Other eyes

  

When friends come to visit, their comments about what they experience encourages you to look again at what you thought was normal and every day and look at it with a slightly (or even a radically) different perspective.

     What I have discovered this time around, is that friends do not actually have to be present in the flesh, their mere imminence is sufficient to cause a rethink.

     For example, we have mysterious rain damage, or water damage.  One corner of the living room ceiling shows signs of something watery going on.  We are puzzled because this corner is part of the wall separating us from the neighbours and the room above is a repository (I daren’t grace it with the term library as the chaos of volumes precludes that designation) for some of my books.  There is no water source, and no signs of broken pipes or similar.  And it does look unsightly.  During the furious storms of last week the water (from whatever source) was sufficient to form long drips down towards the floor.  Something will have to be done.  And the impetus is made more urgent by the fact that visitors will be coming to the house for some time in the very near future.

     But recognition of something needing to be done does not necessarily link towards doing something.  It is far easier to rationalize indolence and think those comforting thoughts that caution too hasty repainting because the damage will merely be repeated and one may as well wait to see just how extensive the damage is before tackling its amelioration.

     And anyway, the smell of fresh paint will be all too telling for the discerning visitor,

and will only cause them to wonder just what has been done to cover up something that did not look right.  Not the most convincing reason to do nothing, but its one that is working for me at the moment!

      I much prefer to wonder what visitors will note this time around.  Things change.  The beach is not the same now that the chiringuitos have gone; storms reform the profile of the sands; the vegetation barrier (which is protected) between the end of the beach and the paseo is growing and dying and blooming, so each visit is different.

     We (the City Hall) is attempting to make Castelldefels a city of sculpture as well as a city of gastronomy, and so we have a few more installations by Lorenzo Quinn to go with the bits and pieces that we had previously.  The sculpture nearest to us is not to everyone’s taste and it will be interesting to hear our visitors’ reactions.

     And we are going to the opera to see Aida.  For me this will be a second viewing.  I frankly do not expect my view of the production to change, but any chance to hear the music is to be welcomed!

     I look around at our roads and the normal structures of living by which we are surrounded and I am made more sensitive by the fact that they will be observed by fresh eyes, and that rubs off on me too as I look at wonder at what they will notice.

 

I have just reread this piece of writing and wonder if it actually says anything.  But, as perhaps another example of the lassitude that grips me from time to time, I do not intend to edit it.  I rely on the fact that at some point in the future I will come across it and wonder, momentarily, what the hell I was thinking about and then move on!

 

Fire!

 

 

The greatest threat to democracy is raised eyebrows and exhaustion.

     When you are presented with an unending succession of immoral acts presented as truth and decency by a President (I almost hesitated to give even the word the dignity of a capital letter) and a government who act with bewildering shamelessness, then each new grotesquerie is met with less and less visceral horror and with more of a resigned shrug.

     The levers of power are in the hands of the criminals, and they are busily trying to ensure that any guardrails on their nefarious activities are removed so that they can act with even greater impunity than they did before.

     And what can we do about it?  Writing diatribes against the most obvious corruption seen in any (I think that is fair) President in American history can certainly give some sort of literary solace to the writer, but it has little effect on the wider population, unless that writer has access to mass media – and even then it has proved to be futile, as witness the re-election of the monster of depravity that occupies (what an appropriate word!) the White House.  There was more than sufficient evidence from his first vile presidency to alert all but the more fanatical of his followers that he was not in any sense an even quarter-way adequate person to occupy such a position of responsibility.  And yet he was re-elected by over 70 million voters.

     So, despair is the only resort left to us?  I think not.

     America is still a democracy (in theory) and votes count – why else would the President and his lickspittle lackeys try and gerrymander and cheat their way to legitimacy through the ballot boxes?  So, if votes count, then it must be a priority for the right-thinking left to get the vote out.

     Bad mouthing the creatures that form the present government of the United States is necessary, but abuse does not work against someone who apparently is impervious to any truth that might be used against him.  His popularity has reached a record low, but are those who have voted for him twice before now prepared to vote for an alternative?

     I sometimes think that the Johnsonian theory about the then head of the FBI, “Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, then outside the tent pissing in!”  Or words to that effect.  Better to have someone you dislike on your side that working against you.  Is there something of that attitude of Trump voters keeping that mobster in power?  Better to have him on ‘our side’ than against us.  It doesn’t make any sort of sense, and he most graphically does not care about ‘them’, but then how, in a sensible world, would Trump ever have been elected – or even manage to get to the point where he could be seriously considered.

     The real danger is apathy, or a feeling of impotence on the part of voters.  Their thinking that individually what difference is my vote going to make and even if we get a change of person in power what real difference will it make.  Uninformed cynicism could be one of the deciding factors in the midterm elections.

     Have the Democrats done enough to offer a positive choice of measures and policies to put against the cavalier opportunism of Trump and his hangers-on?

     If the Democrats are relying on distaste for a corrupt criminal in power to bring said criminal down, then that sort of lazy thinking will ensure his continuation.

     It is only through a clear and unequivocal statement of belief in the institutions that govern the country and a determination to make them work that will gain political success.

     Get the vote out.  Restate basic beliefs.  Get things done.

 

And as an afterthought to the downright sick decision/proposal of the ever-vile Hegseth with the approval of Trump, to have the execution of the mass murderer Nidal Malik Hassan, filmed, I am reminded of another power-hungry would-be world dictator who had opponents hanged and had the executions filmed by a camera crew under the direction of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.  In 1944.

 

 

 

I'll drink to that!

 

 

Today is to be a day given over to the completion of tasks.

     A fine start, and that statement would be more impressive if it was not being written at ten past four in the afternoon, but resolve is resolve, however late the commencement.

     I wrote a list of Things To Do while having my after-swim cup of tea, a well-earned cup, considering that I was loath to get up to go to the pool this morning.  But shame (or some comparable emotion) motivated me to attempt a cursory wash and more thorough brushing of my teeth, and I was (reluctantly) good to go.  And go I went.

     A moderate swim, where all my customary exercises and lengths were completed in water that was my-friend-Carles-cold, but ideal for swimming for me.  I sometimes think that it is only in the waters of the Caribbean than Carles would be satisfied – whereas I have never really got over the shock of retreating from the clammy heat of our Mexican resort and not finding the cold, invigorating shock of British waters that I was more used to, but something more bath-water-warm!

     In a temperature of only 17C I sat and wrote, wondering as I did so whether the weather was going to be sufficiently cosy for us to celebrate my birthday, later in the month, outside - as I fully intend to.

     At my last Birthday Lunch, I have to admit that not a great deal of food passed my lips, but rather a considerable quantity of home-made punch.  I had a thoroughly good time, but I do not intend to repeat the proportions of that repast.  For my birthday this year round I have determined that the drink (inter alia) will be Sangria de Cava, and that the food will be again provided by my friend who had a pollo a last in the town centre.  He did us proud last time round, so I intend to repeat the order - and this time eat some of it.

     As the centrepiece of the meal will be suckling pig (which I will have him divvy up into individual portions) I felt that the Cava ought to be of a superior quality, even if it is to be augmented with juice, fruit, pop and liqueur, and to that end I searched through the Internet hand have found a site that offers a decent Cava at a very much more than decent price. 

     Those who do not live in Catalonia (the Home of Cava) have to understand that it is more than possible to find a drinkable Cava for less than three quid, so one is able to splash out a little and get something presentable for nowhere near the exorbitant price of Champagne.  I have, therefore, taken a chance and have ordered a limited-edition Cava (in a very nice and stylish bottle, and yes, I am shallow enough to be persuaded by design) which should be delivered well in advance of the event itself.  Even the Cointreau and Spanish Brandy are not as expensive as they would be in the UK, so one is able to be a little freer with regard to the ‘body’ of the Sangria than at home!

     And that is as far as my planning has gone so far.  Although completion of this blog is another task done. 

     So, progress is being made!

 

And the rain, it raineth every day!

 

A storm complete with lashing rain, thunder and totally theatrical lightning – and today serene and sunny, a more than reasonable 23ºC.  In Catalonia there is rarely that held-over spitefulness of continuing bad weather that Britain likes just to rub it in!

     Our house is not impervious to storms and Toni is usually quick to lower the outside blinds to shield us from water ingress.  But yesterday, ingress it did, and we are still trying to work out exactly how and where.  That does not sound as stupid as it writes as there was a puddle in front of the television which was more like a self-contained lake than something fed by tributary streams.  There is also a disconcertingly elegant (if unnecessary) extended streak of a dried water track on one of the inside walls, where our wall adjoins the next house.  That is a mystery deserving of more investigation.

     The basic problem of the house is that it is, I suspect, shoddily made and our landlords have done virtually nothing to upkeep the place over the years.  The only time they have ventured to do something is when actual human life is threatened, as for example in eventually dealing with the large broken branch of one of our neighbour’s trees overshadowing our garden and swinging out over the pavement, or some of the stone cladding on the house breaking away and falling.  God alone know when the electrics of the house have last been tested and the pipes looked at.  Certainly, the front of the house has not been painted for decades and looks set to be dingy for decades more.

     We do not have double glazing, and the window frames are ageing wood, and I suspect that the glass in the window is more suitable for framing domestic art than keeping out the elements.

     Why, you may well ask, do we not move?  And the answer is the old three word response: location, location, location.  And so, we make do, and mop.

 

 

I did not trust the pool to be open this morning and so I had an extra hour or so in bed.  Our mobile phones are full of pictures of the the main road in the centre of Castelldefels looking more like a shallow canal with cars ploughing through as if they are hoping to give a good watery display for any passing Ticktocker with an active camera, ready to post.

     There are certain key spots in Castelldefels that flood even with a moderate amount of rain, so they become impassable with a decent storm.  As much of Castelldefels is built at or even below sea level, and a substantial part of it is built on a reclaimed marsh, it is hardly surprising that water tends to stay in place rather than drain away – and one of the places that it remains, is opposite the entrance to the Pool, and indeed in the car part of the Pool itself.

     One of the civic messages that I read this morning states that there are likely to be ‘problems’ with flooding during part of today.  The flood warning extended from last night up until 6 am this morning, so there will have been some adventurous driving needed to get around – at last justifying the high-rise 4 by 4s that so many of the affluent affect in this area.  Although, thinking about it for more than a moment, the state of many of our roads also calls for rugged suspension, where roots of adjacent pine trees cause roads to be switchbacks!

     

 

     And visitors are arriving this Sunday!  With one threatening retribution on whoever is around at the time unless there is a goodly amount of autumnal sun!  We will have to see what we can do.

 

 

Aida boxed?

 

 

   

 

Dozens of Ukrainians protest in front of the Liceu for the presence of Anna Netrebko at the inaugural 'Aida'. ARA

I could hear the Liceu before I saw the doors.  This was not music permeating from the inside, but a demonstration outside.  A group of protesters were (loudly) making their views know about the Liceu’s choice of Russian singer to take the lead in their production of Aida.

     Anna Netrebko is alleged to be fairly closely aligned with Putin, and although she has made various statements about the present situation, those protesters felt that neither she, nor the Liceu had taken strong enough action to show their rejection of the on-going conflict in Ukraine, and also of the accused war criminal and murderer Putin, in his continuation of the war.

     I did speak to one of the protesters and expressed my sympathy for his position but also said that I would be going inside and be a part of the audience.  I said that I would speak to a manager to make my attitude clear, but I felt that I was acting with the cost of my seat in mind, and not with the prompting of my conscience.

     I suppose the trouble is that all of we ‘right thinking’ people have made our positions clear: we do not support Putin in his invasion and his war, and we want to see the conflict resolved as soon as possible.  But, apart from expressing opinions, what have we actually done?

     I did speak to a member of the management, who said I should speak to Public Relations and that somebody would be available at the end of the show.  And that was enough to enable me to enter the theatre, having done (that word really should be in inverted commas) more than most, merely by voicing something to somebody!  Not much, but more than nothing.

     As I sit in the front row of the audience, I get an unobstructed view of the orchestra and as Aida is one of the grand Grand Operas, it was encouraging to observe a very full pit and know that there would also be on-stage and off-stage musicians swelling the sound.

     The Prelude was brilliantly played by an on-form orchestra conducted by Antonello Manacorda, and the curtain rose to reveal the set designed by Christian Schmidt: a gigantic white revolving box which slowly rotated, showing static tableaux of various figures.  The box had different sides and opened out during the performance and had projection shown on it, but the basic stage form for this ‘grand’ opera was fundamentally stripped-back tedious.

     The Egyptian and Ethiopian setting of the piece was both referenced and ignored.  We were invited to view the spectacle through a twentieth century perspective with soldiers dressed in unforms and fatigues, but were also presented with priests who wore costumes that suggested Christian Orthodox or Coptic influences, while the Priestesses suggested something Islamic.  The waving of a large black flag at one climactic point in the production and the singing of praises to the Egyptian goddess Isis also made me think that it was a reference to ISIS!

     I have no objection to updating a classic piece of operatic repertoire, but I like to have a certain coherence in the directorial viewpoint, and Shirin Neshat did not give me that in her presentation of events.

     What conflicts were we supposed to be following?  The violence on stage and on film was neither engaging in a narrative sense nor gripping in theatrical terms.  There was a confusion between the literal and the figurative and we were left wondering what was real and what was metaphorical in theatrical terms.

     This confusion was shown best in the final scene of the opera when Radames and Aida are locked in a claustrophobic tomb – which was presented in a large open space carved into the cube and Aida’s presence was ‘revealed’ by the opening of a circle of unexplained black veiled figures, who, after the reunion made their way off stage via two convenient doors.  Why didn’t Radames and Aida follow them? 

     But this was just one instance when the logic of the stage was not followed.  In the scene with Radames being revealed as a traitor there were enough characters on stage (and at hand) easily to stop the escape of Aida and Amonasro, and to capture them.

     Ritual and stagecraft, reality and convention constantly clash in this vision of Aida, but not productively.  The scene changes were done behind the curtain and the exposed apron strip was occupied by a procession of characters from soldiers, through priests to what appeared to be corpses – in the performance I saw the latter got a slow handclap form some members of the audience and scattered boos as by that point in the opera we had all become irritated by the self-indulgence of the director.  The conductor had to turn around and give a stern look into the darkness to quell the mutiny!

     But the music was excellent.  The playing of the flute solo at the beginning of Act III the prelude to the Nile scene was superb; the six on stage fanfare trumpeters was electric, and the wall of sound that came at the most triumphant moments was almost overwhelming.  Indeed, I did feel that at times the balance between an enthusiastic orchestra and gutsy singers was a little too much in favour of the instrumentalists rather than the soloists, but overall, it was an exceptional music performance, conducted with precision and a close attention to detail by Manacorda.

     Netrebko commanded the role of Aida, though I thought her quasi-balletic movements were more stylized than they needed to be, given the apparent realism of the depictions of conflict, but she was confident in all registers, and her extended high notes were breathtaking.

     Ivan Gyngazov as Radames was a more than equal partner to Netrebko, as was Artur Rucinski as her father Amonasro.

     Ekaterina Semenchuk as Amneris was excellent, though her voice is not entirely one I feel comfortable with as it has a harsher element in it to my ear.

     Moises Marin as the Messenger made the most of his set piece with a voice that had power, lyricism and depth.

     I felt that George Andguladze as the King was slightly under-sung, but he had some stiff competition on stage!

     The Chorus was excellent, but they were not asked to do very much in theatrical terms, and were more static than necessary, unless that was part of the ‘idea’ in some way.

     This was an excellent musical performance inside an indifferent production, where the inherent difficulties and contradictions in an ill thought-out or perhaps over-thought producer’s vision detracted from making this a truly satisfying evening.

 

Play Real, or Live Real?

 

Yet another heart stopping mobile phone warning about adverse weather conditions, especially shocking when it comes out of the blue – literally, clear skies and sunshine, that make a raucous alarm even more surprising.

     We have had a number of these alarms recently and it really does sound (literally) as if the political powers that be are collectively covering their respective asses.  To be fair we are also treated to pictures of horrendous flooding or giant-sized hailstones or equivalent, but elsewhere.  Not in our immediate area.

      I would always agree that it is better to err on the side of caution and to give general warnings where necessary, even if the bad weather conditions could be localized a little more precisely – but, there again, we do have transport options that make our locality wider than our houses.

     I have now been informed that the ‘alarm’ was to tell us that the period covered by the previous ‘alarm’ was now over and we could relax.  That it going to make my fraught drive into the centre of Barcelona, just a little bit more restful.  As if!

     I will have to wait for tomorrow to find out why swimming was cancelled this morning.  And I asked Chat, and it appears that the closure was a Generalitat instruction that all sporting activity was to be closed until 3pm today.  Everything explained.  But a day’s swim missed.

 

As a general point, it is significant that I am turning more and more to Chat for information more than Google or the other search engines, in spite of the fact that Google has made the search more like Chat, and it is possible to have the ‘conversations’ as you search that make the job of research so much more interesting.

     The problem as I see it is one of trust.  For example, when I asked about the pool closure this morning, I got an answer with enough subsidiary information and illustration to allow me to believe that it is genuine and accurate.  As indeed it was.  But my checking for sources was cursory and my faith in the accuracy – and the willingness of ‘my’ version of Chat to tell me if something is not fully checked out – is becoming increasingly fixed rather than tested.

     Google, for example, gave me a totally convincing summation of information about one topic that I was researching which convinced right up until I began testing the sources on which it was basing its descriptions.  It eventually turned out that it did have certain items of authentic information, but it extrapolated from those bases and produced something that was superficially convincing, but basically fiction rather than fact.  But it looked so good and it did list references, that again looked academic until you started testing them.

     Chat does have a qualifier that states that “Chat can be wrong” and that everything needs to be checked, but that has the same strength and reality as the tick that you put at the end of terms and conditions so show that you have read them.  Truth and reality are tricky prospects and AI is making them more and more fluid.

    

Which means that my entry into the blatantly make-believe world of Grand Opera in this afternoon’s performance of Aida in the Liceu, can be seen as somehow more real than the AI world which now surrounds us because, in Opera the artifice is up-front rather than lurking in the background!

 

 

 

Culture Calls!

 

 

 

A laconic message on my phone saying that 8.00 am swimming tomorrow is cancelled.  No explanation.

     Is later swimming OK?  If people have booked later sessions, are they still available?  I could of course phone up and ask, but that seems far too simple a process, while there is fruitless speculation to tempt!

     And lie-ins are not an enjoyable prospect for me.  As I get up at 5.45 am each day for my 6.30 am swim, the fact that I have to stay in bed until 7.15 am on the weekends because of the later starts, is something of a trial, as my body clock is set to get me to rise earlier.  The extra time ‘gained’ in bed is lost to me as I struggle to stay rested and prone.

     And we have just had yet another mobile phone warning about inclement weather for tonight until the early hours – though I do not think that is a factor in the cancellation of the swim tomorrow.  Possibly.

 

Instead, I will concentrate on the performance that I am going to see tomorrow in the Liceu, the first production of the season, and starting with a Grand Opera Blockbuster – Aida!  And this will be the first of the productions that will have a specially produced individual programme just for me – a touch of tautology there, but worth it to emphasise the special nature of the publication.

     Aida is one of those operas that I have seen umpteen times, but I still consider it one that I do not know in the way that I would like to.  Obviously, I can hum along with the famous bits, but the totality of the experience has always eluded me.

     Sometimes it takes a particular performance or perhaps a truly inventive staging of the production to bring an opera firmly into my personal repertoire.   

     Seeing the dress rehearsal of Eugene Onegin in an 1980 WNO production conducted by Mark Ermler with Josephine Barstow and Tom Allen, with sets by Michael Yeargan and directed Andrei Serban, took an opera I had never heard before and made it an immediate part of my world.  I still remember the real corn stalks in the opening scenes, the floating window for Tatyana’s dream, and the gleaming white carpet for the final duel in the snow!

     Or an equally arresting production, which I again first saw in a dress rehearsal, of WNO’s 1978 production The Makropulos Case, with astonishing sets designed by Maria Björnson, the production directed by David Poutney and conducted by Richard Armstrong, with Elizabeth Söderström as Makropulos.  Once seen, so known; and what some might regard as a difficult opera to take to on a first hearing, rapidly became the opera that I have probably heard and seen the most!

     It is when I remember productions like these that I think of what might be my Perfect Opera Season of a dozen or so productions. 

     Here are the first six that came to mind, in no particular order:

 

The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny – Brecht/Weill

Four Saints in Three Acts – Virgil Thomson

Akhnaten – Philip Glass

A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Benjamin Britten

La Boheme – Giacomo Puccini

 

When I feel strong enough, I might attempt to draw up the other six candidates for inclusion!