tubs and packets of medication:
If one did question that proposition on my part, then, with the display-cabinets full of stainless-steel (assumed) surgical implements (some surely are not!), can one believe that Hirst did much more than get a rep to bring around a good range of samples, which, with no real regard to anything other than entertainingly (and aestehtically) fitting multiples of them in the cabinet in question, he tried on the shelves and then ordered as many as he needed. (A task probably best delegated to an assistant, even, whose judgement would be sufficiently good, as would the willingness of the rep to supply on a sale-or-return basis, that minimal rearrangement would be necessary to perfect the work.)
'You can't sell art like hot dogs or ice cream cones at the Venice Biennale', they said. But I believe them to be wrong. I think that art should be within the price range for the masses rather than a few wealthy individuals.
This comment, made (I think) contemporaneously, refers to what appeared to be the constituent elements, akin (as far as I can tell) in appearance to Magritte's alleged stylized cow-bells, from the arrangement of which Kusama's installation had been made. She was selling them off for two dollars apiece, which would have been a real bargain (until she was stopped). Compare this with Hirst's going directly to the market with the huge auction of his works a few years back...
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Monday 21 May 2012
Kristin shows her comedic flair [in Salmon Fishing in The Yemen (2011)]
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22 May
* Many a spoiler in this belated review of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011) *
I do not know the novel from which this was taken, and can insufficiently conceive that seeing how it differs from the film would merit the time to find out (quite apart from anything else that I would derive from the experience). In any case, my shameless interest was to see Kristin Scott Thomas, and anything else was going to be a bonus.
The typical end-of-film disclaimer always talks of denying resemblances to people living or dead, but we all surely recall the folly of being found out recording having contrived to bury a bad news story, and the fact that Kristin, as the PM's Press Secretary, was called Maxwell might not have been without another irony.
In the screening that I have just been at, KST got some very good laughs, in character, for how she sought to impose (what is usual to call) control* on the situations that she faced, including a rebellious middle son - and, even by then, we weren't quite acclimatized to hearing this actress casually saying 'fucking' as one element of throwing her weight about, which made it naughtily delicious.
As to whether finding a positive story about The Middle East to offset the bad press about the British forces' campaign in Afghanistan made any sense on which to hang this story, not least in terms of the different timescale of day-to-day business of press releases and conferences, I rather doubt anyone in the audience would have been persuaded. However, that was unnecessary, when we were just required to embrace Mrs Maxwell's breezy indifference to reality or other obstacles, few greater than the implausibility embodied in the title itself: she just wanted kudos for the PM and his office, and latched onto any figure mentioned, such as the number of anglers, that suggested that there were votes hanging on what she did.
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22 May
* Many a spoiler in this belated review of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011) *
I do not know the novel from which this was taken, and can insufficiently conceive that seeing how it differs from the film would merit the time to find out (quite apart from anything else that I would derive from the experience). In any case, my shameless interest was to see Kristin Scott Thomas, and anything else was going to be a bonus.
The typical end-of-film disclaimer always talks of denying resemblances to people living or dead, but we all surely recall the folly of being found out recording having contrived to bury a bad news story, and the fact that Kristin, as the PM's Press Secretary, was called Maxwell might not have been without another irony.
In the screening that I have just been at, KST got some very good laughs, in character, for how she sought to impose (what is usual to call) control* on the situations that she faced, including a rebellious middle son - and, even by then, we weren't quite acclimatized to hearing this actress casually saying 'fucking' as one element of throwing her weight about, which made it naughtily delicious.
As to whether finding a positive story about The Middle East to offset the bad press about the British forces' campaign in Afghanistan made any sense on which to hang this story, not least in terms of the different timescale of day-to-day business of press releases and conferences, I rather doubt anyone in the audience would have been persuaded. However, that was unnecessary, when we were just required to embrace Mrs Maxwell's breezy indifference to reality or other obstacles, few greater than the implausibility embodied in the title itself: she just wanted kudos for the PM and his office, and latched onto any figure mentioned, such as the number of anglers, that suggested that there were votes hanging on what she did.
If we might compare the farcicality, for a moment, to the monumental one of a film such as Doctor in the House (1954) and others in the series (or maybe even Carry on Doctor (1967)), the pompous consultant (James Robertson Justice (or Kenneth Williams as Tickle)), assured of his own importance, is almost in the nature of the role a sketchily drawn character, and provides enough bluster to rub off on and against those more in the lead. Here, though, Kristin was absent for a long stretch at a time, and her character did not, in this regard, appear to have been integrated enough into the film to sustain her: yes, one can argue that, although it is at her behest that any of this is being allowed to proceed, that does not call for her to be on screen, but I rather feel that the film itself lost sight of what it was trying to be, or tried to be too many things, with too many foci, at various points.
It could be a romantic comedy, set against the infighting and machination of politics, but it does not really sit easily as one, and, to judge from a comment that I heard to the effect that 'they have turned it into a slushy romance', nor did it with someone whose reading of the book had led to different expectations. It is more in the nature of the awkward and rather unlikely romance, which brings me onto the pretty-womanization of Ewan McGregor as Dr Jones. No, he is not an LA hooker, but, in an unlikely way, he has to break through his exterior and appeal to his equivalent of Richard Gere (except that Gere thinks Roberts stunning more or less straightaway, and we are the ones who don't understand his fascination).
In a play on stage, one would trust more, because of having to, in one's script and those delivering it, whereas here, when I first saw him, Ewan had been so dolled down, but only in order that he might shine and look gloriously winsome to be the love interest, that I doubted not only what his lifestyle might be doing to him, but also whether I had actually been wrong in inferring that the voice with Scottish accent that we had heard reading a dismissive e-mail must belong to him. It then made it look quite ridiculous, as a depiction of his throwing himself into the project and, with it, in love with his co-star, that he suddenly became boyishly young.
Oh, yes, falling in love can give one a glow and do other wonders, but this was too extreme, as if we suddenly started expecting him to behave like Trainspotting (1996)'s Renton all over again. That and the accent, which might have been - I am no expert - a mannered version of his native one, but which gave the impression of someone so proud of his Scottishness that he made doubly sure that he sounded from there (whereas many a prominent Scot gives not a hint of it in the voice), even at the risk of seeming to be, if not a self-parody, then a target for mockery.
Which might, in some people's mind, link with what Emily Blunt says to him when she thinks that he has called around on her at home to bully her into going back to work, despite her new boyfriend being missing in action. If McGregor's lack of affect (evidenced as Renton), studied choice of language, and self-confessed inability to tell jokes justified her, in this incautious moment, calling him someone with Asperger's, then so be it, but those things, in themselves, do not add up to anything, and I should be disappointed to know if they were meant to.
Disappointed as I would be with As Good as it Gets (1997), if I thought that those watching it - or House or Frasier - believed that they can see both all the problems that are faced, and also, in the love of a good woman, the obvious and redeeming solution. (Not that Dr Jones' wife isn't a belittling cow, more concerned about his final salary scheme than the job that he has to do to get it, but still**.) But more disappointed with what is put in the mouth of Dr Jones as a reply, since there are many who have the hurts to show to disprove the notion that someone with that syndrome would not be wounded by her outburst - or does scriptwriter Simon Beaufoy know something that I don't?
All in all, I enjoyed the patchy political intrigue (as a chance for KST to show the breadth of her talents), the pottily likeable sheikh (Amr Waked) who - surprise, surprise - has more to teach Dr Jones than he imagines and, of course, has to owe Dr Jones his life (in the face of a singularly inept attempt at assassination by someone commissioned in Yemen to kill him, who fetches up in Scotland with no real evidence of a plan). That apart, it is just the will she, won't she with Emily Blunt, and people doing the decent thing as good Britons.
All in all, I enjoyed the patchy political intrigue (as a chance for KST to show the breadth of her talents), the pottily likeable sheikh (Amr Waked) who - surprise, surprise - has more to teach Dr Jones than he imagines and, of course, has to owe Dr Jones his life (in the face of a singularly inept attempt at assassination by someone commissioned in Yemen to kill him, who fetches up in Scotland with no real evidence of a plan). That apart, it is just the will she, won't she with Emily Blunt, and people doing the decent thing as good Britons.
End-notes
* For some, contol freak is a sort of shorthand, but the word 'control', to me, belongs in the day of training dogs the Barbara Woodhouse way. (The phrase is, itself, more likely to have originated with a freak who thinks that it is fit employment to seek to control how we perceive and think about his or her clients, which, when the PM and his government is the client, is where KST in this film comes in.) And the word has no positive companion, such as - to make one up - control champion, just this dismal word in the phrase He's so controlling: engage tongue, switch off mind!
** At Civic amenities - a far cry from the locus amoenus?, I have pondered Dr Jones, at this moment, further.
Sunday 20 May 2012
What's the difference between a t.v. celebrity and a judge?
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21 May
If you start a song, both will quickly determine that they want you to stop, but the judge might even possess a good singing voice
One holds court and puts everyone else in their place, whereas the other fits hearing the case in around having a good lunch
When two judges meet socially, they talk about the latest play or film, and so do the celebrities, but bitching about who undeservedly got the role that they should have had
With a judge, that is the person who hears a case at trial, whereas the t.v. celebrity is just a case of being a trial to hear
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21 May
If you start a song, both will quickly determine that they want you to stop, but the judge might even possess a good singing voice
One holds court and puts everyone else in their place, whereas the other fits hearing the case in around having a good lunch
When two judges meet socially, they talk about the latest play or film, and so do the celebrities, but bitching about who undeservedly got the role that they should have had
With a judge, that is the person who hears a case at trial, whereas the t.v. celebrity is just a case of being a trial to hear
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Saturday 19 May 2012
What did Jesus teach about bluebells ? (2)
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20 May
Continuing the sketchy piece that was What did Jesus teach about bluebells ? (1), it can now be revealed that:
* We have learnt, from the recently discovered Garden-Centre Scrolls, that in the early days - perhaps misconstruing something that Jesus once said or did - followers of his teaching each started carrying around a pot of earth in which had been planted a clump of bluebells
* Since bluebells, in common with many plants, not only have (as The Book of Ecclesiastes¹ advises²) a season for flowering, but also tend to prefer shade, the meaning of the gesture - whatever could have been intended - was not, let us say, always apparent from the display in the pot
* Rationalizing it all, the pots were done away with, and emblems - or badges - depicting a flowering bluebell (or three) took their place
* Some say that, with the version with three bluebells, The Trinity was represented (although any theology of Three in One³ was not formulated until centuries later)
* It could just as easily have been any one of The Holy Family, a prefiguring of Peter's denials, or the women, numbering at least three, who were called Mary
* No more than this is known (until I trouble to make something else up, of course)
End-notes
¹ Parts of many works, in imitation of The Bible, have been called books, but do we know why they are so called? (Greek biblios)
² However, those who do not know it, should not construe this reference to imply that it is a pre-Christian gardening manual.
³ Which has also, curiously, long been a motto for a type of oil for use on bicycles. (Whatever oil one uses, and however one seeks to avoid getting it on one's clothes, the former's contact with the latter is almost always inimical to any attractiveness or cleanliness that they might have, besides which the odour of the oil is both unmistakable and largely ineradicable.)
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20 May
Continuing the sketchy piece that was What did Jesus teach about bluebells ? (1), it can now be revealed that:
* We have learnt, from the recently discovered Garden-Centre Scrolls, that in the early days - perhaps misconstruing something that Jesus once said or did - followers of his teaching each started carrying around a pot of earth in which had been planted a clump of bluebells
* Since bluebells, in common with many plants, not only have (as The Book of Ecclesiastes¹ advises²) a season for flowering, but also tend to prefer shade, the meaning of the gesture - whatever could have been intended - was not, let us say, always apparent from the display in the pot
* Rationalizing it all, the pots were done away with, and emblems - or badges - depicting a flowering bluebell (or three) took their place
* Some say that, with the version with three bluebells, The Trinity was represented (although any theology of Three in One³ was not formulated until centuries later)
* It could just as easily have been any one of The Holy Family, a prefiguring of Peter's denials, or the women, numbering at least three, who were called Mary
* No more than this is known (until I trouble to make something else up, of course)
End-notes
¹ Parts of many works, in imitation of The Bible, have been called books, but do we know why they are so called? (Greek biblios)
² However, those who do not know it, should not construe this reference to imply that it is a pre-Christian gardening manual.
³ Which has also, curiously, long been a motto for a type of oil for use on bicycles. (Whatever oil one uses, and however one seeks to avoid getting it on one's clothes, the former's contact with the latter is almost always inimical to any attractiveness or cleanliness that they might have, besides which the odour of the oil is both unmistakable and largely ineradicable.)
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Thursday 17 May 2012
Twitter® is old hat*
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18 May
We keep reinventing the telegram, first with text-messages, and then with what is fondly thought of as a revolution in communications, this whole Twatter Splatter, where all these messages are generated to divert from the reality that, in just tens of years, it'll all be going on, if at all, with none of the same personnel.
But the truth is simply this: back in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Shakespeare had to pitch every new idea for a play in the tweet form - give you it in just 140 characters.
The Bard could put over Hamlet like that, but Could you?**
End-notes
* But most of us haven't known, since the days of Laurence Sterne, that the term refers to the female genitals.
** Cousin Marmaduke and I have since taken up my own clannege (? = challenge?) with - I think - creditable attempts by each at a major Shakespeare tragedy on Twitter: by all means do what you like with us then, but find us there!
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18 May
We keep reinventing the telegram, first with text-messages, and then with what is fondly thought of as a revolution in communications, this whole Twatter Splatter, where all these messages are generated to divert from the reality that, in just tens of years, it'll all be going on, if at all, with none of the same personnel.
But the truth is simply this: back in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Shakespeare had to pitch every new idea for a play in the tweet form - give you it in just 140 characters.
The Bard could put over Hamlet like that, but Could you?**
End-notes
* But most of us haven't known, since the days of Laurence Sterne, that the term refers to the female genitals.
** Cousin Marmaduke and I have since taken up my own clannege (? = challenge?) with - I think - creditable attempts by each at a major Shakespeare tragedy on Twitter: by all means do what you like with us then, but find us there!
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Tuesday 15 May 2012
Kym Marsh rocks skimpy LBD (according to AOL®)
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15 May
It is possible, though I doubt it (it is the whole point of this postlet), that LBD is a recognized term of art in these tinsel teasers on sign-on pages. (Remember the one, a few issues back, that reported Lorraine Kelly tumbling from her horse, whereas a newspaper had reported the story at least a fortnight earlier - not so much breaking news as breaking new ground for peddling old tat!)
For those not initiated (right trouser leg rolled up, etc.), I shall not spell it out*, though I was probably helped - when appeared words appeared to be missing in the headline - by the image below, because that would spoil the Fun of Who Is In The Know, i.e. who is manipulated into using some stupid expression or contraction, but merely continue with my would-be contentious proposition:
Is this a WAG** in the making, or an MCD (to refer gratuitously, for the sake of cross-pollination, to Pork and beef on the same plate) - what some might call a defining moment, when that unhelpful term is contracted to its initials?
Although many acronyms (and some contractions) are no easier to say than the original text, are we heading for A Contracting Universe (ACU)?:
With LSL, she skipped down the catwalk in an LBD, courtesy of NBC, and, after a VAC, went home for a NLS
End-notes
* Though 'skimpy' is already part and parcel of the 'L' of LBD. More asutute readers may surmise, then, that it does not represent London Bomb Disposal, Lesotho Bisexual Dilettantes, or Liverpool Ballroom-Dancing.
** An amazing acronym, not only because the words 'and' merits a letter of its own (after all, it was WMD, not WOMD (which might have been mistaken for WOMB, I guess)), but also two categories of women in a relationship (with a man) are brusquely yanked together!
In fact, though celebrities are not, of course, unfaithful or promiscuous, X's WAG could also be (in the other capacity) Y's WAG - KK, for example, is shown dating other men when, as far as I am aware, the man whom she married, and who alleged just weeks after that she had not been sincere in marrying him, has not yet been announced to have divorced her.
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15 May
It is possible, though I doubt it (it is the whole point of this postlet), that LBD is a recognized term of art in these tinsel teasers on sign-on pages. (Remember the one, a few issues back, that reported Lorraine Kelly tumbling from her horse, whereas a newspaper had reported the story at least a fortnight earlier - not so much breaking news as breaking new ground for peddling old tat!)
For those not initiated (right trouser leg rolled up, etc.), I shall not spell it out*, though I was probably helped - when appeared words appeared to be missing in the headline - by the image below, because that would spoil the Fun of Who Is In The Know, i.e. who is manipulated into using some stupid expression or contraction, but merely continue with my would-be contentious proposition:
Is this a WAG** in the making, or an MCD (to refer gratuitously, for the sake of cross-pollination, to Pork and beef on the same plate) - what some might call a defining moment, when that unhelpful term is contracted to its initials?
Although many acronyms (and some contractions) are no easier to say than the original text, are we heading for A Contracting Universe (ACU)?:
With LSL, she skipped down the catwalk in an LBD, courtesy of NBC, and, after a VAC, went home for a NLS
End-notes
* Though 'skimpy' is already part and parcel of the 'L' of LBD. More asutute readers may surmise, then, that it does not represent London Bomb Disposal, Lesotho Bisexual Dilettantes, or Liverpool Ballroom-Dancing.
** An amazing acronym, not only because the words 'and' merits a letter of its own (after all, it was WMD, not WOMD (which might have been mistaken for WOMB, I guess)), but also two categories of women in a relationship (with a man) are brusquely yanked together!
In fact, though celebrities are not, of course, unfaithful or promiscuous, X's WAG could also be (in the other capacity) Y's WAG - KK, for example, is shown dating other men when, as far as I am aware, the man whom she married, and who alleged just weeks after that she had not been sincere in marrying him, has not yet been announced to have divorced her.
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Monday 14 May 2012
The motto of Cambridge Drawing Society
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15 May 2012
It would be much funnier to have a Drawling Society, where you could hear a good Jimmy Stewart or even Tom Hanks (as a modern-style Drawler), but we have what we have.
A few things puzzle me about its recent publicity material:
* It begins by saying 'Art Exhibition / At the Guildhall / Cambridge Drawing Society / 1882 - 2008', but I cannot construe the dates, which appear to suggest that the Society has been disbanded several years earlier: overleaf, we are told, no more helpfully, that members 'are proud to maintain the century-long tradition of annual exhibitions in Cambridge'*
* The motto of the Society (at the top of that side) is given as Nulla dies sine linea
* Even if one could misconstrue dies as in apposition to lives**, not as a Latin word that is probably best known from Carpe diem (a phrase re-energed by that otherwise regrettable vehicle for the largely regrettable Robin Williams), it is clear enough what it means
* So to render it Draw a line every day oddly turns it into an instruction, when the Latin is clearly a statement, and, to my mind wrongly, focuses attention on the act of drawing, whereas the sentiment is one about time and of maintaining a habit, day to day, and one has to infer that line is to be made***
* The flyer directs us to Apelles, quoting a story about him that, maybe, I searched long enough to find, but hiding behind pictures in his shop-window to hear comments from passers-by, amongst the many anecdotes and accounts of him and his great technical skill (as no work of his survives the intervening 23 centuries (and we do not know definitely, except by reference to his having been said to be at the court of Philip of Macedon, when he lived), does not seem the best to have chosen to illustrate the motto****
* It seems that Pliny who is the so-called Elder is a major source for knowledge and appreciation of the abilities of Apelles, since we cannot see them displayed in any work: writing around the time of Christ, he would have spoken Latin, but I doubt that the motto, if authentic, would have been in anything other than Greek originally (Apelles is said to have been from the Greek island of Kos)
* It, too, expands the text, but what the Wikipedia® entry gives as a translation is, all in all, more accurate: Not a day without a line drawn
You never know, it could also apply to blog postings!
End-notes
* Actually, for what it is worth, I overlooked this comment: The first public exhibition took place in 1906 in the old Guildhall.
** As one teacher of English was said to have done with the Beckettt title Malone Dies.
*** The Wikipedia® entry goes into detail about a cobbler, one of whose comments (about how a shoe had been painted) Apelles heeded and remedied the mistakes, but whose subsequent comment about a leg earnt him a rude and surprising rebuff from the hidden painter.
**** Not least not to introduce, as if in a non-sequitur, the observation that visitors can write comments in a book, and vote for their favourite picture
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15 May 2012
It would be much funnier to have a Drawling Society, where you could hear a good Jimmy Stewart or even Tom Hanks (as a modern-style Drawler), but we have what we have.
A few things puzzle me about its recent publicity material:
* It begins by saying 'Art Exhibition / At the Guildhall / Cambridge Drawing Society / 1882 - 2008', but I cannot construe the dates, which appear to suggest that the Society has been disbanded several years earlier: overleaf, we are told, no more helpfully, that members 'are proud to maintain the century-long tradition of annual exhibitions in Cambridge'*
* The motto of the Society (at the top of that side) is given as Nulla dies sine linea
* Even if one could misconstrue dies as in apposition to lives**, not as a Latin word that is probably best known from Carpe diem (a phrase re-energed by that otherwise regrettable vehicle for the largely regrettable Robin Williams), it is clear enough what it means
* So to render it Draw a line every day oddly turns it into an instruction, when the Latin is clearly a statement, and, to my mind wrongly, focuses attention on the act of drawing, whereas the sentiment is one about time and of maintaining a habit, day to day, and one has to infer that line is to be made***
* The flyer directs us to Apelles, quoting a story about him that, maybe, I searched long enough to find, but hiding behind pictures in his shop-window to hear comments from passers-by, amongst the many anecdotes and accounts of him and his great technical skill (as no work of his survives the intervening 23 centuries (and we do not know definitely, except by reference to his having been said to be at the court of Philip of Macedon, when he lived), does not seem the best to have chosen to illustrate the motto****
* It seems that Pliny who is the so-called Elder is a major source for knowledge and appreciation of the abilities of Apelles, since we cannot see them displayed in any work: writing around the time of Christ, he would have spoken Latin, but I doubt that the motto, if authentic, would have been in anything other than Greek originally (Apelles is said to have been from the Greek island of Kos)
* It, too, expands the text, but what the Wikipedia® entry gives as a translation is, all in all, more accurate: Not a day without a line drawn
You never know, it could also apply to blog postings!
End-notes
* Actually, for what it is worth, I overlooked this comment: The first public exhibition took place in 1906 in the old Guildhall.
** As one teacher of English was said to have done with the Beckettt title Malone Dies.
*** The Wikipedia® entry goes into detail about a cobbler, one of whose comments (about how a shoe had been painted) Apelles heeded and remedied the mistakes, but whose subsequent comment about a leg earnt him a rude and surprising rebuff from the hidden painter.
**** Not least not to introduce, as if in a non-sequitur, the observation that visitors can write comments in a book, and vote for their favourite picture
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Indecent haste?
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14 May
Ever wondered why all sorts of biographies (whenever they were written) seem to be in the bookshops so quickly after this or that prominent person's death?
Well, for one thing I think that it is to try to capitalize on the moment, and we must all surely know, at some level, that - death being a certainty - many newspaper obituaries have been prepared and are kept ready for the next edition after the subject's death in which they will appear.
Just imagine that someone, a bit like the guy who (on a machine that moulds the plastic) makes the piece that you take off the back of your phone to get the battery out and change the SIM card, has the job of maintaining a library, archive or database of these pre-written death-notes, and others of writing, refining and updating them!
For another, a person's death marks the beginning of open season in the UK: alive, that person could claim that his or her character has been defamed by what you wrote or said, but, rightly or wrongly, the law of England and Wales says that the right to defend one's character dies with the person who possessed it. (Some other claims can be brought (or continued) by a person's estate after one's death, but one for libel or slander can no longer be commenced.) As I have said, open season - and all the competition in the world to get to press ahead of with this or that juicy anecdote or revelation.
It may not just have been weeks apart, though it seemed like it, that, hard on the heels of the death of Samuel Barclay Beckettt, Cronin and Knowlson's competing chunky books (one approved by the Beckettt estate, but I forget which) joined the only one thitherto, Deirdre Bair's from the 1970s, to make three.
What I wonder is this, because I am not aware that any other title with such pretensions (come to think of it, both titles are, actually, pretty pretentious) has appeared since: if the publishers had not raced to produce their authors' view of Becekettt, would we have a better or different one from the one only now starting to emerge with the publication of the second volume of his letters?
Is all this just inevitable, or would those books, if not available so seemingly soon after 22 December 1989, have benefited from the delay? I should, I guess, look to see if they have been reissued in a revised or new edition, but maybe you will, and let me know...
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14 May
Ever wondered why all sorts of biographies (whenever they were written) seem to be in the bookshops so quickly after this or that prominent person's death?
Well, for one thing I think that it is to try to capitalize on the moment, and we must all surely know, at some level, that - death being a certainty - many newspaper obituaries have been prepared and are kept ready for the next edition after the subject's death in which they will appear.
Just imagine that someone, a bit like the guy who (on a machine that moulds the plastic) makes the piece that you take off the back of your phone to get the battery out and change the SIM card, has the job of maintaining a library, archive or database of these pre-written death-notes, and others of writing, refining and updating them!
For another, a person's death marks the beginning of open season in the UK: alive, that person could claim that his or her character has been defamed by what you wrote or said, but, rightly or wrongly, the law of England and Wales says that the right to defend one's character dies with the person who possessed it. (Some other claims can be brought (or continued) by a person's estate after one's death, but one for libel or slander can no longer be commenced.) As I have said, open season - and all the competition in the world to get to press ahead of with this or that juicy anecdote or revelation.
It may not just have been weeks apart, though it seemed like it, that, hard on the heels of the death of Samuel Barclay Beckettt, Cronin and Knowlson's competing chunky books (one approved by the Beckettt estate, but I forget which) joined the only one thitherto, Deirdre Bair's from the 1970s, to make three.
What I wonder is this, because I am not aware that any other title with such pretensions (come to think of it, both titles are, actually, pretty pretentious) has appeared since: if the publishers had not raced to produce their authors' view of Becekettt, would we have a better or different one from the one only now starting to emerge with the publication of the second volume of his letters?
Is all this just inevitable, or would those books, if not available so seemingly soon after 22 December 1989, have benefited from the delay? I should, I guess, look to see if they have been reissued in a revised or new edition, but maybe you will, and let me know...
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Sunday 13 May 2012
What do we mean by 'an industry'?
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13 May
I have been listening, with half-an-ear, to a programme on Radio 3.
It is clear that they now talk about the heritage industry, by which they mean organizations such as The National Trust, not those consumer outlets that sell replicas of items from a previous era.
Now, I concede that the word 'factory', as used in reference to trade in India, may only have come to mean a building where something is made through the process of industrialization, but this is a little too close to contemporary, a little too much of turning everything into an industry.
We have the film industry, the porn industry, the hospitality industry, probably the industry industry, and what industrial archaeology looks at seems oddly divorced from all these usages, in its concern with engines, pumping-stations, cotton-mills, and - dare I say it - other factories.
Perhaps it will end up with a section of activity looking at these selfsame redundant meanings - or maybe already has one...
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13 May
I have been listening, with half-an-ear, to a programme on Radio 3.
It is clear that they now talk about the heritage industry, by which they mean organizations such as The National Trust, not those consumer outlets that sell replicas of items from a previous era.
Now, I concede that the word 'factory', as used in reference to trade in India, may only have come to mean a building where something is made through the process of industrialization, but this is a little too close to contemporary, a little too much of turning everything into an industry.
We have the film industry, the porn industry, the hospitality industry, probably the industry industry, and what industrial archaeology looks at seems oddly divorced from all these usages, in its concern with engines, pumping-stations, cotton-mills, and - dare I say it - other factories.
Perhaps it will end up with a section of activity looking at these selfsame redundant meanings - or maybe already has one...
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The Janet and John books
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13 May
Those of a certain age may be familiar with - the existence, at any rate, of - this pair.
If so, their names - in that order - will be as locked as Jack and Jill, but what is the appeal?
* Unlike Jack with Jill, John is courteous, and lets Janet go first
* In both cases, there is the - almost necessary to observe - catch of alliteration
* If John did go first, how would it sound, with the falling notes of 'Janet' finishing the phrase, as against the ruggedness of John, a syllable that one has to go out of one's way to prolong, and which provides a solid close?
* But what about Jason, Janet and Jason?: if we could delve into the minds - or, better still, working papers - of those who designed these books, what prejudices about class or even perceived sexual orientation might have militated against Jason
Paula and Peter, anybody...?
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13 May
Those of a certain age may be familiar with - the existence, at any rate, of - this pair.
If so, their names - in that order - will be as locked as Jack and Jill, but what is the appeal?
* Unlike Jack with Jill, John is courteous, and lets Janet go first
* In both cases, there is the - almost necessary to observe - catch of alliteration
* If John did go first, how would it sound, with the falling notes of 'Janet' finishing the phrase, as against the ruggedness of John, a syllable that one has to go out of one's way to prolong, and which provides a solid close?
* But what about Jason, Janet and Jason?: if we could delve into the minds - or, better still, working papers - of those who designed these books, what prejudices about class or even perceived sexual orientation might have militated against Jason
Paula and Peter, anybody...?
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Saturday 12 May 2012
I was once (nearly) a steward at Cambridge Wordfest... (3)
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13 May
Of course, come the full Spring Wordfest (13 - 15 April), I received my reward:
* First pick of which four- to five-hour stewarding slot I wanted to fill, which meant that, by being present at three events in a row, I could guarantee hearing those speakers who most interested me
* Two complimentary admissions to events when off duty
* Free tea and coffee at the bar
* Extra discount on items boought from the Wordfest book-stall
* A refund of around £9.00 to reflect my travel expenses on the night of the 'wasted' training last year
Or maybe that is what would have been nice to be offered, rather than just sent an unitemized amount that did not even compensate me for not hearing the speakers at the events in my shift, and getting to go free into those during the rest of the day that had not sold out
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13 May
Of course, come the full Spring Wordfest (13 - 15 April), I received my reward:
* First pick of which four- to five-hour stewarding slot I wanted to fill, which meant that, by being present at three events in a row, I could guarantee hearing those speakers who most interested me
* Two complimentary admissions to events when off duty
* Free tea and coffee at the bar
* Extra discount on items boought from the Wordfest book-stall
* A refund of around £9.00 to reflect my travel expenses on the night of the 'wasted' training last year
Or maybe that is what would have been nice to be offered, rather than just sent an unitemized amount that did not even compensate me for not hearing the speakers at the events in my shift, and getting to go free into those during the rest of the day that had not sold out
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Monday 7 May 2012
Video: Kim Kardashian shows off beach body
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7 May
Another meaningless phrase!
Not 'Kim Kardashian', which denotes something, but 'beach body':
Does KK have a different body, when at breakfast (probably in a bikini just at the moment, since she is pictured in Mexico), only employing this one at the beach - a bit like a stunt or body double?
The clothes that she may wear for Cancún, lunch at the Bowery, and the red carpet may differ, but, hour to hour, I suspect that it is the same body, just as it is for that infamous photograph of Daniel Craig at the seaside, or even the likes of Neil Kinnock stumbling on the shingle, or for the gaga lady.
As for Kim, when she appeared with fewer clothes still in Playboy, what sort of body was that, by this 'beach body' reckoning? A glamour body, bimbo body, or unbashful body?
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
7 May
Another meaningless phrase!
Not 'Kim Kardashian', which denotes something, but 'beach body':
Does KK have a different body, when at breakfast (probably in a bikini just at the moment, since she is pictured in Mexico), only employing this one at the beach - a bit like a stunt or body double?
The clothes that she may wear for Cancún, lunch at the Bowery, and the red carpet may differ, but, hour to hour, I suspect that it is the same body, just as it is for that infamous photograph of Daniel Craig at the seaside, or even the likes of Neil Kinnock stumbling on the shingle, or for the gaga lady.
As for Kim, when she appeared with fewer clothes still in Playboy, what sort of body was that, by this 'beach body' reckoning? A glamour body, bimbo body, or unbashful body?
PS Just so that Kim doesn't feel left out (or unwanted), here she is with that body on a beach:
Pork and beef on the same plate
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7 May
According to the BSE* story (which some may remember: that health-scare before the next one brightened our days), what was supposed to everyone who had ever eaten a burger - and befell only the unlucky few who developed CJD - was the result of mixing pork and beef.
I can still think of few places where they meet - or where a T-bone steak could have a bone - except: certain sausages, a mixed grill, and those carveries where one can have (usually by paying slightly more**) lamb, beef, turkey, and pork (or some subset thereof) for one's roast meal.
End-notes
* Of course, our press and t.v. being what they are, the abbreviation of a scientific term to BSE wasn't good enough, and we had to have mad cow disease instead as their preferred term. (I used to abbreviate it to MCD.)
** One such place used to call it The Full Monty.
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7 May
According to the BSE* story (which some may remember: that health-scare before the next one brightened our days), what was supposed to everyone who had ever eaten a burger - and befell only the unlucky few who developed CJD - was the result of mixing pork and beef.
I can still think of few places where they meet - or where a T-bone steak could have a bone - except: certain sausages, a mixed grill, and those carveries where one can have (usually by paying slightly more**) lamb, beef, turkey, and pork (or some subset thereof) for one's roast meal.
End-notes
* Of course, our press and t.v. being what they are, the abbreviation of a scientific term to BSE wasn't good enough, and we had to have mad cow disease instead as their preferred term. (I used to abbreviate it to MCD.)
** One such place used to call it The Full Monty.
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Sunday 6 May 2012
Setting what text to music?
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7 May
Well, I have heard, in the last week, Mark Padmore's choice of a text, which Jonathan Dove turned out to end up setting several years later, and now more in the collaboration between Jim Tomlinson, Stacey Kent and Kazuo Ishiguro in a song (to whose words the link takes you) called Postcard Lovers.
Honestly, I cannot feel that either poem was worth the attention, and it puts me in mind again of writing about Elgar putting together his own libretto for The Apostles...
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7 May
Well, I have heard, in the last week, Mark Padmore's choice of a text, which Jonathan Dove turned out to end up setting several years later, and now more in the collaboration between Jim Tomlinson, Stacey Kent and Kazuo Ishiguro in a song (to whose words the link takes you) called Postcard Lovers.
Honestly, I cannot feel that either poem was worth the attention, and it puts me in mind again of writing about Elgar putting together his own libretto for The Apostles...
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Russia ahead in this blog's Top Ten
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6 May
In terms of page-views, Russia is now well ahead of the UK [now updated on 18 May]
1,191 Russia [1,480]
866 United Kingdom [889]
579 United States [625]
116 Germany [117]
53 Brazil [55]
43 Ukraine [46]
36 Australia
32 France
27 The Netherlands
18 Japan
And page-views since The Agent began all this Unofficial Cambridge Film Festival business?
Well, 3,333 of course!
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6 May
In terms of page-views, Russia is now well ahead of the UK [now updated on 18 May]
1,191 Russia [1,480]
866 United Kingdom [889]
579 United States [625]
116 Germany [117]
53 Brazil [55]
43 Ukraine [46]
36 Australia
32 France
27 The Netherlands
18 Japan
And page-views since The Agent began all this Unofficial Cambridge Film Festival business?
Well, 3,333 of course!
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What Paul Said to Whom and Why
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6 May
Perfect for all churches, congregations, chosen and cults - bulk ordering advised!
Those who care to preorder this title (as, according to Amazon®, the word has it), can do so at www.TheAgentApsley.co.uk/slushfund in the knowledge that, whether it is a gift for others or for themselves, they will make someone very happy.
Buy 10 copies and receive just eight - NB limited offer
If you don't know Tahiti, I'd be very glad - for a fee - to show you around...
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6 May
Perfect for all churches, congregations, chosen and cults - bulk ordering advised!
Paul's Epistle to the Swedish
Those who care to preorder this title (as, according to Amazon®, the word has it), can do so at www.TheAgentApsley.co.uk/slushfund in the knowledge that, whether it is a gift for others or for themselves, they will make someone very happy.
Buy 10 copies and receive just eight - NB limited offer
If you don't know Tahiti, I'd be very glad - for a fee - to show you around...
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Saturday 5 May 2012
Pasta made from durum wheat
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5 May
Perhaps we have become accustomed to this assertion
I don't doubt its truth, but - except through familiarity with the fact that pasta-packets usually make it - I have no notion what it means (and so wonder whether that might be true of most of us), any more than if it stated, with just as much specificity*, made from wheat grown in Co. Durham (or in Dumbartonshire).
Unrelatedly, a woman from The Czech Republic** gave my parents what my mother called 'a peck on the cheek' - not spotting that it could have been descrbed as a Czech on the peak, if they had been on an eminence.
And what about the word surreal (or even surrealist)? I do have to agree with what was mentioned in passing yesterday in that day's issue of The Guardian***:
'I feel the word "surreal" has been totally overused as a fancy word for weird'
For, having read a fellow writer's piece about surrealism in films, which was pegged almost entirely (for factual basis) on the well-known collaboration that was Hitchcock / Dalà (and with scant, if any, mention of the other collaboration, Buñuel / DalÃ****, or of the former's significant career as a director), I despaired at what the author went on to identify as evidence of surrealism in more modern (but mainstream) cinematic works.
That said, there seems to be as little chance of stopping misuse of this word***** - so carefully employed to be in opposition to the boring or bourgeois - as of its beleaguered friends random, manic, psychotic, and (surely not for want of anything better to say) like.
End-notes
* A word that - I am led to believe that - T. S. Eliot, if he did not revel in it, used more than others did.
** My mother and father both resolutely, because instinctively, used the name Czechoslovakia in telling more about this woman.
*** g2, p. 8.
**** If Dalà is to be believed, that should be Dalà / Buñuel, but, it any case, they gave us, of course, A Dog and a Toilet (amongst other things).
***** Except, of course, by seeking to impose a totalitarian regime (one with a competent secret police!).
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5 May
Perhaps we have become accustomed to this assertion
I don't doubt its truth, but - except through familiarity with the fact that pasta-packets usually make it - I have no notion what it means (and so wonder whether that might be true of most of us), any more than if it stated, with just as much specificity*, made from wheat grown in Co. Durham (or in Dumbartonshire).
Unrelatedly, a woman from The Czech Republic** gave my parents what my mother called 'a peck on the cheek' - not spotting that it could have been descrbed as a Czech on the peak, if they had been on an eminence.
And what about the word surreal (or even surrealist)? I do have to agree with what was mentioned in passing yesterday in that day's issue of The Guardian***:
'I feel the word "surreal" has been totally overused as a fancy word for weird'
For, having read a fellow writer's piece about surrealism in films, which was pegged almost entirely (for factual basis) on the well-known collaboration that was Hitchcock / Dalà (and with scant, if any, mention of the other collaboration, Buñuel / DalÃ****, or of the former's significant career as a director), I despaired at what the author went on to identify as evidence of surrealism in more modern (but mainstream) cinematic works.
That said, there seems to be as little chance of stopping misuse of this word***** - so carefully employed to be in opposition to the boring or bourgeois - as of its beleaguered friends random, manic, psychotic, and (surely not for want of anything better to say) like.
End-notes
* A word that - I am led to believe that - T. S. Eliot, if he did not revel in it, used more than others did.
** My mother and father both resolutely, because instinctively, used the name Czechoslovakia in telling more about this woman.
*** g2, p. 8.
**** If Dalà is to be believed, that should be Dalà / Buñuel, but, it any case, they gave us, of course, A Dog and a Toilet (amongst other things).
***** Except, of course, by seeking to impose a totalitarian regime (one with a competent secret police!).
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Thursday 3 May 2012
The Dave-ings of an Arranged Mind (2)
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4 May
[Very much] following on[, going forward,] from the first piece [of its kind] in this series - which is no more one for having the same title than constituents of many a t.v. series - here are more [random] jottings that nevertheless cohere (or do they?)
What do all or any of the items in this list have in common (if anything)?:
1. Frank Key
2. The Florida Keys
3. Sarah's Key
4. Gonville & Caius
5. Frankie Goes to Hollywood
6. St Peter
7. Sara Keays
8. Key to the door
9. Major Keys
11. Sarah Keay
12. Alicia Keys
13. Aldous Huxley
By all means submit your answers - on a postcard only* - whilst waiting my inventing some...
End-notes
* Submissions (or falls) by any of the following means will, in especial, be harhsly punished:
Arsebook
e-mail
Twatter
facsimile
Link-tin
telemessage
Bookface
psychic transmission
Zen's Reunited
hymn-numbers
text-message
smoke-signals from St Peter's
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4 May
[Very much] following on[, going forward,] from the first piece [of its kind] in this series - which is no more one for having the same title than constituents of many a t.v. series - here are more [random] jottings that nevertheless cohere (or do they?)
What do all or any of the items in this list have in common (if anything)?:
1. Frank Key
2. The Florida Keys
3. Sarah's Key
4. Gonville & Caius
5. Frankie Goes to Hollywood
6. St Peter
7. Sara Keays
8. Key to the door
9. Major Keys
11. Sarah Keay
12. Alicia Keys
13. Aldous Huxley
By all means submit your answers - on a postcard only* - whilst waiting my inventing some...
End-notes
* Submissions (or falls) by any of the following means will, in especial, be harhsly punished:
Arsebook
Twatter
facsimile
Link-tin
telemessage
Bookface
psychic transmission
Zen's Reunited
hymn-numbers
text-message
smoke-signals from St Peter's
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Wednesday 2 May 2012
Tally for the day
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2 May
So far, Haydn pronounced as if he were Charlie Haden, and an Agnus Dei that sounded like Agnes Day*
Naming no Radio 3 names, but, respectively, before Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 this evening, and during this afternoon's episode of Arvo Pärt Total Immersion
End-notes
* Not as bad as it could have been - Angus Deayton, anyone?
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2 May
So far, Haydn pronounced as if he were Charlie Haden, and an Agnus Dei that sounded like Agnes Day*
Naming no Radio 3 names, but, respectively, before Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 this evening, and during this afternoon's episode of Arvo Pärt Total Immersion
End-notes
* Not as bad as it could have been - Angus Deayton, anyone?
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Trout-fishing in Essex
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3 May
Sorry, I keep getting that one confused with Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011), for a screening of which on Thursday afternoon I have a ticket: worryingly, if only for the publicity employed by the film's distibutors, searching for it on Google® by typing in just Yemen brings up no immediate results.
We shall see, and at least it's not
* Fishing for Cod Russian in the Quietly Flowing Don
* Dolphin Fishing in the English Channel
* Tuna Hunting in my Kitchen Cupboard
* or even Catching Red Snappers in the Bedroom
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3 May
Sorry, I keep getting that one confused with Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011), for a screening of which on Thursday afternoon I have a ticket: worryingly, if only for the publicity employed by the film's distibutors, searching for it on Google® by typing in just Yemen brings up no immediate results.
We shall see, and at least it's not
* Fishing for Cod Russian in the Quietly Flowing Don
* Dolphin Fishing in the English Channel
* Tuna Hunting in my Kitchen Cupboard
* or even Catching Red Snappers in the Bedroom
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All a-titter
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2 May
Cousin Marmaduke has just - according to your preference - twittered, tweeted or twat - again, according to your preference - about, concerning or regarding* drugs offered to him by Barney Strong:
It seems that - word is on the street - they will, if he takes them, 'wake the beast' in him
But he's never liked Mark Rylance that much**, so why would he want to?!
End-notes
* Not to mention 'anent' or 'abune'.
** And hated La Bête.
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2 May
Cousin Marmaduke has just - according to your preference - twittered, tweeted or twat - again, according to your preference - about, concerning or regarding* drugs offered to him by Barney Strong:
It seems that - word is on the street - they will, if he takes them, 'wake the beast' in him
But he's never liked Mark Rylance that much**, so why would he want to?!
End-notes
* Not to mention 'anent' or 'abune'.
** And hated La Bête.
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Medium* comment: TULISA CROWNED WORLD'S SEXIEST WOMAN (according to AOL®)
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2 May
As I am sure that the authors of this item well know (i.e. it is tongue in cheek, but in such a way as to appear 'dumb'), this caption to the headline is an absolute non-sequitur:
Singer proves that sex tape scandal hasn't hit her popularity
No, and nor, with any relevant electorate, would circulation - and even rating - of the said tape**! (I wonder if it has an entry on IMDb...)
** According to AOL® (again) on 4 May, Amanda Holden told Alan Carr that she watched it.
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2 May
As I am sure that the authors of this item well know (i.e. it is tongue in cheek, but in such a way as to appear 'dumb'), this caption to the headline is an absolute non-sequitur:
Singer proves that sex tape scandal hasn't hit her popularity
No, and nor, with any relevant electorate, would circulation - and even rating - of the said tape**! (I wonder if it has an entry on IMDb...)
End-note
* As opposed to media.
** According to AOL® (again) on 4 May, Amanda Holden told Alan Carr that she watched it.
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Tuesday 1 May 2012
The possibilities for confusion in enthusiasm
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2 May
Giving effect to what it says, how would you summarize the following*?:
Warlock's cycle is a monument to an idiosyncratic composer whose career was cut off too soon by his tragically short life
It is possible to read these phrases quickly and seem to understand the message, but I suspect that it may not really be self evident, even in context, that an idiosyncratic composer and Warlock are one and the same person (deemed to be writing his own monument in the song-cycle being discussed).
My own feeling is that the writer of these programme notes, at or around the time of compiling them, may have been overeager to say several things and have conflated them:
* Warlock died early
* His career - not surprisingly - died with him**
* It was regrettable, in terms of that musical career and what Warlock might yet have written, that he died when he did
* Whether it was seen as - or intended by - Warlock as a monument to him, it is suggested that it is one
* The work itself may be idiosyncratic,
* Presumably one can infer that it is, if it is a monument to Warlock, and if he was an idiosyncratic composer
For me, rather too much message for just 21 words, and in danger of being radically incoherent, when notes of this kind should ideally open up easily to examination in the concert-hall
End-notes
* Taken from notes (by Jo Kirkbride) in a concert programme.
** However, I do acknowledge that, in the case of a composer in the position of Delius, it was his health / incapacity that threatened to cut short his career (or cut it even shorter***).
*** More shortly?
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2 May
Giving effect to what it says, how would you summarize the following*?:
Warlock's cycle is a monument to an idiosyncratic composer whose career was cut off too soon by his tragically short life
It is possible to read these phrases quickly and seem to understand the message, but I suspect that it may not really be self evident, even in context, that an idiosyncratic composer and Warlock are one and the same person (deemed to be writing his own monument in the song-cycle being discussed).
My own feeling is that the writer of these programme notes, at or around the time of compiling them, may have been overeager to say several things and have conflated them:
* Warlock died early
* His career - not surprisingly - died with him**
* It was regrettable, in terms of that musical career and what Warlock might yet have written, that he died when he did
* Whether it was seen as - or intended by - Warlock as a monument to him, it is suggested that it is one
* The work itself may be idiosyncratic,
* Presumably one can infer that it is, if it is a monument to Warlock, and if he was an idiosyncratic composer
For me, rather too much message for just 21 words, and in danger of being radically incoherent, when notes of this kind should ideally open up easily to examination in the concert-hall
End-notes
* Taken from notes (by Jo Kirkbride) in a concert programme.
** However, I do acknowledge that, in the case of a composer in the position of Delius, it was his health / incapacity that threatened to cut short his career (or cut it even shorter***).
*** More shortly?
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Vaughan Williams and Blake
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4 May
[For what it is worth, Wikipedia® would probably call this posting 'a stub']
After a performance, earlier in the week, by Nicholas Daniel and Mark Padmore of Ten Blake Songs by Vaughan Williams, and as someone who enjoys the composer's music, and is interested in the painter / engraver / writer's works, I wanted to know more about the genesis of these settings.
It is clear that I shall have to borrow an authoritative and detailed biography of VW to know more about the subject, but, in the meantime, the notes that appear on a page on hyperion's web-site are a useful starting-point.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
4 May
[For what it is worth, Wikipedia® would probably call this posting 'a stub']
After a performance, earlier in the week, by Nicholas Daniel and Mark Padmore of Ten Blake Songs by Vaughan Williams, and as someone who enjoys the composer's music, and is interested in the painter / engraver / writer's works, I wanted to know more about the genesis of these settings.
It is clear that I shall have to borrow an authoritative and detailed biography of VW to know more about the subject, but, in the meantime, the notes that appear on a page on hyperion's web-site are a useful starting-point.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
What's the difference between a t.v. celebrity and a judge? (2)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
May Day
The last posting seemed popular enough - maybe even with those who Interpret Acts, as well as with those who appear to be dozing when they are being shown something - so why not some more...?
What's the difference between a judge asleep on the job and a t.v. celebrity?
* With the t.v. celebrity, the performance does not improve
* The judge is just taking judicial notice of sheep, but the t.v. celebrity mistakes them for adoring fans - and acts accordingly, claiming to be too busy to sign autographs
* In one case, the lack of movement increases the resemblance to a sheep. In the other, you realize that you can say something without being interrupted
End-notes
NB These jokes were part of the VE Day celebrations, but, under the agreement reached at Yalta, it was agreed that they could not be told again until a 65-year exclusion period had expired
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
May Day
The last posting seemed popular enough - maybe even with those who Interpret Acts, as well as with those who appear to be dozing when they are being shown something - so why not some more...?
What's the difference between a judge asleep on the job and a t.v. celebrity?
* With the t.v. celebrity, the performance does not improve
* The judge is just taking judicial notice of sheep, but the t.v. celebrity mistakes them for adoring fans - and acts accordingly, claiming to be too busy to sign autographs
* In one case, the lack of movement increases the resemblance to a sheep. In the other, you realize that you can say something without being interrupted
End-notes
NB These jokes were part of the VE Day celebrations, but, under the agreement reached at Yalta, it was agreed that they could not be told again until a 65-year exclusion period had expired
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
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