SATURDAY 7th MAY 2011
Real Madrid is trouncing Sevilla to the accompaniment in Catalonia of lashing rain, thunder and lightning. Barça were hoping for a humiliating defeat, but the other way round so that all they would have to do in their forthcoming match would be to draw and the Championship would be theirs. Jollifications will have to wait for another week or so – and given Barça’s lamentable recent league performance, perhaps even longer!
Enough of this unnatural concern about football!
Barcelona this afternoon was sultry and very full. The skies were trying their best to squeeze out a few drops of rain but we generally managed avoid the precipitation until after our lunch and visit to the exhibition.
Lunch was in the stylish restaurant near the Roman graveyard and the exhibition was at the bottom of the Ramblas in Arts Santa Monica and was “The End of Appearances” by Julio Vaquero.
A series of largely monochrome large drawings on tracing paper of modern technology mixed with ornate wooden furniture. The overall effect was one of otherworldly looking objects in a world seen through the medium of a spectrum other than that or normality.
To complement the drawings there were two installations of gold coloured furniture a bed, wardrobes, chest of drawers, a washing machine – all crumpled and with wax or solid oil oozing out of corners or gushing out of machines and all set on an undulating mound of black dust. The usual sort of thing that parades itself as modern art nowadays.
If you search for meaning in the publicity for the exhibition you find such things as, “In aesthetic freedom, painting speaks when form breaks down. And so it is that representation bleeds and flows when the referents suppurate gold and fat in transit of time that is light. And so it is that the painter sees and constructs the referent. Vaquero not only perceives and equates art and the real in a system of representation and expression but also, in an unexpected turn in the history of art, assaults the objects of the world by storm and transforms them into painting for the eye of the other.” So now you know!
Thank god our conversation and the lunch we had was a little more comprehensible!
I have now completed reading the dozen novels that comprise the Dave Brandstetter series of books written by Joseph Hansen who died in 2004. The novels were published between 1970 and 1991 and chart the professional successes of the American detective Dave Brandstetter who lives an eventful life as an insurance investigator checking out suspicious deaths before the company pays out.
The stories are tautly written and have satisfyingly complex plots enlivened by the period detail of life in a certain sector of society in Los Angeles and the surrounding area.
Dave Brandstetter was one of the first openly gay detectives and the novels trace an interesting (but never salacious) private life sub plot as a parallel to the investigations of his public life. We see the successes and failures of his love life and we get to know his character through a series of constants that develop through the series.
The common framework of the narrative base of the novels include repeated references to his much married father and his last young surviving widow; the tri-partite home with its sleeping loft and the faint whiff of horses reminding one that the place is a reformed stable; the modern refrigerator housed in an ancient ice box; Max, Romeros and Dave’s corner table reserved for him in the restaurant on a permanent basis; the Jaguar; the Swiss gun; Dave’s fame, wealth and personal attractiveness to both sexes; Dave’s smoking and his love of quality single malt whiskey (sic); the fact that gays recognize each other instantly; the background of southern California and Los Angeles; highly worked paragraphs of description a la Steinbeck; philanthropy; high culture and Jazz; violence and the inevitable hard talking without which an American detective novel would never be complete.
Through the series of novels he gets older and his reactions slow down. He smokes and drinks, in spite of advice and the deleterious effect it has on his life. He has a keen mind and takes risks that keep the reader guessing outcomes.
I am not convinced that the “gay” aspect is anything other than window dressing and am not convinced at how much would really change in the stories if Cecil the boyfriend was Cecily the girlfriend – not much I suspect, but that does not stop me recommending these novels wholeheartedly as excellent reads. Try them.
SUNDAY 8th MAY 2011
As other people reach for cigarettes so I stretch out greedy hands towards CD collections of the Complete Symphonies of Carl Nielsen.
To be fair to myself I cannot be expected to show restraint when my companion in Barcelona yesterday, Irene, buys the Complete Works of Beethoven. She bought 85 CDs and my purchase was only for 3 onto which you can easily fit Symphony No 1; “The Four Temperaments”; “Sinfonia Expansiva”; “The Inextinguishable”; Symphony No 5 and finally “Sinfonia semplice” all played by the (appropriately enough) Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra under Michael SchØnwandt.
I am listening to what is perhaps the most immediate and friendly of his symphonies the second. This recording is sympathetic and shows attention to detail in what seems to me to be an exuberant rendition. It is certainly taken at a cracking pace and lacks the indulgence that some conductors exhibit when faced with the lushness of Nielsen’s sometime showy orchestration. I look forward to the rest!
Tomorrow is Toni’s birthday with the inevitable descent of The Family. We have been out to buy a variety of tapas to keep them happy while the birthday cake will be provided by Toni’s sister. I only hope that I have the energy after a day in school that starts at 8.15 am with the equivalent of Year 9 to enjoy the festivities!
After a dull start the day brightened up and the afternoon was sunny. We couldn’t face doing anything culinary so we went out to the Maritime for lunch.
This is, I suppose, our favourite restaurant and we have never forgotten how much we needed it when we first moved into the house. We used to fall into the place and eat food like faded ghosts after yet another day of unpacking!
I had the menu del dia and had two starters instead of the first and second courses. I chose to start with smoked salmon and followed that with arroz caldoso which is a substantial broth of meat, fish and shell fish with rice. The sweet was tarta whisky and the whole lot was washed down with a more than respectable red wine. This little lot was at the weekend inflated price of €17 – delicious!
I am counting down the days to the end of June. Already my second year sixth have departed – although they will be back for a totally useless examination in English that they have to take for purposes of university entrance. This sounds important, but for reasons that I will not go into it is a complete waste of time. However, the most important thing is that they no longer figure on my timetable so it is able to shrink to what would be a full timetable in the UK – such is the parlous state of the profession in Spain!
As far as I can work out we have time for two complete sets of examinations between next week and the longed for exodus of the students on the 24th of June! You have to admire the dedication to the cause of an institution that lives and dies in the Truth of Faith in Examinations and the Power of Temporary Memory Retention. Makes no sense in terms of education, but what the hell!
Talking of temporary memory, I am beginning to forget how horrendous the last interminable term was. As the sun shines more and we do not have to go to school and come home in the sunless hours we forget the true misery of the dark night of the soul that a long middle term without the leavening of occasional days off can be.
It says something that, while I am looking forward to the end of June and our two months off, I am just a keenly dreading next September. Perhaps I should take the obvious lesson from that sort of response!
Meanwhile a birthday and the next working week.
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