2014 — 27 March: Thursday
It sometimes strikes me1 that I could be said to live a bit vicariously. (Always have, always wish to.) Case in point: overnight emails from Mike and Carol tell me, respectively, of their enjoyment of the new Matthew Bourne production of "Swan Lake" in Soton and the performances of Ian McKellern and Patrick Stewart in "Waiting for Godot" on, I assume, Broadway. And what did I do by comparison last night? Watched nearly five minutes of "Don Jon" before skipping through the chapter stops for another couple and then giving up on it — not in disgust, but certainly in disappointment.
Then I slam into stuff like this in what seems to me the unlikeliest of places — an insightful examination of the new film from the Coen brothers:
Experience has become empty and wearisome. In his essay "The Storyteller: Observations on the Works of Nikolai Leskov," Walter Benjamin observed that:
One meets with fewer and fewer people who know how to tell a tale properly. More and more often, there is an embarrassment all around when the wish to hear a story is expressed. It
is as if a capability that seemed inalienable to us, the securest amongst our possessions, has been taken from us: the ability to share experiences.
That is the central problem of the storyteller and of the folksinger. They are trying to share common experiences that aren't necessarily held in common anymore.
There remains...
... the stuffing of my next crockpot. That's always good for an existential giggle of a mildly Spring-like morning. [Pause for breakfast] As is Gowers. In 1974 Dad passed along to me his copy of "The Complete Plain Words" (to help me in becoming a better instructional writer in ICL — wonder if it worked?). My favourite example from it remains:
If the baby does not thrive on raw milk, boil it.
Good to see that particular gem (from the Department of Health, who else?) still shining out like a beacon. Gowers' great-granddaughter Rebecca, dubious of the revised editions now extant, is doing her bit to tackle our perpetual "mania for obfuscation".2 More here.
Sadly, I can't find my copy though I have a sneaking suspicion either my son or a niece may now be benefitting from it. No matter; I'm beyond help at this point.
Crockpot stuffed...
... and now undergoing thermal agitation. Fingers crossed for a tasty result by the end of the day.
Until as recently...
... as last Tuesday — unbelievable though it sounds, I know — I had precisely one 'song' by Klaatu in my little collection. A 3-minute (or so) version of "Calling occupants of interplanetary craft" that had cropped up on a soundtrack album of music used in various episodes of a TV show called "Due South". Then I heard a 7-minute (or so) version played on "The Chain" on BBC 6Music and had soon found and downloaded an MP3 collection of what Amazon says are two classic albums. By Klaatu.
Of course, had I been wider awake at the time, I might have noticed that this version was actually performed by The Carpenters. Bang goes another 99p! Still, you know what this means? Yes. I now have precisely one 'song' by The Carpenters in my little collection... [Pause for thought] Or so I thought. Moving it away from the default download folder and into the appropriate place on the NAS, and changing part of its filename from "Carpenters" to "The Carpenters" — that damnable OCD streak raises its head again — what do I find but another 'song' by them. Oh, the shame.
<Sigh>
There's a common...
... but, alas, slightly naïve assumption that — with retirement — comes the time needed to do all the things you didn't have time to do when earning a crust. It was an assumption I'd been relying on at the back end of 2006 when I first threw off my IBM chains. Fast forward just over seven years, and allow me to share part of an email exchange today. Prompted by the remark about storytelling in that Coen brothers piece. The subject line of the email was "Howard Jacobson":
Chum:
I may be looking in the wrong places, but I could only find one book by him in your collection. If you're looking for a good storyteller, he's your man. We saw him at the Edinburgh Book
Festival last year, reading from "Zoo Time", and I immediately bought a copy. It joined the to-read queue and popped to the top last week. So far, so very funny. I read his first three
when they came out, but then missed everything until "The Finkler Question". One of these days, I'll be able to afford to retire, then I can catch up...
Self:
I've tried to like him, really I have... In Feb 1994 I still had my 1980s copies of "Coming from Behind", "In the Land of Oz", "Peeping Tom", and "Redback" on my shelves. I currently have
"Roots, Schmoots" and "No more Mr Nice Guy" knocking around somewhere.
Go on. Ask me how I know. I dare you!
Would it help if molehole (external) hosted the same consolidated list that molehole (internal) does, I wonder? It's a chunky file.
Oh, and don't think for one minute that retirement brings a sufficiency of catch up time in its wake. That's the commonest delusion going...
Meanwhile, I've been improving the Shining Hour by reading yet another of the Charlaine Harris "Sookie Stackhouse" books that Alan Ball used as the basis for the HBO "True Blood" series. Wonderfully deranged, and often hilarious. I like that in my books. The TV version has diverged quite intelligently from the source material, which is also interesting. But my tum is now suggesting I need to feed it some calories. And Uncle ERNIE seems to be satisfied with dear Mama's Power of Attorney certified copy. One down, five still to go.
Ever onward.
Given...
... what I said here about the disappointing quality of some of the earliest CDs I was buying back in the 1983/84 timeframe, I suppose it was inevitable that I'd only get around to downloading David Bowie's 1972 "Ziggy Stardust" a decade after it had last been remastered (in 2002). Brilliant album. These (wonderfully fresh-sounding) MP3s are replacing the tracks on Minidisc r031. And I originally recorded that (at some point in the mid-1990s) from the cassettes I'd recorded (in the mid-1980s) from my vinyl albums in an ongoing attempt to minimise damage to the vinyl.
"Home taping is killing music" — yeah, right!
Bad enough that it's exactly 20 years since Pink Floyd's "The Division Bell"... I'm getting old, Christa!
Now this...
... is an odd little video! A blowfly's flight motor... (Link.)