This afternoon ...

Sitting on the bench by the pond in the woods and I hear that familiar mewing cry. Sure enough, through the trees, I see heavy wings flapping. Then, in circles, it starts its ascent until finally glides clear of the tree line.

I watch it riding the air currents high up there. It’s impossible not to feel that the bird is flying for the sheer enjoyment of doing so. Without any other purpose or itinerary or need of self-justification.

Think buzzard.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/feb/17/jeanette-winterson-wine-lover-cellar-secrets

No doubt heading straight for Pseud’s Corner but so what? Fundamentally I agree with her.

Paul Bley - Ballads (ECM)
Charles Mingus - Plays Piano (Impulse)

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Sunny ... 14 to 15 degrees. A jacket will do.
Mike sends a photo of his garden in Finland - easily a foot of snow.

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The first day of the February break. I spend the afternoon strenuously doing nothing.

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Highest temperature on record for February ... 

Appropriately enough - for Valentine's Day - Paul Bley's Open, to love (ECM).

He's such a strange pianist - I'm trying to follow the way his interpretation unfolds, veers, cul de sacs, short runs, plus the wildly varying dynamics and the violent way he strikes the keys at times and then ... and then .. a sudden coalescence ... and something truly beautiful emerges.

'Ida Lupino' is such a one.

(Carla wrote it, of course).

P.S. to the previous post to mark the passing of England’s greatest keeper ...

Oh for the days when Banks meant a safe pair of hands.

This blog is on strike.

Evelyn Waugh’s lesser known masterpiece - A Handful or Dusters.

(Crops up during an afternoon class)

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Tomorrow is a nationwide strike. Not sure whether the workers on this blog will come out in sympathy.

minus bath
minus toilet
minus shower
minus wash basin

a not bathroom

Desert Island Discs

The second movement of Beethoven's Piano Concerto no.5 ('Emperor') ...

Just back from the Vikingur Olafsson concert at Flagey as part of their Piano Days series.

Absolutely riveting from start to finish. Having requested that applause is kept until the end, he plays through a selection from his Bach CD adding in an additional piece. Then, as a first encore a transcription of an Icelandic song by a composer I didn’t quite catch. Then, as a second encore, one of the Glass Etudes. Rapturous applause. He seems genuinely appreciative of the response. 

Afterwards the word goes round he will come out to sign autographs and CDs and, true enough, he appears and settles down behind a table. Too good an opportunity to miss, I wait in the scrum and proffer my CD mentioning as I do I like his taste in sculpture. He pauses for a moment and then smiles - yes! the statue for the unknown bureaucrat in Reykjavik (he’d mentioned it in an interview). Turns out, it is by his father-in-law and he’ll be pleased someone in Brussels likes it. I suggest he signs accordingly - For the unknown bureaucrat! The perfect souvenir - English and French senses. 

Superb pianist and a jolly nice chap. 

“To the speculator, falling prices present just as lucrative an opportunity as rising prices, meaning that instability in general is attractive. As long as nothing ever stays the same, you can exit better off than when you entered. The only unprofitable scenario is stasis.”

(William Davies in the LRB 7 February 2019)

Interesting article on the concept of ‘exit’ and the way it has replaced ‘voice’.

Seagoon: Ah, where’s the front door?
Scot No.1: It's in this brown paper parcel. [Opens it] We only use it for going in and out.

(The Great Strings Robberies)

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More or less my thoughts on doors.

New doors. Dust everywhere.

That peculiar phenomenon of contemporary education - the accreditation visit - and its equally peculiar sleight of hand: “we are not here to pass judgement or offer solutions rather to facilitate a conversation”.

(Nevertheless, we expect to be paid.)

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One of those Maeght Galerie Duos I mentioned yesterday.

Thinking of adapting the idea to a D-I-Y lo-fi version. Repurposed matchbox for the slip case ... 

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Birthday today - thanks to all those who have remembered.

Wandered around the BRAFA this morning feeling - as usual - fraudulent and out of place. Dwell too long over a work and they’ll swoop on you either to see if you’re serious or imply you’re fooling no one.

I’m pleasantly surprised to discover a tiny Greek head going for a mere 300 euros. A nice thing - as they say on afternoon telly.

The real find was, however, the Galerie Maeght Duos: beautifully produced little folds each in its own slip case. I’ll post a picture tomorrow. Two hundred euros a throw. Not bad when you’re getting several limited edition microprints. Anyway, justified the visit.

"... Often I write in poem-constellations and go about making a world by untying metaphors from their tenors, spinning them into networks. Structuring or crystallisation can arrive late, as long as a year into a particular work zone. A form emerges which I recognise as the cell that will transcribe through the space and time of the poem – it will metastasise. But I can get bored with that particular way, I can hear the verse curdling. What interests me is how meaning emerges from rhythmic cross-currents and sonic and semic clusters, and I don’t want to be able to predict what will come about. That may sound experimental, but I want to recognise what emerges too, as having awaited me all the time. ..."

John Wilkinson (off the Carcanet Blog)

I very much like this statement. 

As a fan of Jeremy Hardy - especially on I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue & the Miles Jupp era News Quiz - it has to be a sad day today.

What else to say?