There's always something worth working on

What?

Every teacher knows the look.  Eyes that stare and don’t see.  The look of blank incomprehension.  I know it too, not only from years of experience, but also from last night!

            It is one thing to have a class not know what you are on about, it is quite another to have fellow poets in your Poetry Group look at you in the same way.

            I was, I must say, quietly pleased with my effort from the freewrite, which was on ‘conflict’ and I had taken on board a suggestion from Maria, the group leader that evening, to think about the concept of whether the word or the sword was the more powerful.  This came out as a rather odd scenario in my writing where, in the poem, I burned a copy of Macbeth and then there were a few phrases from the play and . . . OK, I know it sounds a bit odd, but it seemed crystal clear to me when I wrote it.  Not crystal clear to the others and they were experienced poetry readers and writers.

            I brooded on the reception of my piece and I was loath to let it go.  This morning and this afternoon I have been working on it and, eventually I got something which I think is a little clearer than the original.

            A few changes, quite important changes, and I think it reads a little better.  You can read my present draft of the poem, Torture, at: http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es And I would appreciate comments!

Eating out again!

Lunch yesterday was a bit of a disaster, it was frankly awful, and we were not surprised that the restaurant is for sale.  I hope the sale goes through quickly and new management makes the eating experience rather better than it was!  I shall protect the guilty here and not name it, except to say that it is next to a waterfall on a roundabout – which narrows it down a bit!  I hope the owners succeed in their next enterprise because the restaurant trade is not for them.

            So, today we went to a tried and tested restaurant within walking distance of us (and if you know me, that means it is very near) and had an excellent meal.  This was in the restaurant that some friends will be staying in when they come for the United Nations Day Meal in October – The Solifemar.  For €14 each we had an introductory glass of vermouth, a three course meal, coffee and a shot after.  I also had a bottle of wine with Casera thrown in too.  Oh yes, with bread, olives and a few crisps too!  Now that is what I call value for money!

            You can check out a selection of restaurants we have patronized by going to Toni’s blog at: http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es

Freedom short lived

The brief relaxation which came with the sending in of the pro forma has now officially ended and I am deep in the theoretical justifications and explanations for Conceptual Art.  I will give you a flavour of what we have to read in one of the more approachable comments in our text book: 

But the development of Conceptual Art was in part impelled by a perception that the increasing co-option of art to a modernist culture of spectacle had been achieved at the expense of its critical and subversive content.  

So there!  Disagree if you dare!

            

          To be fair the books that we have to read, if taken in bits and read carefully, guide you fairly clearly through a minefield of pretention.  And you have to keep a firm hold of your sense of reality as you look at some of the art work that we are supposed to be considering.

            For example.  Take a piece by Lawrence Weiner.  The title of the piece is A River Spanned, 1969 and the photograph that we have of it is from the exhibition ‘When Attitudes become Form’ Institute of Contemporary Art, London, September 1969.  The exhibit takes the form of a card with: 116  LAWRENCE WEINER A River Spanned 1969 typed on it.  The curator of the exhibition took the decision, as he was fully entitled to do by the artist, not to realise the work but merely to put the card there as an indication of what might be done.  He could, as he suggested, have fired a line across the Thames attached to an arrow and therefore, spanned the river.  But he decided not to.

            So that is the sort of stuff that we are looking at now.  It makes André’s bricks and Judd’s metal boxes look positively fussy by comparison! 

            And I have to write an essay on things like this as well! 

           

            I’m loving it!

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!

There is always room for something else you don't need

Resistance is useless!

Ah, how those prescient words of the Darleks came back to me this morning!  Actually, they came back to me yesterday, but it was on charge and so it didn’t really count until, fully charged today, it did its thing.

            As Doctor Johnson so very neatly put it when Boswell tried to distract him from playing Candy Crush on his iPad, “A man who is tired of gadgets is tired of life!”  And who am I, a mere poet-taster to go against the Great Man’s words!

            Which is a roundabout way of explaining that, as we went out to lunch to add another venue to Toni’s blog (http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es) I pressed the button which brought my new robot hoover to life.  Toni has christened him with a name that I have instantly forgotten and we sallied forth, leaving said Robot to ‘do’ the second floor.  Needless to say, I had already checked that he had some sort of sensor to stop himself hurtling downstairs.

            When we came back he was bleating plaintively, asking to be fed and was in a different room from the one that I had placed him in before we went out – so that much prove something.  And there was dust in the little container for collecting such stuff.  Tomorrow the living room and kitchen because, after all, the whole point of these things is not only do you not do the hoovering, but also you are most pointedly not there while it is being done.  So we will be forced to go out to lunch again tomorrow, just so the hoovering can be done!

            Toni is still deeply sceptical (though also just as clearly deeply fascinated) and I am delighted.  This happiness will last up until the internal batteries explode or the brushes wear out or both.  And it is only then that I find that the only replacements are hideously expensive and only available from a small village in some outlandish province in deepest, darkest China.  Ah well, as I have always said with gadgets, “Enjoy!  Before built-in obsolescence catches up with you.”  Wise, if sad, words.

Send the bloody thing in!

How many partners of those doing an Open University course have had occasion to voice the deathless words in the title?

            They have had to suffer detailed descriptions of the bureaucracy (and I still can’t spell that word, thank god for Word and its dictionary – though sometimes I so mangle the letters that even the ever-patient Word can offer no suggestions) and, these days the electronic hoops through which one has to jump before the work can get where it needs to go.

            It is at times like this that one of the sayings in my family comes into its own: “Anything is better than nothing!”  I do realise that this is not always true in all cases, but it is sufficient to give a little kick up the academic backside when necessary and so it justifies its existence.  And I think that I would maintain that it is more true than wayward in most cases!

            All the necessary work for my next piece of work has been done.  It is just putting it in words that it the difficult bit.

            I have, as usual, and much to Toni’s amazed disgust, left what I have to do until the last minute.  It isn’t actually, but, as I am going to Barcelona tomorrow I really should get it out of the way before it is due on Thursday at mid day British Time.

            As this piece of work is unmarked and merely a guide to initial thoughts (through compulsory) you would have thought that it would be a relatively easy thing to polish off.  It isn’t.  And continues to be problematic.

            Why, I hear you ask, am I not working at it rather than writing this?  I reject the idea that this is displacement activity – though, god knows, I could write a fairly comprehensive handbook on the subject – it is merely releasing my writing flow.  I regard this in the same way as a sort of ‘freewrite’ where the words flowing from my fingertips will, inevitably, result in the academic stuff that I should be writing being released.

            Perhaps I should put it to the test, as I would like to sleep this evening and not stay awake wondering if I will have the time to get the thing done before the deadline.  And we all know, thanks to the publicity which is given to the American Civil War, exactly what that phrase meant in reality!

To short?

The weather has definitely changed for the better.  It is still blustery and if you are in shadow it is not warm, but on the whole you can imagine summer happening without too much mental activity on your part.

            This being the case the question of appropriate apparel comes to the fore.

            I have, throughout the year, been true to my sandals.  My feet, unlike other extremities I might mention, do not usually get cold.  I hate wearing shoes or sports shoes and so I have worn sandals.  I have rejected the accusations that I am making myself look like an ageing peacenik from a bygone age of innocence and bad clothing, and I have stuck to my footwear of choice.  Catalonia is not warm in the winter, though a damn sight warmer than the UK, and I have allowed myself to be persuaded into jeans.  Now that the weather is, or indeed has, changed, the question of shorts presses itself for consideration.

            If it were merely a question of walking about then I might shortify myself forthwith, but the bike is a complicating factor.  I find that riding the bike is colder than walking.  I don’t really see why, it is hardly because I am whizzing along with the wind tearing at my flesh, but it is colder.

            Needless to say, no one in Castelldefels is wearing sandals, let alone shorts.  It is not the season to do that and Catalans are not ones to throw caution and their clothes to the winds just because it is hot.  If the date is not right then the clothes stay on.  And lots of them.  So if I decided to wear shorts then it will only be me.  Not that that has ever dissuaded me from a course of action, but I do have to put up with Toni who never fails to mention the people I have blithely ignored and who Toni later tells me stared with open fascination at my sandals.

            So this is a decision not to be entered into lightly.  I have picked out a pair of shorts that have been left to one side of late and am considering.  Seriously considering.

Thalassa!  Thalassa!

From where I sit typing this, if I concentrate hard and the wind is in the right direction and synchronises the movement of some branches I can actually see a small fragment of the sea.  If I use my imagination I tell myself that I can sometimes make out scraps of whitish things that could be parts of waves.

            What I can see, plainly are lots of pine trees.  They are infuriatingly luxuriant and block out a grade one sea view and make it a fourth rate peep-hole sea view on a good day. 

            These trees, after which the area in which I live is named, grow everywhere.  They drop resin on cars which is virtually impossible to get off.  They drop pine needles which sometimes form carpets of vegetation which stop anything else from poking its head above ground.  They drop pinecones like anti-personnel ammo, and they block drains. 

            They also have astonishingly shallow roots and whenever we have high winds (for us) I secretly pray that the ones that block our view will be uprooted.  They never are of course and, given my propensity for writing poems on trees (see: http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es) this praying for destruction smacks a little of hypocrisy, but that is just part of the rich tapestry of contradictory emotions that make us what we are.  I say.

Determination

And now, I can put off working on my outline no more, this is it, a concerted effort, no distractions.  Write!

This and that

. . . and stretch!

If pain at the back of the legs indicates dedication to cycling, then I am dedicated.  I am beginning to think that all this much-vaunted belief in the positive power of exercise is much over rated.

            My knee joints, it must be admitted are not the finest articulating things in the world, but they did work without feeling as though someone has wrapped clumsy weights around them.  Now, after a week of cycling, this is not the case.  The pain, such as it is, is a ‘surround’ discomfort and I am working on the basis that this is merely muscle, rather like the alien I have just been watching in a most unsatisfactory film, suddenly called into action after a considerable time being quiescent. 

            Having been called into more stringent duty that they had heretofore been expected to complete, my muscles are rebelling.  And something must be done.

            I have therefore decided to revert to what I always (usually) [sometimes] did before playing squash or badminton – I will stretch my muscles before I put foot to pedal.  This will be, I am sure, the panacea and all manner of things will be well.

            And anyway, there are only a few more weeks to go and I will be able to sink behind the wheel once more!  At least just before and after I have my swim!

Rebellion!

There are some things you do because you have always done them.  Unthinkingly and with a sense that this is how life should be led.  They are the basics which make up the ethos that propels you through life.  Things that you can sink back on in times of trouble and feel that this, at least, is right.

            So it is troubling, to say the least, that I find myself – after a lifetime – going back on something which I have never even had cause to question.

            As far back as I can remember – and this I know because somewhere I still have evidence of my childish faith in books which I slavishly kept – I drank PG Tips.  It was the tea of choice, there was no other.

            In Spain, one of the first things that I did was search out a place where this need could find the raw material to be satisfied.  And I found it – albeit in a French supermarket chain, but I found a supply of tea bags with the requisite trademark.

            It has taken me some time, but I now realise that I have been denying the truth, the truth that I actually prefer Ty-phoo tea.  How can this have happened?

            I have rationalised it of course, it must, I have told myself be something to do with the quality of water.  I am used to the softness of Welsh water, whereas here in Catalonia, as I am fond of saying, I don’t know how something so full of calcium actually makes it out of the taps.  To say our water is hard is . . . and fit in simile or image of your choice . . . and to be frank it is the same for Ty-phoo as it is from PG Tips, but, there it is, after all these years a change of taste.

            Something I will have to learn to live with as I spit my traitorous cuppa!

Open-ended

The writing of the pro forma for the outline of the work that I intend to do for the end of course module which takes the place of the examination in the Open University for my art course is proving to be a damn sight more tricky that I thought it would be.

            Some things, like my bibliography, seem to have taken on a monstrous life of their own, but the actual title and the fiddly little details are tantalizingly out of reach.

            They will have to come to reach in the next 24 hours as the thing has to be handed in and I have to go to Barcelona on Wednesday.  So, the whip is being metaphorically applied and, as usual, in spite of moaning, I will probably manage to get something winging its electronic way.

            This is a real opportunity for my tutor to come up trumps.  She does know much more than I, and she can make or break my long essay by her suggestions.  She seems to be ‘fairly’ on board at the moment and I only hope that the sense of fellow travelling will extend itself to fairly concrete suggestions for the ‘bits’ in my proposal that I have somewhat glossed over!

            In a strange sort of way I am looking forward to this project becoming reality and words actually making it to the screen, because I am interested to see what the end result will be.  Because I don’t have a clear idea at the moment.  And that, I think, is a good thing.  I hope.

Editing

I am at the stage in my book where I am thinking of the order in which the poems should be published.  Thinking is not doing, and I am justifying my laziness by telling myself that I have more pressing academic problems.  How easy it is to write about problems rather than doing something about them.  It was ever thus and, as I have made that a way of life, don’t knock it!