The sound of perfection

I was listening to Simon and Garfunkel this morning - as I often do, it's excellent morning music - and Bookends came on - as it always does, it's on the album - and, for about the millionth time I thought, this really is just a perfect piece of music. The guitar, the lyrics, the pauses, the timings, the phrasings, the everything basically:


If you don't agree, well, you're wrong.

Working with your hands is great (if you can do it)

I read a great book recently about the world of work and why office life is not the luxurious evolution of years of toil we believe it to be, but is in fact a drab, unstructured place full of vague management speak, unsure ground and a complete lack of answers.

Many would not need a book to tell them this, but in Matthew Crawford’s The Case for Working with Your Hands: or Why Office Work is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good he makes the case with allusion to philosophy while comparing it to his own experiences as an electrician, motorbike mechanic and other similar trades, and makes a compelling case that much of work in an office is bad for the soul when compared with the single-minded work of a fixer, builder, craftsman, who is set a task with a single, clear goal: to make it work, and can only be right or wrong.

So, when I bought myself a small, linen clothes bin, that required some self-assembly, I was ready to enjoy the task at hand, to screw a few screws, assemble some wood, pat myself on the back for a job well done. After all, it was only four pieces of wood and some screws: easy but satisfying.

Some 25 minutes later, frustrated, enraged and cursing the self-assembly Gods of Argos, I heard myself say out loud, “Couldn’t this thing just come pre-built!”. I recalled the book and its mantra of building, creating, self-fulfilment through doing, not thinking (as so much of modern work has become: “How do we measure the customer satisfaction of our latest loan insurance policy”? – I have no idea).

So I persevered and, of course, my brain taxed itself enough to actually get the stupid thing built and now I have a place for my dirty clothes – what a fun bank holiday. 

My Dad can build and fix most things, from cars to showers to cookers, while I am utterly bereft of such abilities, (despite many attempts at teaching). Where does this difference come from? Innately or self-taught, or both? Probably both, but then living in the late 20^th century, with its flat-packed, self-assembly fittings and pop-up tent camping gear, it’s not surprising I, and so many people my age, are clueless when confronted by anything requiring true craftsmanship or a working knowledge of woodwork, electricity, construction.

Furthermore, as Crawford notes in his book, nowadays designers and firms don’t want people tampering with their stuff. A friends’ Dyson vacuum broke the other day, but there was no way to take it apart as the screw sockets in use were bespoke, not suitable for an of the array of screwdrivers in his Man Box. Even our fleeting attempts at wanting to fix something, or try to understand it, proved impossible, instead being forced to get A Man to fix it.

Anyway, whether you love your office cubicle or feel it’s a prison by another name, I recommend the book, even if some of the philosophy went over my head at times. Not a philosophy, not a builder, not both as Crawford. What a failure!

A single piano run and Dire Straits coolness

Are Dire Straits cool? I can never decide what the general world census is on this, so many people’s opinions to take into account. There’s some sort of pervading sense that they’re not, due to headbands, some clunky lyrics, something vague ennui about them that I’ve never quite got.

Is discussing the coolness of Dire Straits relevant in 2012? Probably not. Anyway, I only mention it as lately I’ve been listening to Tunnelof Love quite a lot, mainly due to the lovely guitar solo outro which builds for about two minutes before being topped by a fantastic piano run in the final few seconds of the song, which my brother revealed to me is played by one Roy Bittan, the pianist of from the E Street Band, who regular readers will know I have already professed my appreciation of in a previous blog.

What is it about those fleeting moments in music where everything just swells together into a sheer moment of, well, what, elation? Joy? Genius? I don’t know, it doesn’t happen very often, but there are some songs – all within the ear of the listener on a personal, subjective basis – where you just feel enlivened, invigorated, perhaps even moved. 

It’s below, I think it’s worth the listen.

Green is not a creative colour

 A late night Vimeo session led me and my housemates to stumble across this piece of weird brilliance. For me it's the crow and his direct statements that makes it, as well as the line "Green is not a creative colour".

How do people generate such ideas? The images, words, music, characters, the desire to put it together: it's all the mystery of creation and the huge disparity of brains that exist in the world that mean some can create the videos like the one below, and some can become judges, and others brain surgeons and others carpenters.

Some excellent ahhhhh song endings

Some songs have lovely, long languid outros in which the vocal's echo on for an age, in this sort of Ahhhhhhhhhhhh way, and I really like good songs that do this, so here our a few of my favourites...why not?

Simon and Garfunkel - The Only Living Boy in New York: possibly the best example, with the whole song fairly "ahhhhh" throughout, and then really driving it through until the end. Good old Garfunkel and Simon. Starts at 2:50 odd.



Sufjan Stevens - Chicago: I find Sufjan a bit tiresome, so twee and whimsical, but you can't deny (well, you can if you want) the lovely ahhhhhhness of the ending to this song, complete with twinkly piano notes. Starts at five minutes dead.



The Flight of the Conchords - Ladies of the World: Comedy song, yes, but musically excellent and a nice ahhhh moment which comes back into the song unexpectedly, catching you off guard and giving you a nice, bonus ahhhhhhh. Ah, that's nice. Starts around three minutes.



Any suggestions? Know I'm missing some but these were the ones that I could recall with relative ease...

Brighton Rock – what's the deal?

I've read Brighton Rock, I've seen the old film and now I've seen the new film and I have to say, I just don't get it.

It's sort of a classic (certainly in shops it's always displayed prominently) but it's just not that good a story. In the novel it starts off a mildly interesting murder mystery between warring Brighton gangs before descending in to a bunch of religious hokum. The films are worse, as they have the chance to shed this fat and turn it in to a potentially good story, but both are long, boring and ultimately implausible.

The whole thing falls down due to the central conceit of Pinkie trying to marry Rose to stop her testifying. He's meant to be a vicious gang murderer but for some reason seems unable to dispatch Rose, instead deciding to charm her and marry her to gain her trust and therefore silence.

Yet he does this by abusing her and being utterly cold-hearted to her and in return she, for no clear reason (no background to explain why she loves someone acting with clear hatred towards her), falls in love with him in spite of this and we are left watching this hate-love set-up with nothing but bemusement and then boredom.

She should leave him, he should just kill her. Instead, it labours towards a lame conclusion on the cliff tops as he attempts to get her to commit suicide in a fake lovers suicide pact. Why doesn't he just kill her himself? What's more she's so pathetic throughout the book / film and then willing to go through with the pact that by the end I wanted her to just get it over and done with and save us all some misery.

Return to blogging

Where have I been? Busy, that's where.

I went to Paris for a day and a night – I found the Eurostar quite boring actually, not much to look at. Just a train really, isn't it? No fishes out the window or anything like that.

I also saw a play about sub-editors called Subs, which was fun, although was in Kilburn which was not so fun. It was quite good, although the main driving force of the play was an incredibly irritating Welsh man who shrieked and cat-called his lines –as he was no doubt meant to-but it became a bit grating after a while.

Even more enjoyable than this was seeing my girlfriend's play – Dirty Laundry – be performed at the Putney Arts Theatre a couple of weeks ago. Am dram is great, I love the people you meet, the willingness to get involved, the sheer creativity that occurs when people are forced to think innovatively about creating sets and costumes and all those such things.

I have begun running again, heading towards 10k in Clapham in March where I want to get sub 40-minutes (just because) and I am reading as always. Recent books included Do Not Pass Go by Tim Moore (The book I lost on my flight back from Las Vegas last year but found for £2 in a shop over Christmas so bought to make up for that loss) and now Why England Lose At Football, a very interesting pop-economics book on how data in sport reveals that traditional thinking of sports, especially football, is bunkum.

Oh, and only four episodes from finishing The Wire. What a journey.

Expect more updates as and when possible.

Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy, I've come home now, woah oh woah oh

I reviewed an e-reader device for work the other day, and as such started reading Wuthering Heights to test out the functionality of the device and see what it's really like using an electronic book for reading novels and the like.

I actually quite liked the device, as the review gives testament, as I found it quite convenient to have something so small and lightweight on my person that contained an entire novel, and could have held 1,000s more. It wouldn't replace books for me at all, but I can see the value and benefit of having one.

During my intensive testing I actually got quite into Wuthering Heights, at least to the point where I was determined to see it out so I could say I've read it -and what a strange tale it is. I've always known the main thrust of the story, but the ins and out, (see what I did there), are highly peculiar, all fall of cousins marrying one another, inheritance scams and strange walks across moors, essentially telling two stories joined by one complete life span of the central character, Heathcliff (It's me,Cathy, I've come home now, oh woah oh woah...).

Yet, as I was reading I was also struck by how useless the house keeper who retells the story to Mr Lockwood is throughout. She frequently fails in her duties, is passive to the point of being complicit in some of the key scenes, almost aiding and abetting Heathcliff, and fails to work out what is plainly about to occur when agreeing to some fairly daft requests. She also has an amazing ability to miss the bleedin' obvious. Apparently, I read afterwards, critics have commented upon this, and I am pleased to see that they have! Rightly so, this woman should be locked up! Oh yes, she's fictional.

The name in question is Nellie Dean, which will mean something to you if you've worked, or more likely drunk, in and around the streets of Soho.

Overall I think Ms Bush, by writing a truly epic and unique piece of, erm, baroque pop (can I coin that?), has actually made a " good but hardly worlds-best tale" something that is now ingrained in the majority of the popular consciousness through her warblings, which is fantastic. I also very much like the guitar solo on the song, which is often overlooked I think.

All singing, all dancing

Ok, I'm not ashamed to admit this: I went to a musical on Saturday night…and I enjoyed it.

There, I said it. The musical was Sweet Charity with Tamzin Outhwaite (her off Eastenders) and fair play she can fairly well act and sing and dance, as could the rest of the cast – then again who can’t on the West End?

That's the thing about any of these shows, whether you actively like musicals or not, you'd be hard pressed to actively not enjoy it to some degree as everyone in them is so damn talented. The voices, the dancing, the timing, the choreograph of the dancers, even the musicians, are just fantastic.

Seeing anything in the West End means you should have a right to expect it to be brilliant and maybe if you went week-in, week-out you'd start to spot flaws but for the random theatre-goer (very much me) it means you're almost always guaranteed to have an enjoyable time.

The Wire

I am finally watching The Wire.

I know, I know, I am only five years behind the curve, but, in my defence your honours, I was always wary of watching such a well received show on the variously poor TVs I have owned. I now live with a good friend who has an excellent TV and together we have made a pact to watch the show, and we are now just embarking on season two.

There isn't much I can say, I think, from what has probably been written about the show already but 100 journalists and more, mostly from The Guardian (har har) but it is one of the most engrossing shows I've ever seen in the way it slowly, subtly, pulls out threads and strands of plotlines over sprawling, hour long episodes.

Also, some of the scenes are so much like a cut-scene in Grand Theft Auto it's uncanny; the music, the camera angles, the dialogue all match up perfectly.

Stand up comedians

I finished Stewart Lee's new book this week, How I Escaped my Certain Fate, and it was a very interesting, informative read from the 41st best standup comedian ever, 3!

Following his progress from up-and-coming star on TV and stage, to despair with the profession, back to his triumphant return to comedy (said in best Krusty the Clown voice), the book contained the three transcripts from each of Lee's three most recent stand up shows, with footnotes littered throughout explaining the origins of certains jokes, references being made, or asides to other comedians.

This was the most interesting aspect of the book, hearing Lee explain in detail, often over a page in small, footnotey font (why is footnote font so small?), about his time working with Harry Hill and Robin Day, or explaining that he bought a certain joke from another comedian to help lighten the mood of his otherwise often long-winded affairs.

Reading his scripts without knowing the delivery would give you no clue as to how funny Lee can be, the way he repeats jokes over and over again, with changes throughout perhaps, to build laughter from what could be awkward repetition. Or that, as Lee admits, sometimes is just awkwardness and the audience fails to get the delivery and therefore the jokes.

A final point on the book I found interesting, was Lee's choice of introduction music for his shows.
For each one he used piece of jazz to help him identify, or even turnaway, potential troublemakers: "If they can't handle the music, they probably won't like the show" is Lee's (paraphrased) rationale behind this and certainly one that seems to make a lot of sense.

Overall then, if you're a fan of the man and want to know more about the thought processes behind his shows and the world of interesting, clever, thought-provoking comedy, this book is one for you.

I give it 41/100.

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Public Squeaking.

I gave a speech at a black tie dinner in March 2009. It was fairly nerve wracking but I memorized the gist of the speech, and had a little mnemonic for each section and got through it unharmed, with a few laughs, and that was that.

This weekend I was at the wedding of two very good friends from university and they kindly asked me to read First Sight by Phillip Larkin at the service. I decided I would learn it by heart in order to give the best performance I could and, thankfully, it went fine: I stood, I poetried, I sat again. Phew.

It was strange, though, having to learn something word perfect, for possibly the first time ever, to deliver as impeccably as possible. The best man, groom and father of the bridge speeches must all be scary and exciting too, but at least you can ad lib, or um and err your way through them. For poetry, you have to get it perfect, everytime (talking widely here now, not about myself).

Anyone else done a poetry reading / recital? I might try The Waste Land next…

'This music crept by me upon the waters
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline

Is Billy Joel any good?

Growing up, driving around in a black, weather faded Renault, then a highly economical Passat, my parents subjected me and my brother to many a songsmith, from Bob Dylan to Clapton to, you’ve guessed it from the title, Billy Joel.

Years later and my love of Dylan is strong, Clapton, meh, and Billy Joel…well, I just don’t know. Some of his stuff is overblown tripe, I think, but other songs seem deceptively good, I think.

It doesn't help that songs like Uptown Girl have moulded his reputation in the general consciousness (mostly probably mis attributed as a Westlife song too I would bet) and he seems to have this vague air of “ha, Billy Joel? Don’t make me laugh…” A sentiment my brother and I both developed as we grew up but that now I think we would both admit has passed into grudging respect, even enjoyment.

A song like Piano Man is the very model of a genuinely good pop hit. Melancholic, rousing, reflective, engrossing, uplifting if you wish, downbeat if that’s your mood, it's up to you.

Goodnight Saigon is a damning reminder of the pointless waste of the Vietnam War, complete with dramatic helicopter sound effects and a huge military chorus of “We will all go down together”. It’s actually kind of heartbreaking.

We Didn’t Start the Fire is an incredible piece of showmanship, even if some of the rhymes are a bit forced. Yet again, it’s also sort of laughable when you hear it too many times. It’s certainly ripe for parody too.

Then we come to Scenes from an Italian Restaurant. A seven minute plus pop epic that starts with a slow, almost saccharine love song chorus then randomly shifts into a fast, three-line stanza-ed rock song complete with madly upbeat clarinet work, trumpet solos and jaunty piano fills and trills that all flit around a song about the “popular steadies Brenda and Eddie” realising their love isn’t that strong and falling apart. It’s bizarrely epic and inappropriately upbeat. 

Also, a lot of Joel's lyrics actually make sense. Someone like Elton John is a clear example of a similar type of musician (broadly speaking), yet some of his Bernie Taupin's lyrics are scandalous: "Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kid, in fact it's cold as hell...and there's no one there to raise them, if you did". What the hell does that mean? Sheer nonsense.

Yet rarely, if ever, does Joel ever seem to feature in any Top 100 this, or Top 50 that lists. I feel this is an oversight.  Although they did make a stage musical of his songs. Which is something. Also, we share the same birthday. So that’s nice. 

Any response to all these musings? Good, bad, indifferent? Well?!

Victorian people

What I like about London, and it's something I sometimes 'forget', is just how many weird and wonderful events there are every single night. Gigs, viewings, cinema showings, sport events and talks.

I love a good talk about interesting, off-the-beaten track things. Last year I went to a great one given by two BBC wildlife camera man, and last night I went to see Daniel Maier, who writes for TV Burp, give a talk about "Ideas Man" Sir Francis Galton.

Galton was a strange chap, a quintessential Victorian who spent his life trying to measure the world, exploring the world, and inventing all manner of weird and wonderful things. He was very much into statistics, and Maier's explanation of how Galton had decided to work out if his new house could hold all the world's gold, was fantastic. Galton also had a terrible track record with animals, usually killing them, to put it blunty.

The final section, on how Galton had devised the perfect way to cut a cake was hysterical, with the Victorian gent landing on the perfect solution to stop the sides of cakes be left exposed in order to prolong its life, but all the time working to measurements of cake that made the need to keep the cake for more than one day irrelevant.

It was a very enjoyable, interesting and quirky way to spend an evening and if Maier does the talk at other times then it could be one to catch.

For the record, one of my favourite Victoria / turn-of-the-century figures is Emily Hobhouse, a Cornish woman who came before many of well known heroines of that age, who helped improve the diabolical conditions for the displaced in the Boer War, mainly women and children, and caused such a stir with her protestations, that she helped advance the peace talks between the British and the Boers.

She helped inspire Ghandi with her form of peaceful protests, so much so he called her "one of the noblest and bravest of women" while Lord Kitchener found her meddling so irritating she was known as "that bloody woman". This was the title of a book written about Hohouse recently, the author of which I interviewed for an article about a year ago in Cornwall Today.

In South Africa she is a well-known figure, with states and submarines named after her, and her story taught in schools. It seems a huge shame she is so unknown in the UK, and even in Cornwall, her county of birth.

Norfolk

I've never been to Norfolk but it's a place that literature has taken me to, twice. Firstly, in Ishiguro's heartbreaking Never Let Me Go (that's not a flippant assessment, it's one of the saddest books I've ever read (but don't let that put you off, it's stunning)), and recently in Graham Swift's Waterland. Norfolk it seems, is a sad land. Flat, barren, wet, cold and wild, and full of tragedy.

Waterland, set across a span of history from the 1800s, through to the 1980s, is an amazing book that deals with themes covering the family, childhood, work and love, and perhaps most grandly of all, the idea of history itself. Swift tells a tale interlinked by the history of the fens of Norfolk his forebears rise to prominence through land reclamation and ale brewing, his protagonist's childhood spent living with his father and mentally ill brother, and the repercussions the events of this time come to have on his later life, when he teaches history in the fear-of-nuclear-Armageddon obsessed world of the 1980s.

Swift was shorted listed for the Booker for this novel, but lost out to J. M. Coetzee Life & Times of Michael K. He subsequently did win with Last Orders in 1996 though, which was made into a film with Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren and Michael Caine.

There's a film of Waterland too, made in 1992 and set in Pittsburgh (with flashbacks to Norfolk – phew). Reviews don't seem stunning but I would be intrigued to see if the film could in anyway capture the book's crushing sense of despair and futility that creeps along in the background, interspersed by moments of halcyon days of childhood, however fleeting they may be, before its gut-wrenching ending.

More books

Read a few books recently.

An Artist in a Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro. Very enjoyable and thoughtful story set in post war Japan that deals with, through a domestic setting, the way pre-war and post-war society reveres, then reviles, those who led them into the war, be that through political decisions or propagandist art. Interesting stuff and as well told as ever by Ishiguro.

The Buddist of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi. A great, spiralling story of growing up in the London suburbs. Set in and around London I knew some of the locations and streets, even if it was based in the 1970s. A great mix of high realism and slightly mad story plotting combined to make a highly enjoyable, and without being pretentious, profound novel on the ways of parents, children and growing up interlink.

Remember Me by Melvyn Bragg. Melvyn Bragg has had a tragic life. His first wife killed himself and he had two breakdowns before he was 31. True. This book, 550 pages long, is that entire story of Joe (read Bragg) meeting Natasha (his wife, Lisa) and their life growing up until her death. It's sad to know that happened to a man who is so watchable on interesting shows, but it's sadder still that I just found this book so boring. So much telling and not showing. The amount of times that Natasha is described as "wonderful" and "one in a million" by other characters, without any hard proof for us, as the reader to understand this, drove me mad.

She says nothing of note, nothing funny, interesting, clever, profound, nothing.

She does write a book, but we see nothing of this process, we are just told that she begins it, then finishes it. It is published and reviewed favourably. Talented, clearly, but so in your face with the fact that "this is what happened, take my word for it", that I found it tiresome to be given no chance to see anything, but instead be force fed the story.

I am a Google Street View driver*

What do I do all day? Drive around all the roads of the UK, or Australia, or Chile. I get up and drive, I drive up and down streets. I see the people stare, I see the children run after me, the privacy people swear, the technology lovers wave.

I stop in bizarre hotels in side streets of villages and towns I'll never see again, I stare out of windows over desolate roads or thriving markets, before climbing in my little white car, mounted with its all seeing eye, and trundle off again, collecting endless images of life. A snapshot of things.

It's a strange way to live, a kind of job, a half life. But hey, you can see your house on the internet now, so I hope that makes you happy.

*(N.B. I am not a Google Street View driver, obviously).

Letting go

I re-read a book recently. Not something I do very often. Only The Great Gatsby can I remember re-reading before. Once, when forced to at university, and then again about a year ago for enjoyment.

This time I re-read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's a stunning work. One of the saddest, most moving books I've read. It's coming out on film later this year with pencil necked beauty Kiera Knightly in the secondary role of Ruth.

Re-reading books is interesting. I knew the story, although bits of it were lost in the five years since I last it, but overall my memory of it was clear. But other things, little sentences and asides, suddenly resonated more because, knowing the context, they made more sense.

Re-reading books is a bit like watching films again, something that for the most part is pointless. Not that it's bad, but because you're denying the chance to see something else you might enjoy. But, at the same time, re-watching and re-reading, offer a second view, a second perspective on something you have either misremembered, or plain forgotten.

I await the film with interest, if only to see if they manage in anyway to capture the tragic, dull ache the book subtle threads throughout, without ever overtly trying too hard to tell you how to feel. It probably won't, but let's see.

Thirty-nine plot holes

I read The Thirty-Nine steps recently. It was awful. Truly terrible. Full of bizarre, utterly implausible 'as luck would have it' moments and some terribly dull chapters in which Hannay scuffs his shoes about a bit and talks with an accent to give the criminal masterminds the slip.

The bits everyone knows from the film(s) - being chase by a plane, escaping from a train, hanging from Big Ben - never happen in the book. N.B. The plane does exist, but it never chases him, just looks for him - YAWN.

It's interesting though that, with so many adaptations, from stage to screen to small screen (I've seen them all) the story doesn't really exist in any one form. It's open to interpretation. In the book the 39 steps, the actually steps, are just some boring steps from the back of a house to the sea. In one film version they are steps to the clock face inside Westminster Tower while in both Hitchcock's films and the stage version they name refers to an organisation of spies.

So often films are berated for ruining the essence, subtle, characters of a book. However, sometimes the touch of an outside who sees that having a character run to the wilds of Scotland, only to just 'happen' to walk into the ring leader of the entire evil organisations' house, is slightly improbably, and could be easily tidied up by making the hero Hannay have to go to Scotland as part of the story involving the The 39 steps. Buchann simply sends him to Scotland as he has family ties there and it’s a good place to hide. Silly.

On to William Golding's Rites of Passage now, which won the 1980 Booker Prize, so should be better. He comes from Cornwall too, which not a lot of people know.

3D thoughts

Finally got around to seeing Avatar last night. Have to say I was utterly blown away. The visuals, as you've no doubt read, are truly stunning. Like nothing I've ever seen before. At one point I flinched as a gas canister was shot 'past' me while one several other occassions I had to stop myself from trying to swat away a bug that was on screen. And by swatting it away rather than becoming at one with it you can see what would have happened to me in that movie.

The most levelled criticism at the film has been that the story is obvious and, less said, that the acting is leaden. I didn't see much evidence of either. While I would admit the plot is perfectly predictable in the majority of the storyline I fail to see how else you could film something so epic and spectacular and not need to resort to a simplistic plot line in order to make the most of the compelling visuals at your disposal. Make it too complicated and you just risk confusing people.

I'm certainly glad I saw it though, as I think it is likely to be regarded for some years as film that brought on a new (golden?) age of cinema by finally making 3D a technology that works. And even the glasses are alright too. Expect them to become this year's quirky festival fashion accessory.