The Lesson For The Day

-->

There is nothing like being in a gathering where you are the only person who does not have fluency in the language being used in fast, idiomatic exchanges to encourage you to focus on “unconsidered trifles” (and yes, I did look it up, and I thought it was from another play than the one I first thought of, shame on me!) and then to play around with the levels of irony that you can find in and around your place setting at the dinner table.

One such “trifle” was a bottle top (so to speak), from a bottle of Cava given to me because I was British because we obviously know everything there is to know about alcohol from its manufacture, through bottle opening, to astonishing consumption.  

All the Catalans that I know are, generally speaking, moderate in their drinking habits to the point of squeamishness.  Therefore, my ability to consume more than a single glass of Cava is regarded with something approaching pitying awe - though those last two words sound like an example of oxymoron, but let it pass.  The point is that I am deferred to on matters alcoholic, especially in matters Cava-ic, so I always open the bottles.

I have to admit that I am something of an expert now and pride myself on the efficient removal of all but the most recalcitrant of corks with the minimum of sound.  There are no ‘pops’ when I uncork a bottle of Cava, merely the merest of susurrations - if that!

As I am sure that any ful kno (and I am not prepared to give the source of that deathless quotation based on the Satchmo Principle) under the foil covering the cork is a round metal disc that stops the wire holding the cork in place cutting into the cork itself.  Usually these discs have some sort of design on them and have actually become collectors’ pieces!  Sad buggers, says the grown man who still collects British Commemorative First Day Covers!  You can buy specially designed folders with special pouched plastic sheets to display your treasures!  Says the man who has tens of filled folders with pouched plastic sheets to display his FDCs.

Anyway, a colleague in The School on the Hill in Barcelona once told me that her sister-in-law collected such things and that she would be grateful if I could keep my eye open when a bottle was un-corked and, if I remained sober enough, remember to keep the illustrated disc.  I dutifully collected the discs that I drank through, as it were, and in spite of the fact that my colleague’s husband now owns a restaurant and therefore is an unending supply of little discs, I still look and almost automatically put the discs into my pocket.  And then months later throw them away.  It’s a sort of domestic rite of passage.

The one illustrated above, however, caught my interest because of its innate preachiness.

I always maintain that I was virtually unique in the teaching profession by actually listening to each and every school assembly to which I went.  I mean really listening.  Elsewhere I have noted the extraordinary “quality” of what I heard.  The content ranged from the recited (from a printed book of assembly suggestions), through out-and-out gibberish, to one exceptional Christian assembly in which the basic tenets of religion were comprehensively rejected!   

No matter what was said, there was little to no reaction because people did not listen.  Never mind the kids who adopted the defensive ‘closed ears’ syndrome in an assembly situation, but also the adult teachers who I noted were able to look with empty eyes at the speaker on the stage while at the same time giving a vague impression of being emotionally engaged in what was being said.  One of the tricks to maintain sanity!

There were good assemblies in which well-chosen examples were linked to the kids' lives that, if only they had been listening, would have edified them.  But they were in the minority.

My favourite assembly speaker was, I have to admit, one of the worst.  He was a great aficionado of the “While listening to the radio this morning . . .” and the “On my way to school today I noticed” school of assembly giving.  Whatever he talked about in his free-flowing stream of consciousness, the delivery of the punch line of his words was always the same.  The content may have been conflict in Africa, or charity in India, or the perils of drug taking, or the need to plan your studies, but the punch-line, the denouement, the didactic thrust was always, “Don’t drop litter!”   

His greatest moment came when his topic appeared to be (nothing was ever clear cut) something to do with female hygiene!  Just the way to start the day!  After ten or so minutes of acute embarrassment wondering what the hell the point was that he was trying to make in his indelicate meanderings, we finally to to the  clear, concise and gloriously out of place summary: “Don’t drop litter!”

I couldn’t help thinking of him as I looked at the disc, while speedy Catalan flowed around me: “Sin ALCOHOL”, and I wondered just what he would have produced from such a ready-made stimulus for a student audience!  Perhaps he would have remarked the sinuous, sensuous, swash capital ‘S’ taking up so much of the space, spreading itself on the pristine white as though owning it, literally crowning the bottle!  And then the prosaic sans serif of ALCOHOL in small capitals: the capitals representing the importance of the substance, but the size a reference to the insidious nature of the product: no frills, just threat; there, yet at the same time almost inconspicuous beneath the flamboyance of Sin!  And so on, until the peroration and the exhortation to be tidy!

The real irony, of course is that interpretation only works in English, not in Spanish!

In Spanish the word for ‘sin’ is ‘pecado’ - which we retain in English in the word ‘peccadillo’ meaning a little sin.  Interestingly, though probably only to me, the word ‘peccable’ meaning open to sin, also exists, but this word is more commonly used as its negative as in ‘impeccable’ and therefore forms a part of the select group of words which include ‘gruntled’, 'whelm', ‘kempt’, ‘couth’, ‘ruly’, ‘corrigible’ and ‘wieldy’.

Anyway, in English the Spanish word ‘sin’ means 'without’, so the bottle top disc was actually from a bottle of semi-sec (ugh!) Cava-like liquid, without alcohol!  It tasted, I couldn’t resist it, as disgusting as you might imagine.

I suppose, if you were feeling in the right mood of mischievousness, you could work out a whole ‘assembly’ in which the revolting taste of the drink without alcohol, linked to the free forming and sheer exuberance of the word ‘sin’ and the solid reassurance of the black capitals of the word ALCOHOL are a direct encouragement to sybaritic excess.

But, please to remember, Don’t Drop Litter, and dispose of the metal disc in a container for recycling!

Now, go and learn! 

-->

If you have enjoyed reading this post, please feel free to click the 'Follow' button on the top right of this page.
If you would like to read drafts of my recent poems please go to:                                            smrnewpoems.blogspot.com

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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!

Do not die Seneca!

Every music goer has his or her own story of ‘The Supressed Cough’ or perhaps a description of when the supressed cough came out, and the consequent feeling that the entire audience was glaring in your direction wanting to rip you to pieces for ruining their favourite passage in the piece.

My moment came towards the end of the first half of The Coronation of Poppea in the Liceu last night during the death of Seneca.  This is one of my favourite parts in the opera and I would have preferred to have enjoyed it in tranquillity, rather than while wondering which of us was going to die first, Seneca with his vein slitting or me trying to keep in a cough that was bursting its way to the surface like magma from a volcanic explosion.

Things were not helped by the fact that the orchestra was in keeping with the ‘early’ nature of the music with sparse and delicate orchestration and so there was rarely sound sufficient to mask any “audience participation”.  I found that I could not breathe properly and had to take tiny bird-like sips of air so that I didn’t activate the full cough that any reasonable breath would have guaranteed. 

Somehow or other I managed to keep the cough under control, though to the people sitting behind me there must have been some strange writhing to observe before black-out and merciful release.

I will spare you the phlegmy details of that luxuriant cough, but the relief did not make up for the previous minutes where the sonic restrictions imposed on an audience member trying to be considerate had appreciably limited my life expectancy.  Not coughing I felt, was my Sydney Carton moment, “It is a far, far better thing I do etc.”  Admittedly I was not taken to the guillotine, but I did die a little death during the struggle for silence!

Apart from that, what was the performance like?

Well, this production of The Coronation of Poppea (1642) by Claudio Monteverdi was a concert version so there is no dramatic production, scenery and costumes to speak of, though the singers made the most of their score-bound, music stand limited opportunities – but the major action was through the music and the voices, as it should be.

One of those who defied the limitations of a concert performance and who had a great stage presence was Filippo Mineccia, a counter-tenor singing Ottone.  He had a beautifully modulated voice and, while it lacked power, it was expressive and touching.

The key roles of Nerone (David DQ Lee – counter-tenor) and Poppea (Sabrina Puértolas) were central to the drama.  Puértolas brought more raw sexuality and sensuality to her singing than I have heard in this role, while the oafish, self-satisfied vulgarity that Lee brought to the character of Nerone was a counterpoint to and at the same time a development of the characteristics inherent in the character of Poppea.  I would have to describe Lee’s voice as a Helden-counter-tenor, it had a throaty fullness that could, and did fill the Liceu and gave a real masculinity to the role.  This was a voice that could easily be imperial and the contrast with the more delicate voice of Mineccia gave a dynamic to the drama of the interactions of the characters.

Maite Beaumont sang Ottavia and produced a version of the Lament that I have not heard bettered in any live performance that I have been to.  Her voice was point perfect and the pathos that she injected in her song of loss was astonishing.  She showed herself to be dramatically and vocally versatile in singing through a whole range of passions, and each one of them convincing.  For me, her voice was the stand out performance of the evening.

Luigi De Donato as Seneca was magisterial and his vocal range was strong in every register the music asked him to hit.  A rich and full voice that seemed to relish the challenges in the role.

There was some doubling in the roles so that, if you were not sure about the narrative, you could be confused as a character you had just heard being one person suddenly transmogrified into another, but the music led you surely and with voices of this quality who cares if you are kept guessing!

The role of Arnalta was taken by Krystian Adam, and he made the most of the opportunities that it offered especially in the lullaby, a real moment of pathos in the power struggles going on in the imperial court.

Drusilla was sung with intelligence and grace by Verrónica Cangemi, while Franciso Fernández Rueda sang his variety of roles with competence and musical precision as did Cyril Auvity.

The scoring of the piece allows the music director a fairly free hand in how it is presented.  I have heard productions of The Coronation of Poppea which have been accompanied by what sounded like the 101 strings of Mantovani in lusciously Romantic music and I’ve also heard ‘authentic’ productions where I have failed to recognize any of the instruments in the orchestra.  This version led by Jean-Christophe Spinosi was a little more conventional.  The orchestra (Ensemble Matheus) resources were limited, with recognizable strings, continuo, harpsichord, lute, harp and what looked like a dulcimer.

I have to admit that I was a little disconcerted by the sounds in the opening of the opera, by what I took to be roughness from the wind section, there was also a certain scrappiness from some of the strings – but as the piece progressed so I became more immersed in Spinosi’s approach.

You could say that Spinosi was less of a conductor and more of an actor in the piece as he sat, stood, clapped, stamped, smiled and encouraged.  He was not afraid to go for dissonance in the name of drama, but at the same time, he was more than prepared to manufacture musical moments of tremulous delicacy.

When, at the end of the production and for the curtain call, everyone, singers, director and the entire orchestra came to take a bow in a line together, it seemed like a fitting accolade for what was an ensemble piece realized by individual virtuosi!

This is being typed on my MacBook Air now that the battery has been replaced.  I was informed by the Apple Centre that I went to that they would have problems finding a battery because my machine was ‘vintage’!  Vintage!  I asked how this was possible and I was told that Apple describes as ‘Vintage’ any machine over five years old, and that specific parts would cease to be readily available.  If this is true then it is a truly disgraceful example of forced obsolescence.  However, in spite of the machinations of Apple, they did manage to get a replacement battery and installed it in double quick time for which I am grateful.

And what a joy this machine is to use, I am now remembering! 

It turns out that I do not want a two-in-one tablet and laptop; I do not want a larger screen; I do want a ‘proper’ keyboard layout; I do not need the extra memory that I thought I did.  In short, I should have stuck with what I already had, instead of which I spent a lot of money on a ‘better’ machine that I do not like using.  Ah well, hoist by my own gadgets.

I have to admit that coming back to a small, light and stylish machine like my MacBook Air is an absolute delight: yes, it is overpriced and it doesn’t have the specs that many cheaper machines boast, but it does have an illuminated symbol on the front cover and it still looks as slick as it did when I bought it.  All those Vintage years ago!

Never satisfied!

I can fully understand why previous generations, before the advent of real science (as opposed to the mumbo jumbo that POTUS 45 believes in), thought that it was the rotting meat that gave birth to the carrion flies feeding on it.  It made sense: there were no flies; meat rots; covered in flies – QED.

This thought came to me as I was driving Toni to his hospital appointment for another test.  In Barcelona.  During the rush hour.

It is easy to forget just how awful driving in a large city is when you are surrounded by sullen drivers, hating your very existence and hoping that the earth would open and devour you whole.  At least that is what I was thinking.

The traffic jams I can take.  I have learned to count the minutes that each stoppage lasts and I have also learned that, in spite of the fury that I feel when I am delayed, the actual, real time that I am hindered is actually quite derisory.   It is a truth universally acknowledged etc etc that time is relative, and time is never so relative as when you are spending it looking at the backside of the car in front and wishing death on the driver in front and the driver in front of that driver and so on until the way is clear for you to progress.

Though the this-too-will-pass philosophy lets me cope with car-forced delays, it does not seem to have such a mitigating effect on my attitude towards motor cycle or motor scooter drivers.

I scowl (inwardly at least, and usually outwardly as well) at all youngsters (i.e. anyone under the age of 35) on two wheels.  If those wheels are motorized then the inward smile often becomes articulate as they seemingly swarm from nowhere (hence the image of the carrion flies and the rotting meat) and encircle your motorcar.  They come at you from all directions because, as far a motorcyclist is concerned, any three-lane motorway into a major city actually has at least seven (7) lanes for motorcycles.  They regard the three lanes for cars as merely the starting point for their depredations, as they see cycle lanes on each side of the conventional car lanes.

All that would not, in itself, necessarily be a bad thing, but the real problem comes when you consider the physiological make up of the drivers themselves.  Like flies they consider themselves faster with their reflexes than mere car chained humans and so they flit from ‘lane’ to ‘lane’ through a real lane (without the quotation marks) space as if these lanes were entirely empty rather than filled with large, four wheeled, heavy, dangerous vehicles.  No, these buzzing insects swerve, cut, under-take, over-take and ignore all the rules of the road right up until the realities of the legitimate road come into play and smash them from their fragile, relatively unstable two-wheeled mortality machines.

They (that amorphous crux of undifferentiated otherness) sometimes say that your ethical standard may be judged by how well your treat those who you think are beneath your regard e.g. Conservatives.

Well, though Conservatives are “lower than vermin” (Nye Bevan) they are not as challenging to me as motor scooter riders.  As someone who has actively, persistently and vocally bewailed the lack of a directional flame thrower operated from the driver’s steering wheel column to deal with the infestation of these two wheeled insects and who has (shame be told) urged that any scooter driver involved in a RTA be swept to the side of the road and left, I feel that my left wing, humanitarian and human decency level are clearly pretty low.

In my defence, in the comfort of my home and well away from a rush hour road, I look askance at the outrageous things mentioned in the paragraph above (apart, of course, from the comment about the Conservatives) and tell myself that my hot thoughts fail to take in social, historical, political, economic and indeed every other -ical and –ic that comes to mind and that I should be ashamed of myself!  And of course I am.  I do not, in my saner moments, wish harm on anyone – misery though recognition of their own evil, yes, but not physical harm.  What I do wish for is simple consideration.

The equality of suffering is something that unites us all which is why we all hate those people who push in or take a space or display their selfishness for all to see – like motor scooter drivers who use bus lanes and cycle lanes and pavements to STOP!  You are not in a traffic jam in the centre of a large city; you have a cup of tea at your side and a good book to read.  Relax.  Let it go!

If I am like this after one short exposure to rush hour traffic, imagine what I would be like if I was still working in Barcelona!  Thank god for retirement!

I have a further admission to make: this is not being typed on my new Lenovo Yoga 910, top of the range, 2-in-1, touch screen and back lit, no, I have reverted to my MacBook Air.  Part of the reason for my backsliding is that the Air is smaller and more portable, but the major reason is the keyboard layout.  My Lenovo has an odd, and entirely unsatisfactory arrangement of the shift and return keys on the right hand side of the keyboard and I simply cannot get used to them.  What the arrangement means in reality is that my wayward little finger finds a page up key and before I know where I am I am typing in the middle of another paragraph rather than simply capitalizing a proper noun!

Since I am a touch typist, anything which actually makes me think about the mechanics of what I am typing simply gets in the way of the thought processes and makes writing a chore rather than a joy.

The whole point about buying the Lenovo was to get me free of the stranglehold of Apple products that has defined much of my computer buying over the years.  As an earlyish adopter of an Apple computer I found myself with a computer system that was user friendly, but as a teacher I also discovered that most of the computer programs used in schools were designed for PC and not Mac and I ploughed a lonely furrow in the educational world!

It was the pricing of the iPhone before last that was the tipping point for me as I felt that Apple was simply taking financial advantage of a loyal customer base and doing so with total cynicism.  Enough of my money for them I thought.  Enough was enough!

I mean, I am not a fanatic, I’ve thrown nothing away and my major computer is still a Mac, but I am on a path to find another way.  And if that means buying new gadgets up to and including a new laptop, then so be it!

I will have to draw up a list of my requirements and then, with Toni’s help, start the hunt. 

Though the more I use my MacBook Air the more I remember how much I enjoy using it, so it may be that I am actually looking for the MacBook Air that I already possess!