January 19, 2007
Reading the score
For a while I’ve been musing on which piece of classical music perfectly replicates/interprets the narrative of human despair. Now obviously that’s some indication of the cheery types of things I think about, but every time I hear certain pieces of music I hear the elements of the novel. Or perhaps more accurately I hear the elements that are missing from my own novel. It may seem absurd to try reduce human despair to one single narrative, but heck I have to start somewhere, so I’m settling on one for now.
My present contender is the Dvorak – Cello Concerto in B minor Op. 104 – II. Adagio ma non troppo played by Jacqueline du pre in the recording I have.
In an effort to explore this duality I find between music and narrative I got this barmy idea to try to read musical scores, which, given that my knowledge of the treble clef is v limited and all early experiences with violin were severely detrimental, was a little optimistic.
The other day at the library negotiating the difficulty of a man hogging the shelfs of the section I was trying to reach I was excited to see the Bach cello suites. Ha, I think, I’ll start there because I can throw on Pablo Casals CD and try to follow him as a first step.
Naturally forgot about it til the small Puffin chanced upon it.. what’s this? Starts singing out the numbers above the notes. So I tell him my plan about reading it with music on. Sling on the CD, dart to sofa. It’s suite 1 playing, and suite one open on the knees. Think I am fathoming it, point out to Puffin looks it going up, he rightly asserts it’s going down on the CD. Perplexed hit track one again. Repeat dart to sofa. Five further attempts. Dismal failure. Declare to Puffin reading music is impossible task. Turn off Pablo. Return to sofa defeated. Close musical score. Catch sight of words: double bass on inside cover. It’s bloody double bass music we’re looking at.
We turn to something we really can understand Pippi Longstocking in relief.
It was an excellent exercise in knocking on the head another barmy notion from the increasing list of barmy notions. Actually I’d like to know which part of the brain is responsible for barmy notions because that might explain why a I, who cannot follow an omlette recipe, thought my chances might be higher trying to read a cello concerto.
January 12, 2007
Candidates
So wind chill and minus 16 turned out to be quite anti climactic. Small Puffin and myself dressed to the top of the hill, exit the building. Small Puffin exclaims in view of my front bite warning that’s it’s a bit steamy inside this get-up. Seconds later declares he’s blinded with the heat. I look across the road and see a bloke wandering along with his jacket wide open and no hat nor gloves. I have to declare the whole episode an over reaction as we fling off the face wrapping. Further confirmed later when I spot a woman working as a flag person (traffic director?) stood in this wind chill doing a crossword. I stop for a chat with her and we discuss roadworks. Do you know, she says eventually, I should have had my ex evicted out of the house we shared when we split because I’ll never be able to own another house. I wonder can it be possible to have this much clarity, if it really is -16 in the wind. Then note there is no wind which makes it only -6.
In the soiree we get enthused about the sledging potential. On the road I think small Puffin looks strange: why’s he got two thick hoods on back of his head? Closer examination reveals he’s accidentally placed two big winter coats on. I must have forgot he says mystified. I cannot fathom how he physically managed to get them on, not least because one is two sizes too small for him.
The park is strangely empty, except for two snowboarders. When pulling Puffin from one side to other to reach some semblance of a hill I finally understand what it is to be a horse travelling the roads of Derbyshire in some Jane Austen tome. It’s beautifully quiet though, snow shifting away from the wellies like flour. It’s not that dreadful slushy snow. Powder, I think they call it.
Since this blog has largely turned into tales of the Puffin and I walking along the road, due to the uneventful nature of anything literary, the use of the ‘s’ word in first paragraph will cause all kinds of problems, as sometimes people arrive at this blog with the most alarming search terms. It’s like a form of censorship. Have had to remove an article to try to divert the owners of that group of brain cells to some other corner of the web. (i.e the corner they are actually trying to reach!) Certain adjectives have me on edge. I am faint hearted. I’m sure people would say that’s the nature of blogging. Indeed there are far better candidates for it.
January 8, 2007
Car Boom Puts Europe on Road to a Smoggy Future
Article from yesterday’s New York Times, well worth a read for a gander at the picture of the Danish bicycle. Quelle fine contraption. I wonder whether the annual rainfall encourages the Danish….
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/world/europe/07cars.html
DUBLIN — Rebecca and Emmet O’Connell swear that they are not car people and that they worry about global warming. Indeed, they looked miserable one recent evening as they drove home to suburban Lucan from central Dublin, a crawling 8.5-mile journey that took an hour.
Take it to the bridge: here’s a link to that fine contraption for porting your young ones: http://www.christiania.org/bikesframe.html
January 8, 2007
Slán Magnus
The black chair, the narrow light, the arms on chair, closeup on the face. I can’t be the only one whose heart raced worrying some individual in the leather chair wouldn’t remember some tiny detail from some literary tome or the name of an obscure river in Panama? Bless, bless (sp?) as they say in his Native Icelandic.
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1985125,00.html
Magnus Magnusson, best known for his 25-year reign as Mastermind’s formidable and cerebral inquisitor, has died, aged 77.
The TV presenter, journalist, historian and author will be remembered for his catchphrase – “I’ve started, so I’ll finish” – heard often during his interrogation of subjects in the black leather chair.
Magnusson hosted Mastermind on the BBC from 1972 until 1997, making him synonymous with a quiz show that gained mass appeal and up to 22 million viewers, and paved the way for today’s more aggressive formats.
January 7, 2007
How not to write a novel
Spend seven years continuously generating material until it fills up in four large boxes and you cannot find any part of it in a hurry, so inevitably you begin to write that part again. On reflection you see you’ve written three different novels, none of which have an ending. Like constantly knitting the arms of a jumper, without noticing there’s no back nor front to it.
Alice Flaherty has written an interesting book on a neurologist’s perspective on the creative brain, the urge to write and writers block. Usually I would avoid reading books about writing and just stick to writing and or rereading the classics, but was attracted by the brain ingredients in it. Then upon reading it discovered this notion of hypergraphia. She’ll hopefully write a follow-up which explains how the hypergraphic writer fathoms editing without marrying an editor, which given some of the contents of the current publishing catalogues would hardly set the pulse a-racing.
I’ve noticed it’s popular to remark on the writing process in newspaper articles. Writers often are asked about it. Curious then that no one suggests how not to do it. This would likely be far more use. Also, people are largely interested in the writing process once it’s over, which is a terrible pity. It would be more interesting to read an interview with some harried writer half way through, rather than when they are chipper and have forgotten the misery.
Early on New Year’s day I expressed the sentiment to a charming person beside me at a party, who was ruminating on Chick Lit, that it would be a more noble gesture for certain writers (this extends far beyond just the realm of chick lit) to actually read good books, rather than consider writing books at all. I was promptly told to get off my literary high horse.
Giddy up.
Subconsciously, I may already have heeded my own advice.
January 4, 2007
Mighty leap
For those on the European end of things who may have missed this tale about Wesley Autrey leaping down onto the New York subway tracks to aide a man having a seizure. Myself and the small puffin were sincerely impressed with this tale, also with his children standing on the platform watching.
December 17, 2006
Randomness
A random remark and conversation about a dog (given I’m not generally a fan of dogs, it really was random) a few days ago led a young woman to describe to me how earlier in the week she had been “jumped” by three guys in a residential street. They pushed her to the ground and repeatedly kicked her in the ribs, when she refused to go with them to the bank machine. Remarkably, the woman, who I’d observed previously to be a patient, gentle individual, now with several broken ribs, had only one big question in relation to it: What was going through their minds while they did it?
Today when listening to that brain programme I thought of that incident again. Those six legs that chose to kick her operated from three different brains. And since they repeatedly kicked her, were those also single individual brains making the choice to do that each time or at that point had they somehow melded into one?
She was able to somehow see a bigger tapestry. Surprisingly she did not express bitterness toward the area where it happened. She was grateful to still have her teeth. It was the question of their minds that had remained with her, even overriding the residual pain of their boots which must have persisted with every inhale of the conversation. I should say that there was nothing religious about this woman, she was not in some kind of forgiveness mode: she genuinely sought an answer to that question.
We know so little about the brain.
December 16, 2006
Neuro Henry on brain, science and medicine.
Here’s the listen again link to the Free thinking program with Henry Marsh — neurosurgeon.
He puts the cap on notion of the soul and afterlife, so basically you can relax on that front. By the sounds of it unlikely we’ll be returning as frogs or anything wiggly. He also somewhat dismisses the implied significance of left/right brain divisions, saying it’s not as absolute as previously purported by some factions. There’s a whole wadge of other stuff, but due to poor memory I cannot recall. It’s probably the most engaging thing I have heard on this yellow brick road of lunching with logic. Maybe because it’s audio. Maybe because he’s a bit of a skeptic, which appeals to my first language: pessimism.
December 11, 2006
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)
December 8, 2006
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.