Why are things, sometimes, so difficult!

Why is it so difficult to transfer music with iTunes from my Macbook Air to my mobile phone?  And that is a real question.  I have downloaded the programs that are supposed to help and all I have got is increasingly frustrated as the music stubbornly stays on the Mac and will not seamlessly transfer itself to my phone.

At which point, I know, some of you are going to ask, “Why are you trying to transfer music anyway?  Haven’t you heard of things like Spotify?”  Well, I have.  But I feel that there is something deeply unsatisfying about instant access to infinite music without some sort of effort.

This explains my love/hate relationship with the Internet.  There is nothing more satisfying that having an informational itch that can be satisfied by a few key clicks. 

I always forget the word for the technique of putting opposites together like “hot ice” in Romeo and Juliet, but I know that I can find it out by going on to Google.  Which I just did.  I first searched with “technical term for hot ice” and found a whole series of scientific, chemical references which, if I had not been writing this, I might have been tempted to delve into and spent god knows how much time getting further and further away from the original investigation! 

However, I added “Romeo and Juliet” to the search terms and got to a whole range of references.  Glancing through them I soon found the word “oxymoron” and didn’t even have to click on anything further to find it!

I had the whip of writing this to keep me on task, but the number of times that I have started off looking for something like, “When was Cervantes first translated into English?” and found myself, half an hour later looking at the latest finds from the ancient Antikythera wreck, and looking at the amazing “Mechanism” that was found that might well be the oldest computer in the . . .   You see what I mean! 

Fascinating stuff, but not what I was looking for.  [Though, if you haven’t heard of the wreck, you really should read about it.  The quality of stuff that has come from this sunken ship already is amazing, and the finds that might come to the surface next year promise wonders!  You can find more information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_wreck  Well worth reading.]

But to be realistic, you don't always diverge from your appointed task and find yourself reading about something as culturally uplifting as an old Greek wreck!  No, most of the time you discover that, for the last twenty minutes you have been going through a horror show of pictures that show "25 child stars who have not aged well" or "50 famous people you did not realize have died this year" or something similar and generally unedifying - but compulsive!

So, the excitement of the chase for knowledge has been made much easier.  The laborious use of the index in various encyclopedias and the frustrating page turning has gone.  But I seem to recall that my page searching days were just as frustrating, as my eye would inevitably fall on a tempting title and be drawn into seductive byways having nothing to do with the original search.

But the speed with which you can get through the ‘little’ things; correct the lapses of memory; check an irritating, questionable reference – for these the Internet is wonderful.  When I think of the amount of time that I have spent during my life in long, exhausting searches that could easily have been completed in a few seconds had I been able to move forward into the future and use the Internet I could weep!

But you can often only get so far putting your trust in the Internet.   

I have found that using the Internet in traditional specific research, certainly in the arts, encourages you by gains in the early stages.  You get the sense that you are making real progress and then something, sometimes something that you consider to be a minor obstacle, becomes immovable and whatever you do, the Internet does not seem to have the answers and you have to return to more traditional methods to get where you want to go.

As someone who is now outside the traditional university system, I do miss access to a decent University library and the library services that it provides.  Sometimes a thoughtful librarian can save you days of work!  

In my case, a couple of years ago, I was looking for an article in an Arts magazine published in the 1970s.  The Open University, with which I was then studying, had electronic copies of the magazine but not including the 1970s.  The ‘Night Librarian’ of the OU – a service of international librarians accessed via the OU website – found copies of the magazine for me in Milan and somewhere in Germany, but not in Barcelona. 

I sulked.   

I knew that I could go to the British Library, but that was a flight away from where I was.   

I sulked.   

It was only when I enquired about a book in the art gallery shop on Montjuic and the shop assistant casually asked if I had tried the library on the first floor that things became to happen for me.   

The library, whose existence I had not guessed at, was a positive treasure trove.  My magazine was there, and was photocopied for me; other books that I had hoped to read but had given up finding were there; suddenly, everything seemed possible!

Perhaps the mistake is mine.  I am in a foreign country and I have not exhausted the availability of institutions that might be of help to me.  But, sometimes you just have to admit that you have failed.

One piece of work that I was doing concerned the artists Álvaro Guevara and David Hockney. 

I was comparing Hockney’s A Bigger Splash with swimming paintings by Guevara.  I had seen one of Guevara’s paintings in an art book I owned, and I was able to find a colour reproduction on line from an auction catalogue, but I did not know where the original was. 

After much searching on line, I did see what I thought was the painting in a lifestyle magazine and I was eventually able to contact the owner who very kindly allowed me access to the paintings that he owned and I was able to complete my work. You can see the finished essay here:

http://independent.academia.edu/StephenRees

But one painting by Guevara (with a tempting title that paralled Hockney’s) I was never able to find.  I knew that it existed and had been exhibited, but beyond that, nothing.  I wrote, I telephoned, I searched, but I could find out nothing about the present whereabouts of the painting.  A dead end.  

Or a nagging lack that might, one day, prompt me to revisit what I didn't find the last time I tried!  

Something for the future!

As is getting to terms with Spotify if I persist in being unable to get music from one machine to another!

Brought to book

Mac the Knife’s observation that the most difficult element in politics was, “Events, dear boy, events!” came back to me with a bump when I visited the printer that was to be entrusted with the sacred task of publishing The Book.

            The place was barred, empty, with ‘To Let’ signs on the window and the phone number of the letting agent prominently displayed!

            Not one to be dismayed by such an occurrence, though I obviously was, I reverted to my mother-fostered shopping persona and stood a while in uffish thought and then made a bee-line for a place that would help with production or at worst a suggestion of where to go.

            In the event, they have suggested that they could publish the book and I am now anxiously awaiting their price.  The hardback version that I hoped to produce seems to have died the death, and perhaps (making the best of a bad job) that was one refinement too far in reality.  So, the book will be a paperback, but at least with a full-colour cover!

            The translations of Autumn Trees have been completed and I am now waiting for my other collaborators to do their stuff.  When those elements are placed in the book final pagination will allow me to complete the indexes and we are good to go.

            It has been a long journey but, as we get nearer (interesting use of the royal plural there!) to publication the more excited I get.

            Enough on the book!  I do not want to tempt fate by saying too much in a semi-triumphlist way this close to completion!

The weather has been almost unbearably hot over the last few weeks and we are now in a cooler overcast mode.  It has tried to rain on a couple of occasions, but apart from a few drops squeezed out of humid air innundation has remained threat rather than reality.

            One practical consequence of the hot weather is that the roof of the local swimming pool has been fully retracted with the, to me, illogical result that swimmers do not have to wear the supremely irritating (and in my case surpurfluous) swimming cap.  Why they are compulory when the roof is closed and not when it’s not, is one of those little mysteries that I do not want to find an explanation for.  Quirks should be enocuraged!

I continue to use my bike to go swimming and for other limited perigrinations.  But I never go very far.  I have now become expert in finding my way around Castelldefels by limiting the number of ‘hills’ (road bridges) that I have to slog up.  The main road linking the beach part of Castelldefels to the town passes along the side of the Olympic Canal and there is a dedicated cycle lane which is completely separated from the road.  Unfortunately it follows its own undulating and eccentric path and has rather more lack of horizontality that I like and so have I found a longer, but more level, way to get to where I want to go.

            When I am on my bike I become fiercly bikocentric and regard all pedestrians and car and motorbike drivers as self-evidently The Enemy.  I am particularly intolerant of walkers who invade my stipulated bicycle space and have become a querrulous cycle bell tinger.  I have also become, less poetically, a post-pedestrian mutterer, as I grumble sotto voce after passing each miscreant who has had the termerity to venture onto My Ground!

Reading about the Renaissance as preparation for the final course in my OU degree seems to have died the death at the moment, but work on the possible collaboration with Guevara’s great-grand-nephew about a modern photographic response to Guevara’s 1916/17 series of swimming pool paintings has taken its place.

            I did do some slight research on public bathing in the early twentieth century, but that will need to be developed further if I am to produce something written with even a glaze of academe about it!

            My problem is that the books I need are not, unsurprisingly, exactly to hand in Catalonia and the ‘research’ hardly justifies a trip to London and the British Library.  I have compensated by sending out a few enquiries via email, though I am not sure how far those are going to get me.  Especially in the holiday period in which we are now sweltering.  Still, ever optimistic, I am clearly working under the ‘Anything is better than nothing’ philosophy cherished by the male line of the Family Rees!

For this relief, much thanks!

It’s off

Well, I have taken my ‘Anything is better than nothing’ philosophy seriously and the pro forma is off for consideration by my tutor.  This is one time when I really need my tutor’s advice.  I will be interested to see how she deals with the well meaning gibberish that I sent off, I only hope that she can make more sense of what I have written than I can!

            Which is not quite true, but I am hoping for substantial help here, if only to point me in manageable direction because I think that I have set myself far too wide ranging a topic for consideration.  Still, ambition is good thing, yes?

            Now, for a shot while, I will be able to concentrate on the next essay which is another substantial piece of work!  And on the outer reaches of modern art!  Should be interesting and should also give me enough information to irritated people for years when I pretend to more advanced tastes than I actually have.

            It is going to be a considerable shock when I travel back in time to the Renaissance for the next course, which come to think of it is nearer than I like to think about.  This course will finish in May, then there is the summer and the production of Flesh Can Be Bright and then holidays followed by the traditional laughing at teachers when they are ready to go back to school in September and then it’s October, the start of my next course and time for the United Nations Day repast.  That little paragraph is one way of travelling through time!  Which does indeed seem to be speeding up!

Where have all the poems gone?

The notes are building up and the pro forma has meant that I have not spent so much time writing my poetry.  But it does mean that I have a stockpile of ideas to work from now that the pro forma has been sent off.

            My attendance at the Barcelona Poetry Workshop usually means that I have something to use at the end of the session – and it also gives me an opportunity to see if two of my collaborators are still up for their contributions to the book.  You can always see what I have written at: http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/

            My generous deadline of the end of May for all contributions to be in and ready, now seems terribly close and what seemed generous now seems tight.  Still, I seem to thrive on tension and I hope that I put it to good use!

Page turning

Reading through Chris Richard’s blog: http://www.chris-richards.co.uk/blog/

about the books that he has read in 2015 made me realise that the number of novels that I have read this year is limited, and the number of novels that I am prepared to admit that I have read is even fewer!

            It comes to something when the books that I can recommend most easily are art books and a readable guide to philosophy.  The four Skira books on Modern Art are pricy but worth it.  They are hardbacks and they cover and illustrate in a thoroughly academically intelligent way a convincing history of the modern movements in art.  At round twenty quid each I think they are a bargain and if you look around you can get them for less!

            I have just looked them up in Amazon and found that you can get them for a damn sight more as well!  Amazon is now offering them for one hundred and thirty-five quid!  And still worth getting!  The full title is Art of the Twentieth Century in four hardcover volumes (with a 3D slipcase) by Valerio Terraroli and Heinz Althöfer and others.  There are some excellent essays in these volumes as well as some simple to digest information.  Published by Skira, I cannot recommend them enough.

            The philosophy book that I suppose you could say that I bought in self defence as I was struggling to understand some of the basic philosophers that we were being asked to consider was by the ever-readable and student friendly Nigel Warburton.  The volume, A Little History of Philosophy, is a book that I have recommended before and I am more than happy to take another opportunity to recommend it once more.  Of all the books I have read on philosophy (!) this one is the least intimidating and most readable.  And it has little drawings!  Who could ask for more!  If you have no other book on philosophy in your library then this is one that you will read and (more importantly) go back to when you really want to understand!

Be prepared!

I now have to be thinking seriously of my visit to the UK because there are some things that I have to plan for as I cannot expect hem to happen when I get there.  For example, I will have to visit the vaults of the Tate and to do that you need to apply at least six weeks in advance!

            I have visited the vaults before and it was a remarkable experience and I am eager to repeat it.  Not one of the paintings by Alvaro Guevara is on show at the moment and so I will have to look at them in the vaults.

            I also have to future plan my reader’s ticket for the National Library as my book choices will have to be applied for long before I go to Britain.  I have visited the National Library, but not as a Reader (with a capital R) and I will have to use my time wisely if I am to get the benefit from a couple of days set aside to study there.

            I m looking forward to my visit because it is gradually getting filled up with more and more things being squeezed into a shrinking pint glass!

Work has to be done!

A working lunch

The Puritan Work Ethic, which is supposed to buried deeply in such northern Protestant (atheist) capitalist people like my good self, means that something you have worked for must have that added extra that easy-come never gives you.  Which is my way of saying that lunch should have tasted better because I cycled all the way to the take away after having completed my swim (to which I also cycled) without once getting off the bike and walking it!

            The result of such exercise is that my knees feel as if someone has packed them full of slightly blunted tacks.  So much for exercise!

            To my continuing concern, the workmen who slaughtered the twenty trees have done nothing further to the sandy waste that they have created.  Where are the preparations for the laying of the cement – and, more importantly, the re-opening of the car park?  Where indeed!

            If the Fates think that they are changing my way of life by extending the cycling duties that I am grudgingly undertaking until they become second nature and I cycle through my own free will – then I warm them never to let it rain again.  The first sign of atmospheric moisture and I will be back behind the wheel and roaming though the residential areas like an Urban Flying Dutchman looking for a parking space.  And it if ain’t there I ain’t swimming!  Perhaps it’s the atheist bit of me that denies the full working potential of the old ethic!

            I have to admit that I do feel a sense of achievement about the effort that I am now making and my appearance on a sit up and beg, ‘S’ frame, basket carrying cycle has not gone unremarked – and I have not even written a poem about it!

Private faces in public places

The reality of having to make something of my whimsical choice of swimming pool paintings by Alvaro Guevara and David Hockney is becoming a little more problematic now that I am having to turn my whim into something academic.

            I have thoroughly enjoyed hunting around the Internet to try and discover the whereabouts of Guevara paintings and am thoroughly satisfied that I have found a location (that I will visit in a couple of months time) where someone has very kindly allowed me to book a visit to photograph and study the paintings he has!

            My tutor has suggested that I try and contact Hockney, as he is still very much with us, unlike Alvaro who died in the 50s.  But I am not sure that Mr Hockney actually talks to mere mortals any more.  It may well be worth making the effort to find out though as honourable failure is also an achievement!

            The details on the pro-forma that we have to submit giving an outline of what we intend to write about are coming together and my bibliography looks very impressive.  And that, after all, is the main thing!

            It is very difficult at the level of the course that we are studying, to add anything new and indeed, ‘real’ research is not a requirement of the enterprise.  As this piece of work is taking the place of an examination, there is a requirement that we use the scope of the course in the written work that we produce.  So, as the basis of what we are currently studying is Modernism, its development, critical basis and reactions to it, as well as the ‘rejection’ of it as a way of thinking about the more modern manifestations of art, our choices should allow some discussion of this.  That is the difficult bit, on which I am still working!

Politics and Big Brother

It is difficult for me to work out which I have more contempt for: the politics of our present Spanish government which has just promoted a hit-and-run hag as their preferred candidate for the leadership of the government of Madrid, or the Spanish version of VIP Big Brother.  The characters in both ‘drama’ are, to my mind, equally contemptible – though at least the ‘who the hell are they’ celebrities are at least openly doing it for the money!

            I am convinced that Toni only watches the interminable broadcasts of this awful programme in the same way that Wittgenstein used to sit in the front row in cinemas and watch Westerns – it was one way to stop him thinking about what he was doing.  Toni is so immersed in the complexities of installing and working virtual computers inside his computer (don’t ask!) and then making them work and speak to each other, that he sometimes, wild-eyed, needs some relief from the computer screen!

            I always feel a bit of a fraud when I think about my own use of computers.  I am, after all, an early personal computer adopter, but I have rarely used it as anything more than a glorified typewriter!

            This is not stopping me from exploring the possibility of turning away from Apple and embracing the Dark Side and reverting to Windows and PCs.  Even I, a dyed in the wool Mac user, have become disgusted at the single minded, dedicated pursuit of money at the expense of their customers.  The cost of the new version of the iPhone is little short of criminal extortion and has finally opened my eyes to just how callous Apple are/is – for they are legion!

            You can get so much more for your money for a PC rather than a beautiful looking Mac.  I am thinking.  And taking photographs of alluring machines with 1TB or even 1.5TBs of storage.  I know that everything should be in the cloud nowadays but I trust that thing as I would a rabid dog.  In the same way I still buy CDs – which I know appears to be absurdly quaint to those technophiles amongst whom I used to count myself.  But, I know what I know and there are machines that are tempting and yet do not have a logo that lights up on the cover!  Who would have thought it!

Now a little more on my Art course and then bed.  Deserved, I think.