Rambling on my mind

I've got a very long, rambling post about Mahler sitting in my drafts folder yet. I keep looking at it and wondering how to make it more coherent. Or even if I should post it up. it's kind of personal. Oh well, we'll see. Look, a cat!

Schoenberg, Marquis of Granby

Schoenberg, Marquis of Granby
Originally uploaded by petemaskreplica.

Who knew?

Sprouts

I'll get back to Mahler in a minute. It's a tricky subject, it'll take a while. But it rarely if ever stands still round here, and I must now think hard about what to writ about the next KSO gig. It's always tricky making that start. It's a matter of finding that thing that brings it all into focus. It might be a quote, it might be one of those random sudden moments of clarity where you suddenly see what it's all about.

Elgar, Strauss (ugh), Brahms.

I have decided that this time, it's all about facial hair.

Old Fart at Play

I resent the caution that comes with age.

When you're young you're reckless. You don't think about the consequences of your actions. You don't wonder if the idea's any good — it doesn't even occur to you that an idea you've had might not be. You just plow on, what the hell. If everything goes to shit, oh well — the next idea's here already, and this one's brilliant.

As you grow older, you question your ideas. I've heard it said that you get fewer, but I don't think this is so: I think it's more that you accept each one less uncritically, you question, and fewer get past that initial thought and make it to something realised. This isn't necessarily bad, of course. It's got something to do with wisdom, the experience that enables you to dismiss the idea that isn't going to go anywhere. You learn to conserve energy, because you don't have so much. You think of the boundless energy you had when you were young, and stupid, and thoughtless, and profligate in your thoughts, and wish you had that energy now, now that you've got the wisdom to expend it on valuable activities more than frivolous ones.

There's more to it than that, though. Sometimes I start to think, is this wisdom stopping me doing this? Or the complacency that received wisdom generates? Or is it fear? Growing older you learn the tricks, you negotiate the traps better, you avoid the failures. But failure's not always such a bad thing is it? Sometimes the mistakes are more valuable than the assured, competent execution, because they shake you out of your viewpoint. Sometimes they can give you that sudden realisation that there's another way to do things, that you hadn't thought of before. That's what keeps music, or any art, alive.

Of course sometimes mistakes are just shit and you're wasting your time, but you've got to take the risk.

That's what I resent about the caution. It stops you fucking up, but it can also stop the interesting fucking up that real proper actual art comes from. It's easy to learn, harder to un-learn.

Trapped in the aviary

Hell, I swore I wouldn't do this, but I ended up crawling back onto Twatter again. If you're one of the 3 people (apart from my parents, I should imagine) who've never heard of it, it's kind of like blogging for people too lazy to write a whole paragraph. It's clearly vile and narcissistic, but equally clearly an easy way to massage my monstrously huge ego.

Every day we get nearer to the logical conclusion of the interweb networking madness, where everyone in the world simply hits a button every few minutes to make the message "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! I'M ON THE INTERNET! LOOK AT ME!" appear on www.ihavenothingtosaybutthat'snotgoingtostopme.com. If I had any sense I'd set the damn thing up myself, wait for the inevitable rush, and then sell it to Murdoch or whoever for a fucking fortune, just as the Guardian picks up on it (which is always a sure-fire sign that something is over).

Still, it beats doing anything constructive.

A dog's life

Once upon a time, Man and Wolf came to an accommodation: Man provided food and shelter, and in return Wolf became dog and provided companionship and protection. Over time Man realised that he could manipulate dog to become all kinds of useful shapes.

Eventually the uses themselves disappeared, but the shapes remained. Nobody could remember why that particular dog was that particular shape and had those particular features emphasised, only that it was good and desirable that it should be so.

So the dogs kept being bred into more and more unlikely shapes, until eventually they ended up wonderful to behold, but completely impractical, and so far removed from their wolvish origins that they were incapable of surviving without Man to provide food and shelter.

Then one day Man decided to stop feeding dog and kicked him out, and he died a slow, painful death from starvation and neglect.

And that's pretty much the story of (so-called) classical music.

Why don't young people listen to classical music?

Well, why should they?

Post-It Score #3: Blue

The thing about Post-its is that they come in different colours:

After I did this one, I started wondering to myself: is the mood determined b the colour or the colour by the mood? So here's the same image on yellow. Does it make a difference?

Post-It Score #2

Land, sea and sky (?)

(or whatever you want to see)

Post-It Score

A slow day, a doodle, a vague desire to do something a bit loose... who needs staves anyway?

Capital Moments

Spring has sprung, it seems. Out for a walk at lunchtime in the West End, the sky is brilliant blue and there seems to be that indefinable sense of everyone being a little bit happier. I walk down Berwick Street, pick up a bit of veg. "Cheers mate," I say to the vegetable man in that Mockney way I've learned over a decade in the capital. I try hard not to look over the shoulder of the girl standing at the bottom of the street drawing the sex shop opposite, because I'm on a mission, and have to be back at the office in 40 minutes. I swing across towards the London Graphics centre to pick up a few drawing implements, when suddenly I'm confronted with the sight of an enormous dildo on top of the Palace Theatre:


A few steps further reveals the truth: it's just a giant stiletto heel advertising the new musical version of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.


Just another normal day, then. I move on, pausing only briefly to reflect on the fact that it didn't seem terribly bizarre to have a giant dildo on top of the Palace Theatre. As I walk back to the office, I pass the girl, still intently sketching the sex shop at the corner of Walker's Court. Once, when I was a child, this place was the Soho sex industry. Now it's just another back street full of porn and what we then called marital aids. But it still retains that whiff of scandal, even amid the gentrification that seeps into it. I consider the walkers, and where they may now be. Then continue back to the office, pausing only to linger and gaze at other temptations offered for sale

"Mother's 8-Baby Delivery Surprise"

...screeched the headlines at me as I fought my way down the Euston Road, swatting free-paper-hawkers left and right.

Eight babies? Eight?! How on earth can you be unaware that you're carrying octuplets? I don;t have a womb myself, but I can't help thinking that if I did I'd notice if it was that crowded. Did the mother just think she was constipated for nine months? Or was she so busy gorging on burgers and Mars bars that it didn't occur to her that there might be another reason for the sudden and dramatic weight gain?

Closer inspection reveals that the woman in question was perfectly awarer condition, and in fact that seven of the arrivals were expected. Only the eighth (sentimentally named "H" by the doctors) was a surprise. Suddenly it all seems much more reasonable. I suppose if you're a hard-pressed gynaecologist you might easily give up counting after the fourth or fifth body shows up on the ultrasound.

Still, eight babies. Are they very small? Or is the mother some kind of Titan? As no mention is mad of her extraordinary volume I can only assume she is now the proud matriarch of a tribe of Tom Thumbs, who will grow up to wear dolls' clothes and fear cats more than most children.

One person who will have been very happy at the news is her bank manager,who must be rubbing his hands with delight at the prospect of the interest she'll pay on the kind of overdraft you need to finance raising octuplets. Perhaps we'll salute her in years to come as the person who singlehandedly unblocked the international flow of currency.

There are moments that defy explanation

John Lydon. Advertising butter.

I can't think of anything to add.

Fight!

Jessica Duchen provides a handy roundup of the opening salvos of the London orchestras' new seasons today. But what's this?

So Stravinsky and Vaughan Williams emerge as flavours of the month, which is an interesting combination since Stravinsky could probably have eaten Vaughan Williams for breakfast, given half a chance.

I'm not convinced. A Google Fight would appear to back Jessica up, but given that Vaughan Williams was very tall and hefty (over 6', I think), and Stravinsky was a measly 5'3", surely Ralph would whup Igor's ass?

Simplicity is a complex business

Obviously, living in this Google-Age of interweb ionformation overload, nowadays I've got the attention span of a goldfish, and not a particularly bright one at that. But I would like to draw your attention to this excellent post by Kyle Gann, which says a lot of very intelligent and insightful things that I agree with but don't posess the writing ability to express as beautifully as like wot he does, and is so good that I read right to the end, despite it being more than two paragraphs long.

Is your critique really necessary?

This interesting article (which I found via the splendid folks at the Detritus Review) provides much food for thought on the place and aesthetics of criticism. Defeatist Towers is of course on the whole a repository of half-witted ranting and raving rather than proper criticism that actually says clever stuff, like, but I like to believe that it all serves some sort of purpose in exploring ideas and thoughts about music and whatever else I drone on about. I sometimes wonder if there's any real value in what I type here, it being all pretty subjective and often outright ignorant, so it's good to have someone with more brains than me justify the utter lack of critical distance I so often display. And as there's a debate in the air about critics, bloggers and the relationship/divide/overlap of the two, it's always good to have some more ideas chucked in the pot. Call it work in progress.

Friday link-o-rama

It's time for one of those posts you do when you can't think of anything interesting to say!

There's a wonderful tribute to Bo Diddley in today's Grauniad by John Moore.

Top violinist and David Badiel lookalike Leonidas Kavakos interviewed.

EMI's shameless cash-in Best of Radiohead CD given the kicking it so richly deserves.

His Bobness has an art exhibition opening next week.

I'm writing programme notes for this concert at the moment, and I must admit I'm struggling to find interesting things to say about some of the music -which is no reflection on the music itself, I hasten to add. I adore Dvořák, it's just tricky to find an angle on him that isn't the usual boring rubbish you read in programmes. But I'll get there.

Near and far

I ride a new way, aiming for the same destination. It's amazing how little deviation it takes to make the familiar seem like unexplored territory. I whistle a happy tune, with obscene lyrics rewritten as I ride. I reflect on how good it feels to be alone, out of the city, disconnected from the daily grind. At one point I almost look at the time, but think better of it. Why spoil the wonderful freedom from the temporal whip? I think of how strange it is that we strive to isolate ourselves from the wilderness, and then construct an artificial one. Of how fragile our existence is. Of how wonderful it is that this freedom is there for the taking, even in the city, if you take the time to find it.

Then I stop thinking, and look at the world.

Tuesday Link-o-rama

Oh, has it come to this? Am I now on that slippery slope to being just another blog with a bunch of links to the words of other, far more intelligent and interesting people than me? I'll try not to make a habit of it. Anyway, in the absence of anything interesting to say coming out of my brain, here are a few things to read:

EMI's planned job cuts have been delayed by some piddling legal process. Damn those pesky Europeans with their crazy ideas that big multinational corporations can't just shit on people as they please.

The Graunaiad is publishing daily extracts from one of the Defeatist's number one heroes, Mark E. Smith. Part one is here and part two is here.

Harrison Birtwistle's new opera The Minotaur premieres tonight. Here are some interviews with the composer, director and protagonist. I'm interested in the way the media seem to have moved from portraying Birtwistle as a terrifying figure to almost the cuddly face of modernism.

Mothman about the house

I thoroughly enjoy reading Ben Clark's Magic Beans Comics. And so should you.

Scenes from a life I did not live

Am in Lon tmw so could meet you at waterloo after my meeting around 5? All well my end. Speak tmw Tx

I've never texted the wrong person by mistake myself*, but I suppose it must be easy-ish to do. I occasionally get a random message, or sometimes am treated to a long voicemail message consisting of the sound of half heard muffled voices through the phone owner's pocket.

There's a strange illicit thrill to receiving a random unintended moment of someone else's life. Who is meeting whom? Why at Waterloo? Is that kiss a meaningless friendly thing, or something more significant? Before you know it, I've constructed an entire scenario of affairs, desire, deception, furtive assignations and stolen kisses on train platforms. It's one of those rare moments when you're suddenly taken out of your own life and catch a glimpse of the normally unimagined, unnoticed, hidden or ignored world of others. A reminder that as we shuffle through our own concerns, other lives are happening, everywhere, indifferent to us.

*My phone's decided to text or call random people by itself plenty of times, though.