Meteorological matters
We had the arses well and truly blown off ourselves last night in these parts. I have spent enough of my time on Sealink ferries and in the West of Ireland — where the wind appears to reserve its most committed effort at bluster — this new variety is astonishing. Especially in a place usually habituee to a mild climate.
It’s somewhat difficult to cull an interest in the weather, when it’s whipping the arse of you. I became fixated on the weather as a security guard, even though I was only outside patrolling car parks, and spent much of my time inside, getting cosy with the 12 mini security screens, rereading Coetzee novels, in a jacket 19 times too big for me, obsessively texting the weather forecast.
Once in a Cagney and Lacey moment and to make it seem like I was a useful entity I wrote a report (we had to keep hourly reports on what was happening, there was largely nothing happening, hence the need for the odd fictional slant on nothingness) of noticing two people out the back digging a hole and burying something. I realised afterwards, that the area I had described was in fact a vast expanse of concrete and a man or woman would have needed pneumatic arms to dig anything out there. I think the person may have been tying a shoelace. Poor quality cameras can rapidly up the drama factor of almost any movement. An ambling dog blurred can look like a bison. Even someone pausing to light a ciggarette can begin to look as if they are conspiring to knock down a building.
A real highlight of that job was when someone politely asked me if I collected bottles, offering a bagful of empties. Another time someone gave me a plastic bag full of small shampoo bottles and soap, but nothing topped the harrassed hockey fan who appeared in front of me one night wondering if I could fix his toilet which had inconveniently gone on the blink in the middle of a match. I suppose by logical deduction that made me a well-dressed binner, who needed to pay more attention to washing, but had the makings of a great plumber.
Curiously rarely did anyone ask about the books I was reading.
It was an interesting vista watching people entering and exiting their lives, because the time waiting for the elevator was like a pause in the grand scale of what they were doing and always they remarked on the weather, so perhaps that’s where the responsibility to be up to date and add to the weather discussion lay. Otherwise where could the 17 second conversation go?
Brains and surrendering on attention
So at the symphony on Friday — with the small Puffin making his debut in the back row, supported by a stack of bubble gum, cough sweets, and finally chewy mints — the teenage virtuoso (Ryu Goto) is interviewed before he takes to the stage. 18 yrs old, he casually describes how he’s studying physics and maths at Harvard. Ah, ha. I take his neurological measure from seat 148. Section 14. Music, maths, and physics yahoy. All nestling in the same neurological sun lounger. Je comprends.
Later I read that when musicians are playing they actually have brain activity in the language centre of their brains. I feel immediately cheated. So Mr Virtuoso has been bestowed the sun lounger in one lobe and gets to pole vault into the other lobe, as soon as he starts bowing. And while he’s bowing does he also have the instant ability to speak fluent Arabic or Amharic simultaneously? Not fair. Neurology = very unfair business.
I have observed there is a mini publishing industry dedicated to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. It now occurs to me that it indicates we are actually not cut out for paying attention. Or perhaps we are creatures of selective attention paying and should release ourselves from this blessed hell of paying attention to so many multiple things and everyone just chose one or two each, with room for a bit of doubling up here and there. If it was evenly distributed it would work out very fairly. I feel confident that I could commit to pay attention to the act of hoovering and folding clothes after they are dry in the domestic realm, but nothing else. Never is one made more aware of this when one is parent to a small Puffin. The world decrees the Puffin must just learn how to do x, x and x. X usually involves dreary task like sitting on uncomfortable carpet, while taller person describes sides of a triangle. Under my system small Puffins would state two things they are willing to pay attention to and we’d just not worry too much about the rest. I cannot find much support for this thinking on an average Monday in rainy playground.
Finally, I have discovered two camps of brain books. The first are people who know the technicals on the brain, but if they veer into the direction of a simile force instant closing of reader’s eyes or closure of book to prevent dizzy spell. Then there are the poetic types, whose similes do not jar the thorax quite so violently, but so dense is the waxing poetics, it’s really hard to find the lobe or cortex or neuron information through these mosquito nets of vervy description. Neither camp is exactly satisfying.
I did gather from one that anxiety and motivation may reside in the same part of the brain I cannot remember the name of and could face a bit of inter neuron argy bargy because anxiety could cancel your motivation. I wondered about athletes, if say you were anxious about next Saturday’s race would that then cancel your urge to get up this morning and run like a rabbit to prepare for it. Or does the general abundance of endorphins take care of it?
My next reading on the brain has the word endorphins in capitals in the title. I also realise my earlier assertion of the brain as heavy as a frozen chicken would cause plenty neck problems. Should be a frozen chicken in a state of thaw. A very petite poulet.
If you want a happy brain moment there are some excellent docs on youtube about Jacqueline du Pre. One is a collaboration on the Trout quintet. The other is a film from the 1960’s about her relationship with the Elgar concerto. London looks precisely like the picture on the front of JM Coetzee’s book Youth or rather London looks precisely as it did look to those trotting about in the Sixties. Like East Berlin or Czech looked in 1988 to those of us who weren’t.
du Pre and Elgar
http://youtube.com/watch?v=PToFY-Upaw0 (there are 8 parts to this documentary they should pop up by the side of the first one once you watch it)
Trout Quintet.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=sKbK5inlHlU&mode=related&search= (There are at least 4-5 parts to this)
Up the pole with Dickens
This is one you’ll enjoy. Simon Gray describes his dementing Tango dance trying to write a play, then film, the radio play, then play about the life of Dickens:
Bernard Shaw said that writing a play was either easy or impossible. My play wasn’t impossible: I’d been at it too long and spent too much of my best blood on it to allow it to be impossible. I reverted to the old tactic of stealing up on it when it wasn’t looking, and then batter, batter, batter: “Come out you bastard, and fight!” etc. But of course I was nearly 40 years older than the last time I’d attempted it, overweight and short of breath, so I gave that up and tried cheating – by putting what I thought to be my best draft on the computer. From it I extracted drafts galore, draft on draft on draft, sometimes attaching the top half of one to the bottom half of another. This is the great thing about the computer, at least for someone of my generation, with my sort of temperament: it gives you the illusion of work. You go to bed at five in the morning with squinty eyes, a befuddled head and an unnatural but satisfied sense of having cut, copied and pasted yourself to well-earned oblivion.
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1969190,00.html
I have to confess I loved the batter, batter, batter idea. It’s the closest description I’ve read to the level of loathing one can muster for one’s pet project that continues to evade as the Christmas’s tick by.
I foolishly keep telling myself that there’s method in the madness of continuing to fight for evasive characters in an evasive novel. Then I read a random novel, that in my humble opinion, might have benefitted from another year or two of ruminating and recommit myself to the task. Batter, batter, batter.
This is especially pertinent for my generation, some of whom appear more concerned about producing a stack of books, than actually taking the time to cultivate something deserving of the readers time and attention. This desperate notion of career instead of work is redolent of these by-pass roads. As my mother always says off them “we go onto it from a boreen and we come off the other end into a boreen”. I sometimes think of the novel (from the pov of the writer trying to write one, not as the reader of one) as a pugnacious, drunken git, who for some perplexing reason no matter how poorly he sings, you cannot give up on him/it.
You can hear the results of Gray’s batter, batter, batter on Radio 4 (www.bbc.co.uk/radio4) on Saturday. I think Little Nell might be the title.
Neuro-flop
This brain business is very exhausting. So far all I have ascertained is human brain weighs the same as an average frozen chicken (3 pounds). In the bookshop had an unfortunate time trying to negotiate the neurology titles, which for some peculiar neurologically challenged decision were filed beside books with blasterish titles in orange capitals like: The verbally abusive man — will he ever change? And lilac, pale green books, that have taken over as gifts, where previously the recipient would be given a box of talcum powder and a puff.
I’m deeply suspicious of books that stick Mozart in the title. Mozart has a monopoly on having a brain it seems.
Salvation may however be on its way however as Nightwaves on BBC Radio 3 and the Free Thinking Festival have the following scheduled for Dec 13th, 2006.
Free Thinking Festival
Wednesday 13 December 2006 21:30-22:15 (Radio 3)
More highlights from the Free Thinking Festival of Ideas recorded in Liverpool in November.
Henry Marsh, one of Britain’s leading neurosurgeons, delivers a lecture on the brain and the memory.
The Rainey’s/ Ita Kane
The Rolling Wave have a feature on The Rainey’s — a travelling family who played traditional music around County Galway fifty years ago. They were recorded only on one day in 1956 in Letterfrack. The lovely Ita Kane made a documentary for Radio Connemara, where she traced relatives of the Rainey’s, having been inspired years earlier on hearing the only recording of them.
The piece starts 43.13 into the programme if you want to scroll to it. The recordings of the Rainey’s are particularly atmospheric and unique because you can hear people shuffling around nearby and you feel like you could be sitting at the table with them.
There is some other interesting stuff before it about a man who makes flutes, as I recall.
National Anthem Neurology
Which part of the brain likes the national anthem? I’d like to know because the small Puffin will not stop singing it, despite our numerous chit chats along the lines of it’s a song designed not to be sung too often how about singing…. this other song Mr Tambourine man?
No, it’s the usurper. He recently announced he’d almost perfected it. This means he sings it even more often. This song is making something in his brain very, very happy. Or perhaps the fact it’s hurled before every ice hockey match is the key to it.
Small Puffin also announced he’d been working on an operatic version of the national anthem, which when revealed turned out to have a touch of the Sheryl Crow’s about it, rather than Covent Garden vibrato.
Then there’s his French version which ends after the first two words.
Then there was the version in the middle of the packed ferry boat.
But the highlight of this national antheming was when he interrupted our recent Romeo and Juliet inspired wooden spoon sword fight, declared it was the worst sword fight he’d ever had and announced he had to sing the national anthem, turned the wooden spoon ladle end up and used it as a microphone.
Have at you patriotism…. 5 years of singing the same song and it looks likely there’ll be no let up shortly with the promised rock version and Christmas version in the works. To say nothing of the “I’m now working on the American national anthem”, which the Canadians on the next packed ferry boat/ trolley bus will surely rise up and clap over… it currently stalls after 1 and half lines.
Shostakovich
This is what the brain needs. A blast of Shosto.
Tried giving it some exercise today because it hasn’t had any for a very long time and the brain people claim it likes it. After 4 mins according to the dottish clock, what felt to be at least 19 mins by my knee tendons, being of short stature, struggled to find the stop button on this stepping yoke machine, I managed to physically fall off it. This was followed by a bout of that dizzy, trembling they warn you about in the posters. I discovered an additional pulse in my abdomen and retired. I will repeat the experience only because my brain and cardio pipes do very well with only 7 mins total of it and the alternative will be looking for a new hip on ebay.
Recovery was possible with this piece of music.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/lunchtimeconcerts/pip/4dmbl/
It’s only available for a mere matter of days, so get a blast while you can.
Something up with that link .. it’s expired but here’s another lunchtime blast: Shosto comes in at the end, after the first two.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/lunchtimeconcerts/pip/ohtun/
The first piece in that last link did not agree with my particular neurological picnic.
This is more like it: lovely anecdotes at the beginning of this concert about him being a late starter, football coach and deeply suspicious of the postal service sending postcards to himself to check it worked.
Case in point
Exactly which part of the brain is responsible for hanging things on the wall? Which part of the brain allowed a woman hang this shelf on the wall in this manner and look at it each day (for many months) without any overwhelming desire to make it practical and useful.
If there can be a defence against this act; some initial neurological trickery went on in the purchase of it, since it turned out not to be a shelf at all. It was a panier/basket impersonating a shelf. In which part of the brain does a basket masquerade as a quality shelf?
Spatial reasoning? Apply red dot.
Make that a clutch …
So Charlie Rose somewhat put me off the brain, though I liked the pink model they had in the middle of the table. Every one should have one made at a certain age, with red dots that mimic the real state of our individual brains based on scans, so we can then point to it in difficult situations and say look its my x or x or x that’s playing up that’s why I forgot my purse to buy the food, or drove through that red light that looked orange or can’t get anywhere on time. Could be very useful for finding a mate: put your pink model on the table and compare and contrast compatibility.
I need to start more basic, so next stop will be the teenage brain. Found this Frontline series on PBS that one can view online: cannot vouch for it yet, as got distracted (red dot alert) by another one about the disgraceful response to Hurricane Katrina by FEMA and those other elected dozy does’ who did so little to help people in the aftermath.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/teenbrain/view/
It’s going to be a while before I’m cracking the neurology textbooks at this rate. I wish someone would publish an online “current bun” style guide to the brain and how it all computes up there. They should divert all this wasted money going into weapons in space into research into what’s going on upstairs instead.
A grasp at grey matter
I’m attempting, with a sincere and unfortunately limited disposition towards anything scientific, to get to grips with the brain. I’m tired of it all being a random bingo game above the neck. This multi story car-park set up that’s up there needs a few signposts.
I should point out that I’ve lived a life to this point of scientific blunder. This is not an exaggeration, but I’m not about to admit to the extent of it because I’ll never be gainfully employed again if I do!
The small puffin has a much better aptitude for science and so is always asking for clarification on things, that usually I cannot answer. There was some astonishment at the dinner table when I admitted it never occurred to me that snow was frozen rain. Politely put, I had a more poetic version of it I thought it just stuff nestling up there alongside whatever else is up there. Impolitely put, it probably equals a low IQ ! There was a terrible 12 hour pause when the small puffin was required to learn the time at school and I couldn’t exactly decide whether the earth rotated the sun or the sun the earth. Another parent, a doctor as it turned out, cleared it up for me with a slight degree of polite bemusement in the playground. Some folk may be appalled by such an admittance. Truly though these kinds of facts are simply missing from my lexicon or they just never occurred to me. They require a degree of logic than evades me. (I think it’s the same gene for cookery.)
It’s not all doom and gloom neurologically speaking since I can accurately recall the first prologue from Henry the Fourth part I (not the roman numerals in title though) that I read a full 20 years ago. Plus phrases in Indonesian and the handy question in Icelandic: have you got a car? (or maybe it’s: are you a car?) And in Hebrew: I am picking melons in a field (though the last time I uttered it the recipient said I had confused the word melon for breasts). I can also repeat nine numbers in reverse if someone says them forwards to me.
Useless skills ultimately, being able to cook a good omelette would be far more popular and practical. Also, if I am reading a book and a word gets repeated 200 pages later I notice. Doesn’t happen with my own work where a word can be repeated five times in the same sentence and I won’t see it. I intend to understand it all very soon, as I voyage into the neurological realm and have a quick picnic with logic. Handily, I came across Charlie Rose getting tres enthusiastic over the brain, round the table with a bunch of blokes who been perpetually excited about it. Subsequently there are a group of women discussing more specific aspects of brain function. You’ll have to bear with some of the ironic adverts.
For those who have long come to terms with the frontal lobe there’s Jimmy Carter and David Hare close by.