Sunday, March 13, 2011

The closing movements of Mozart's Missa Solemnis on the radio as I'm sitting in the car at 7:50 a.m waiting for the pool to open. Rain drops on the window. For a moment or two it feels like being in a Godard film. Cue dialogue. And Anna Karina.

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On length 8 or so, I begin to think again about The King's Speech - having promised R. I will commit my thoughts to paper (I saw the film on Thursday). I'm turning over thoughts about Samuel Johnson's Preface to his Dictionary and attempts to govern 'the tongue'. What if it is the tongue belonging to a monarch? This, in turn, makes me think about Prynne's Kitchen Poems and "the voice". And then Beckett's Not I. It's rather fun simply allowing the film to develop in this way - the more ideas the further away I am from seeing the film.

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A dream last night about having ordered a DVD player. And it hasn't arrived. I vent my fury in French. Proving, I suppose, that one can dream in another language.

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Stacks of CDs. A sudden enthusiasm for ECM: Tomasz Stanko Quintet ... Eberhard Weber ... Miroslav Vitous ... Ralph Towner ... as if I'm searching for something - a melody, an atmosphere, a - well, what is it?

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Make an impromptu curry for lunch: onion, cauliflower, tomatoes, chick peas, curry powder, spinach leaves, toasted sesame seeds (in approximately that order). It's surprisingly good.

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Huysmans (A Rebours) and the chapter in which Des Esseintes arranges his library. The passage on Mallarme in particular. I'd quote it but the volume's downstairs.

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According to an article in The Independent the Japanese earthquake moved the earth "ten inches off its axis" (a fact disputed by our resident scientist). How, in fact, do they make such a measurement?

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That strange, unnerving feeling as one of your friends becomes a ... grandfather ... This Dad business still feels something of a novelty.


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