Water wondering wariness

Technology always wins

I spoke too soon about the prowess of my smartwatch and its ability to track my swimming.  It probably does do exactly that, but it doesn’t vouchsafe the information to me, the mere user.  The last time I used the thing for a swim it told me how long I had been swimming, but kept the length of my swim secret.  I am convinced that there must be a way of finding out this information, but it eludes me.

            And that goes for most of the electronic equipment that I use.  It does its job and I am sort-of satisfied with it – but I know that there is much more that I could be getting out of it.

            Take, for example, the example of the smartphone.  I use mine for reading books.  Occasionally, just occasionally I actually use it to phone someone.  And that is it.  Other people, like Caroline for example, use their phones like an extension of their bodies.  There is seamless movement and the phone bends (metaphorically) to her will and information spills out, photos are sent, videos made, voices recorded – well, you get what I am saying.  Her phone does so much more than my small library assistant.  And I have an iPhone!  Cutting edge and all that.

            But, the same thing with the computer: I use mine as a glorified typewriter.  A very expensive typewriter, and one which needs a bulky, expensive to feed machine to produce the end result of the typing.  Which perhaps points up the problem.  For people like Caroline, there is not the same necessity for a hard copy of something.  Her poems are written electronically, retrieved electronically, read electronically and shown electronically.  Me?  I have to have the A4 100 mgs sheets before I believe in the reality of my writing!  Perhaps that attitude is something of my generation and not something that I will ever get rid of.

            My watch, having started well by letting me know that I had swum 1,300 m a few days ago has stubbornly resisted all my best efforts to tell me know how far I have swum since on any occasion.  Press what buttons I please; I can’t get what happened naturally to happen again. 

I could, I hear you say, try reading the instructions and stop trying to prove that I am of a later generation which doesn’t need to read the things.  I do.  And I should give in gracefully.  And who knows?  I might actually have a constant stream of irrelevant information about my swimming technique that I can ignore. 

             I will have to search for instructions on line because there is nothing in what I have at the moment on watch or phone which gives me any idea at all about what I should be doing.  My fear, of course, is that even with the instructions (written in god knows what language) I will still be confused about how to make the damn thing work.

Prejudice justified!

Prejudice has to have an element of unthinking assertion not backed up by evidence.  If there is evidence for what you are saying that it becomes a reasoned point of view.

            So, to those of my fellow citizens who hail from North Wales.

            It turns out, according to recent research and publicised by the BBC that people in North Wales are genetically different from those in South Wales!  It also points out that there is no genetic evidence to show that the Celts are a linked distinct genetic group!  This interesting stuff is to be found at http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31905764 and give at least some genetic justification to the animosity which sometimes exists between the North and South in Wales!  As the report puts it, “it also finds that people in North and South Wales are more different from each other than the English are from the Scots” – which will come as no surprise to neither North nor South.

            I must admit that I can see more compelling reasons for the perceived differences between North and South based on inequality, politics, history, the Industrial Revolution, the Welsh language, religion, communications, road building, railways, tourism and politics again rather than genetic evidence – but it is interesting none the less.  And worth reading!

Thank goodness there was nothing wrong

A trip to the dentist.  Never one of my favorite appointments, but necessary!

            I will never understand why people, sometimes educated and intelligent people with some understanding of the world, assume that my stuttering attempts at Spanish mean that I will understand fluently what I can’t say.  My dentist was a case in point.

            She spoke with a speed and a passion that did her credit and, to be fair, I did follow a fair amount (I think, but what can I possibly know!) of what she said, she certainly didn’t have that mystified and pitying look that my responses to swift conversations used to have!

            After what I thought was an inordinate amount of socializing, and considering the wear and tear on my nerves having to keep up my end of the conversation (about being warm in cold countries, if you must know) I was almost relieved to sink back into the depths of the dentist’s chair and think calming thoughts about the person who had sharp spiked instruments in my mouth.

            All she did was scrape and clean, but you know how it is when a dentist pokes around in your mouth, it sounds as if they are casually, yet determinedly destroying every scrap of enamel you have left.

            When I unclenched my hands (a typical dentist technique for me) I scrambled to an upright position preparatory to running away and was held back only my the dentist’s laughter as she watched my frantic attempts to escape and as she urged me to calmness.

            €44 that little clean up cost – as I said at the start, thank goodness there wasn’t anything ‘real’ to do!

What’s going on!

A disturbing email from the tutor in the OU urging those people who had not sent in their completed pro-forma giving details of the proposed end of module subject to contact her.  This is disturbing because it was an open email to everyone and this is a week after the deadline for handing it in.  Extensions are easily available in the OU, all you have to do is ask – but this email suggested that people had not handed in their work and not asked for an extension.

            You can imagine that the years of guilt-laden upbringing immediately sprang into play and I assumed that I was one of the people being castigated.  Why I should have thought this I do not know as I know (surely I didn’t dream it) that I sent off my work early!

            That belief meant nothing of course.  I immediately went back to the OU web site, I checked that my list of assignments had registered that I had sent something in.  I checked my past emails and found the notification from the OU that something had been received.  I noted down the reference number of the receipt (we have such things in the OU) and went back to check the reference number on the . . .  You get the idea.  Full out panic.

            The only thing that I have stopped myself doing is downloading a copy of what I have sent.  Which I did when I first sent it just to check that it was what I thought it was.  So, something, which I have checked and for which I have an official OU receipt has been sent.  I am safe.  I think.

            I am still unsettled by the fact that it was an open email.  How many pieces of work has she not had?  Although the pro-forma is unmarked and used mainly as a way of the tutor responding and advising about the work that you propose to do, you fail the course if you do not submit!  What are people doing?

            The great thing, the one technique that you have to learn about distance learning is not to let everyone else panic you.  It is very easily done, and the fact that we students in the North of England Group (Europe) are scattered all over the continent and we, or only a section of us, are only going to come together for the Study Day in May at which point we should all be working on the material, the outline for which we should already have sent in!

            You can see, just as I type the words, they are getting just that little bit frazzled, I am responding to worry and letting my imagination work overtime!

            Be calm, unruly student soul!

            Wait for the tutor’s words, which cannot be far away.  Some people have had the comments on their pro-forma back already.  Which in itself is disturbing but . . . calm!  Get on with the reading of the textbook, do a little light writing and all will be well with the world.  Probably.

            I am sure that I can find more disturbing things to worry about.  Easily!

Wagnerian Marathon!

Siegfried – Wagner - Liceu

The hero of last night’s performance of Siegfried was not the eponymous hero, it was the orchestra.  Conducted by Josep Pons, from the atmospheric opening moments of the music to the last ecstatic chords the playing was superb, I have rarely heard the Orquestra Simfònica del Gran Teatre del Liceu on such form.  I cannot pick out any section of the orchestra for special mention because this was an ensemble tour de force!

            But the opera does have a name and, as part of The Ring Cycle it is a barrier that every Opera House has to respond to, knowing that many of the customers will have seen other productions and will certainly have heard any one of the myriad majestic versions easily available in our technological age.

            So how does this one stand up to the competition?  Five hours is a long time to demand from even the most compliant of backsides!  In a word, for me, it was OK.  And if that doesn’t sound amazingly enthusiastic, then neither was the audience at the end of the performance.  Polite?  Yes.  Enthusiastic?  No.

            The positively magical orchestral opening promised much and when we finally got to see the woodland glade we were presented with a junkyard in which a broken-down, dilapidated caravan was the main feature.  Mime, Peter Bronder, was presented as a slovenly, vest wearing caricature constantly keeping his comb-over in place – but he sang with authority and his mannerisms with constantly amusing.  I don’t know if the caravan was meant to bring the word Traveller to mind, to match the character of The Wanderer?  Or am I reading too much into the setting?

            Stefan Vinke was to have sung the title role, but he was replaced by Lance Ryan.  This Siegfried was played with insouciant gusto by Ryan but his voice was not at home in the character.  I felt that he came into his own in Act III when his lighter lyrical tenor was more at home in the mawkishly embarrassing scenes with his aunt/lover.  For too much of this opera Ryan’s voice was overwhelmed by the orchestra, and not because of the inconsideration of the conductor.  Helden tenor Ryan is not and we needed one to match the other sung performances during the long night!

            Greer Grimsley as the angst consumed Wotan, impeccable in neat suit, coat and hat with his silver topped cane/spear, gave a magisterial performance with a voice powerful, yet nuanced.  He managed to convey a sort of sense of power-overload, of someone bored with his own capabilities and looking for change, any change even if it meant destruction.  His scene with Era, Maria Radner, in the ruined sitting room of a chaotic castle was finely sung and a masterpiece of existential emptiness made musical!

            As far as scene setting was concerned the re-forging of Nothung was competently done, but Siegfried’s demonstration of its power by smiting the caravan and having the whole of one side fall off was, to put it mildly, slightly absurd.

            I liked the use of slight and smoke to convey the power of the dragon and I liked the theatricality of a pair of well lit bulldozer claws as the mouth, beneath which the giant/man that was always the base of Fafner, Andreas Hörl, was able to appear.

           

            Alberich, Oleg Bryjak, was played with some style and vocal satisfaction and the antagonism between Alberich and Mime brought out the underlying theme of Waiting for Godot that pervades the feeling of this production.

            The Liceu likes fire.  That is not a reference to past destructions, but rather to the number of times that real flames light up the stage in various productions.  This opera was meant for this opera house and it used fire interestingly, from the flames of Mime’s smithy to the magic flames keeping everyone but a hero away from the sleeping Brünnhilde, Catherine Foster, it always played a justified role in the action.

            Foster was at home in her role and sang with passionate beauty.  Act III had some of the most touching music making in the whole opera and, even with the strange situation and the even stranger words that they sing, there was real passion and a sense of excited exploration in the ending to the opera.

            Did the staging make sense?  Not entirely for me.  This production was full of good ideas: I liked the concept of Siegfried played as a bizarre mixture of the incomprehensible innocence of an Oliver Twist under the tutelage of a Fagin-like Mime, yet also with some of the amorality of The Artful Dodger as well!  But I found myself wondering, too often, about some of the concepts and just how they satisfyingly tied in to a unity in the piece that could give it strength through the radical reworking of traditional ideas.

            This was a production largely drained of primary colours, but there were some spectacular scenes in spite of the sub-fusc palette used. 

            And there was always the music!

Future

What will be, will be

I am surrounded by things that are going to happen rather than things that have.

            Today I heard from Ignacio Acosta who is the great-grand-nephew of one of the artists that I have chosen to write my mini-thesis on for the end of my OU course.  Ignacio is mounting an art exhibition based on his experience of his great-grand-uncle Alvaro Guevara, which has opened to positive reviews.  The press release can be seen here www.wildpansypress.com and, if things go according to plan then a version of the work that I will produce for the course will find its way onto the website devoted to the exhibition.

            A lot of work has to be completed before that can happen, but it is a goal worth aiming for.

            More pressing is the essay that I am supposed to be writing for the end of April.  This seems like eons away at the moment but I am not going to be fooled by that trick time has of melting away just when you need it most and I am reading my last textbook with avidity bordering of desperation!  I am already reading chapters that we should not have started until April – but as I will be in the UK on the date in April that the essay should be handed in I need to give myself some sort of buffer zone of knowledge before that date.

            We are, it’s true, given a week off for good behaviour for Easter, but I am looking to be writing the essay during that week so that I can concentrate on the masses of work necessary for the piece on Hockney and Guevara.

            All of this is in the future and all my work at the moment is the potential rather than the realization.  Still, bit by bit.

Beware!  An ‘early start’

There is always something a little daunting when the opera you are going to see is scheduled to start a clear hour earlier than the normal starting time!

            It perhaps comes as no surprise to learn that the opera in question is one of Wagner’s, and is the latest offering of the Liceu as part of the realisation of The Ring Cycle.  We have now made it to Siegfried.

            As far as I can tell, the setting for the story has been updated from the Mythic German Folktale to a more industrial and 30s Austrian faux-schloss modishness.  So far I have enjoyed the productions and, apart from my rear end going to sleep, I am sure that I will enjoy this one!

            I will attempt to write a review of the production in the next couple of days, with the real problem trying to find secure photos of the production that will not slip away to blank squares after a day or so!

            I have not had the courage to discover just how long we are going to be in the theatre and I might just consider buying myself a meal for one of the intervals to make things bearable.

            I have also booked myself a room in an adjacent hotel so that I can collapse with the least possible effort and not after a drive.

            The cost of the hotel room has gone up 33%!  That, if nothing else, is an indication that the winter months have gone and Barcelona is eager and ready to fleece the tourists who flock to the centre.

            The one thing I object to is that everyone who stays in Barcelona is subject to a 72c ‘tourist tax’ or ‘city tax’.  I mean, come on, I live here, why do I have to pay!

           

Poems keep flowing

I have recently had a crisis of confidence in my writing.  The last two poems I have written, I like.  I enjoyed writing them.  But.

            It’s that ‘but’ that disturbs me.  There is a sort of arrogance in writing poetry, especially poetry that one is prepared to share.  You are saying, in effect that you have something worth saying and that people would benefit (in some intangible way) by reading it.  It’s that last bit that I am not sure about.  Nor come to think of it, the first bit!

            If you are writing a story there is a distinct narrative to keep you and your readers going.  One plot device follows another, there is character development, things happen and then they come to an end.  Some of my poems are, I think, like that – other are most distinctly not.  Some poems I think I know what I was hoping would be the end result of writing them, other poems I read through them and wonder.  I know that could be a good thing, but I sometimes wonder about the quality of what I have to say.

            Some people writing about ‘big’ subjects and use vocabulary that I shrink from.  Not out of prudishness, you understand, but because I do not think that my poetry is strong enough to take such loaded words.

            The last poems I have written have made me think about what I am doing and wonder if I am going through some sort of phase in my development which may mean that I write in a different way in the future.  Put like that, my questioning seems quite positive.

            I like that approach and I will watch what I write with interest and hope for something new to come out of it.

            If you want to accompany this voyage of discovery (which isn’t going to be much of a voyage if I continue to use clichés like that) then do check out http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es and leave a comment to help me on my way!

            Wednesday will see the return of Kate, the group leader of the Barcelona Poetry Workshop after her extended visit to the USA and that usually means that another poem will be squeezed out of me.

            It is also an opportunity to put pressure on a few of my possible collaborators on Flesh Can Be Bright whose publication is galloping nearer and nearer!

The Future

 

Book to edit; text book to read; essay to write; research to be finalized; abstract to be written; poems to be produced; lengths to be swum; bikes to be ridden and . . .

            Talking of swimming I have downloaded an app for my watch.  I am a great supporter of Pebble smart watches (Kickstarter and all that!) and I have just managed to use a swimming app which is supposed to tell me everything about how and how long I swim.  It does seem to me to have all the qualities of Black Magic (and I don’t mean that in a chocolaty sense) as I am nowhere near my mobile phone (which is necessary for my smart watch to operate) when I have my swim and yet, my watch told me how many yards I had swum.  I think.  I have set nothing, not even the length of the pool – but I long ago surrendered to the power of gadgets beyond my ken and I simply accept what they say.  I have no idea how to access what I saw on the face of my watch when I pressed some button or other at the end of my swim.  Presumably the information is somewhere, probably waiting for me to download it to a computer where a bewildering array of graphs and statistics will be presented for me to ignore.

            This is something to work on.  Or wait for.  There is another app that I downloaded which is supposed to monitor how far I walk in a day.  I don’t quite know what happens, as I do nothing.  But when I wake up in the morning the watch face that I have selected (you can do that sort of thing at the touch of a button) has gone to be replaced by a very technical looking dial.  Which I ignore.

            One day I pressed the wrong button and I was suddenly presented with a graph showing how long I had slept for the last week!  I think this is the approach I will take with the swim app, wait for a fortuitous accident, and then marvel at what a wristwatch can do nowadays.

            Technology, after all, is a belief in the future!