Cultural challenges?

 

 

Well, a second viewing of Aida in the Liceu last night has not changed my opinion of the production – though musically (orchestra, chorus, and soloists) it was as good as my first experience.

     As my second viewing was with friends who were seeing the production for the first time, I kept my negative views to myself until the interval when I was able to add a certain amount of my sored and repressed venom to the general rejection of what the director, Shirin Neshat, had presented.

     The irritation with the front-of-curtain processions, the appearance and inexplicable nature of the veiled characters in black, the one-note moral argument, and the static quality of much of the stage work, all came in for fully justified criticism – while the music producers were as justly lauded.

     This time around I felt much more irritation about the use of film projected onto the blank surfaces of the hollowed out rotating cube that constituted the scenery.  It seemed to me that the director was caught between metaphor and reality and did not give any sort of coherent argument for the differing portrayals of action on stage or indeed on ‘screen’.

     The March of the Zombies, that comprised the last of the front-of-curtain processions before the final scenes, did not provoke the slow handclap and boos that accompanied my first view of this charade, and the conductor was not called on to quell incipient mutiny by the audience with a hard stare.

     Musically this production is redeemed by the quality of the music produced but not justified!

 

 

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Our second foray into the music scene is due to be a lunchtime performance in the Palau, but our plans may be derailed by bad weather.  If it is only a spot of rain, then I couldn’t care less, but some of the downpours that we have had recently have been tropical in their intensity, and given the lunatic level of driving normally, I do not want to be on the road in challenging conditions with The Driving Death Cult!  We will see.

 

 

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In my Huxley research, the second researcher that I have contacted with a view to looking through the Chatto archives in the University of Reading, has explained that she is fully booked until some time next year; so back to the drawing board.  Though I do have a list of further names of people centred in the area who are contactable, so all is not lost.  Yet.

     The irony of a wide-ranging research project focussing down to a single footnote, which will be used as the basis for an entire research paper, is not lost on me.

     The problem of having a topic so narrow is that the information that is central to my ‘thesis’ and that will be the original element, is contained in an archive that is not readily accessible to me, though it would be just a car drive away were I still living in Cardiff.     

     Well, that is something that I should have thought about when I was doing the original research all those years ago – like half a century ago!  Dear god, it does seem extraordinary writing sentences like that, and even more so when I unearthed my original research and started reading through extensive notes made by someone I barely recognized as myself! 

     I am sure that there is a moral lurking somewhere in those last sentences, but I can’t be bothered to tease it out!

 

 

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With all the apocalyptic talk of hurricane-level storms for tomorrow, outside, now, there is bright sunshine and the temperature is a more-than-acceptable 23C.  And we are preparing to go out for a menu del dia – something I feel I deserve given the demands of an evening performance of a Grand Opera last night.

     As I am now used to going to the opera for the Sunday afternoon series (and therefore getting out of the theatre at a reasonable time) it was a shock to the system to find myself hours past my bedtime before head finally hit the pillow.  And, to make matters worse, it took me some time before I finally got off to sleep, so I felt more than justified ignoring the raucous interruption of my reveries by my mobile phone urging me to gird my loins and get to the pool for an early morning swim.

 

 

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     Everyone is entitled to a leisurely day from time to time, and this is one of mine.

 

 

 

And the next thing?

 

 

 

  

It says something for my state of underwhelmed-ness about the new Amazon Prime Series The Rings of Power, that I have not bothered to watch the latest episode, which was released last Friday.  The idea of my ignoring something that plays to all my sci-fi fantasy weaknesses, does not say a lot for its impact!

     I am more even more disappointed because I read previews by trusted critics like Bradshaw in The Guardian which were so enthusiastic that I watched the pedestrian opening episode with an avidity that was soon rapidly dwindling to disinterest, bordering on boredom.  I’ve now reached episode three and I am still not engaged, in the way that the books or films of The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit captured my reading and watching dedication.

     The Silmarillion on which the new series is loosely based, I found unreadable in its book form, and regarded it as a piece of donnish self-indulgence – as indeed is the series, if you think about it in terms of the commercial hopes of Amazon who made it!

     Yes, of course the look of the series is spectacular, the landscapes are staggeringly beautiful, and the set piece grandeur of fantastic civilizations amazing, but then it should look good given how much cash has been expended on it.

     I find little ‘new’ in the series, and the clunking reveal of ‘random human who turns out to be an unrecognized king” etc tedious, and a weak re-run (pre-run?) of Aragorn/Strider.  I do recognize that the series is a prequel and that there is a sort of satisfaction in seeing the ancient pre-history of the more interestingly critical moments in Tolkien’s created world that far better known, but it does take the sting out of what might happen as we do know how things eventually turn out, and this series does not have the ‘wow’ factor that the films had.  We have assimilated director Peter Jackson’s epic visual conception of Tolkien’s world and we now take for granted visual effects that would once have blown us away.

     I will, of course, watch the whole of the series.  And I will maintain my hope that there will be moments that justify the time I spend watching and the money burnt to make it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have completed my open-air-early-morning-swims.  The fortnight of local pool closure for maintenance is over today, and I have already checked that the pool will open at the normal times for normal use from Monday.  I have been relatively lucky with the weather so that I have not had to swim in challenging circumstances – or cold water, but I still do feel a sense of Mission Accomplished that I have swum all fourteen days in our community pool.

     One of my lecturers used to swim, every day of the year, in Swansea Bay.  I am not made of such stern stuff, though I can say that I swam on Christmas Eve off a beach in Sitges.  When I say swam, that is something of an exaggeration: I immersed myself in the water and immediately exited the sea.  The sunshine that was streaming down, did not, as I vividly recall seem to have any part in heating the icy wavelets.  There is a fine line between resolution and stupidity and staying in the water for any longer than I did would clearly have been an illustration of the latter!

     The pool-absence period has jinxed my writing by changing my routine, and I have only scribbled ‘thoughts’ in my notebook on a couple of occasions, whereas I always write in it when I am taking my cup of tea and baguette in the pool café.  Have jotted down a few phrases and ideas, but it remains to be seen if they are actually worth working up into something real.  There again, even ‘failures’ are interesting, and it is rare that I can’t salvage something from the wreckage of a poem ‘gone wrong’!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Opera Season is almost upon us, and I still haven’t decided if I should take out a ‘Saturday Afternoon Subscription’ to a series of orchestral concerts in Barcelona.  This is an odd hesitation on my part because I am essentially an orchestral music sort of person, with my going to Opera being something of an indulgence for me.

     As is usual with any subscription series, there are some concerts that don’t really appeal, though from past experience, the concerts with low expectations very often surprise with unexpected delights.  At least that is what I keep telling myself.  And afternoon concerts mean a Barcelona exit at a reasonable time!  Worth considering.  And going.  Perhaps I will buy a subscription.  There you are a decision made in under one hundred keystrokes!  If only the other things in life were so easy!