Tears out of step?

I cried early this afternoon; did so four or five days ago and for the same reason. A powerful reason but I don't intend to explain.

The crying had a strange leathery quality and was unnatural in that it didn't flow; there were times when I seemed to be forcing myself to cry. But the need was there, no doubt about that. And tears.

The sound seemed alien, quite unlike the crying I did as a child and in early adolescence. Might the noise I made today be affected by eight years of singing lessons? I simply don't know. But the mind-state was the same despite the passage of time; crying being the only way of expressing a very real sadness.

My next birthday will be my ninetieth; are nonagenarians prone to crying? I have to confess to a certain degree of self-awareness as I cried but in the end it may have worked A psychosomatic diminuendo, perhaps. 

Can one cry to order? An interesting question.

Infuriating verse

Skype’s dying fall

Hail distant friends! Ta-ra di-bum; I hope
These words ring out a Hallmark note for you,
Not too egregious, that five-dollar term;
Not claiming amity which wasn’t there;
But if I fail then pardon me toute suite
 
Why distant? Simply because your bookshelves,
Cars, faces, house facades, offspring, pet dogs,
And how you manicure your nails, must be
Forever blurred to me. Distorted
As they are through long electric links
 
But let’s disdain the intervening miles
And mobilise the power of thought. Let’s say
We’ve met on Chichester, that urban route
I walk each day to buy the fruity stuff
That spills its juice and keeps my love alive
 
We stand. We talk. Oh, how we did. Discussed
The horrors of the presidential cloud.
Our wit. The whys and wherefores of bad health,
The songs we sung so plangently. And how
Our histories do inform on us. (Good quote)
 
Yet, as I watched, you weren’t quite there. Instead
Seemed haunted by a vague-ish entity
Coming and going, only partly seen.
Raising questions you did not dare to put.
A matter of suburban delicacy.
 
But asked yourself: who’s that vestigial wraith,
Ten feet behind him and his shopping bag?
Comprising mist yet reeking with overt.
Significance. A threat? A prophet with
A view of what the future might portend?
 
Talk ended blankly thus you turned to leave.
I bid goodbye, devoid of friendliness.
I’d recognised your faint distress, but felt
It better that your doubts should rest
As now, in unresolv-ed ignorance.
 
The wraith went too but – sure as eggs
Are eggs – he will return. He must return.
 
He is my lately born and helpful twin.
 
He did not share my birth but has a past,
Once was a babe, arms waved in protest
In his pram. Went soccer-mad in youth,
Then Grand Theft Auto brought insanity.
Shrugged off with an improving adult tome
 
Did well in uni with the harder stuff, then
Took a job because it promised empathy.
Sought those in need in other quadrispheres.
Succeeded, after which he travelled west
To take up station at my ageing side.
 
I say “my twin” but that was then - the day
We met; since then, in time, he’s passed me by
But I’m OK with that, it is his job
To surf the future’s waves on my behalf
And stay erect where I’d be lost in foam
 
That’s why the wraith you saw on Chichester
Was/is a fraction older than I am;
The same but saner, more experience.
Less angered by surrounding politics,
More able to engage with life to come
 
Older, faster, yet on my trajec’try.
If asked, he could convey new news to me.
When will it rain? The hell with that. Horse wins,
Who cares? Yet there’s a knot’s to be untied.
The biggest question anyone may ask.
 
He’ll get there first; and see with clarity
My ailments coalesce within my frame;
See cleverness dissolve, arch words turn dust,
The urge to write be deadened by the dark;
Wisdom – if it exists - be foul and crass.
 
And music, ah, the cruellest change of all,
Losing its song and beat, becomes mere noise,
I’ll be alone, mute, deaf and unsustained,
I’ll sense the nothingness as tangible,
Departure finalised with no return.
 
An awful preview which – ironically -
Will shine light on my former, wordy trade.
A scoop of answers gifted by my twin,
Brings understanding at the price of pain.
It’s why I named him: Curiosity

Awfulness, by the back door

Have you ever been betrayed? Let down; expecting something – a mundane matter, even a regular routine – and it not happening? Being left confused and self-pitying.

No?

Here’s “betray”: to be a traitor to; to deliver (somebody or something) by treachery; to deceive or be disloyal to…

Still no? It is, after all (and thankfully), a fairly rare experience. This morning, I was betrayed and it was horrible.

An hour ago the world changed. From a deep sleep I woke up, rolled over to inspect the digital clock: 08.34. And I knew! Immediately! Hair frowzled, still in my PJs, I stumbled out of bed, crossed the landing into my study, turned on the PC, and there was V – my singing teacher – telling me it was no big deal, the hour had “gone on” the previous day, to go back to bed and, and we’d re-schedule for Wednesday.

Comforting words but it was a big deal. I’d been betrayed by my body and this shouldn’t have been a surprise. In five months’ time I’ll be ninety. No felicitations, please. In extreme old age the unexpected changes are the killers.

On Monday, January 4 2016 I had my first private singing lesson and halfway through I burst into tears at the sense of revelation. Subsequently I’ve bored the pants off Tone Deaf followers detailing this ongoing process that – I suppose – was, and is, ultimately incommunicable. As with this present post.

Back then weekly lessons were at the piano in V’s living room. The pandemic forced us to use the indirect system of Skype, V moved house, and the lessons have continued, always on Mondays, always at 8.30 AM.

But always I was awake well before, two hours in fact. Time enough to shave, get dressed, raise the blinds, comfort the other V, my wife, in the aftermath of her illness, ease myself into the world of classical music via performances on YouTube, and afterwards off to the supermarket, preparation of meals and the etceteras.

There’s a further irony. My previous trade – journalism – was framed by deadlines. Never previously have I overslept, either professionally or socially. Ever!

Will I wake up in time next Wednesday? Now there’s apprehension...

YEAH: The obvious solution: an alarm clock. That's worked in the past - I've spent the whole night awake, waiting for the thing to go off. Infallible.

 

Not always hoity-toity

Blogging a musical score is a sure way of discouraging all forms of comment. But thisone's special. My present repertoire of 106 "learned" songs is mostly Schubert, Schumann and all those old fellas. But Roberta Flack just died and I've her to thank for this inclusion. It's harder than it looks.

Trumpism: A diagnosis

The following text was intended as a response to MikeM's comment to the previous post. It may be of wider interest, hence I'm offering it as a separate post

MikeM: I've been reflecting on what, for want of a more elegant label, I call Lack of Application. It lies at the heart of a newish form of ignorance manifest in the result of your recent presidential election and is even more overt in Trump's progressively insane pronouncements. But it isn't at all confined to the USA; Brits too suffer from this ailment.

At its lowest stratum (ie, those who failed to profit in any way from mandatory formal education) it is represented by a total lack of useful data. Such that when these bottom-feeders utter observations they do no more than repeat sentences (more often slogans) previously uttered by celebrities, and often repeated. These nuggets are complete in themselves, they are not related to each other in any way. The sequence of words is never altered.

The next stratum concerns those who passed comfortably through school education and may even have gone on to college, albeit to take subjects where rigour of proof is unnecessary (Media studies is a good example). They have - willy nilly - accumulated data but these facts lie like pebbles on a beach, separate and incapable of manipulation. Their owners have, to some extent, been educated by rote. I can't ever remember any quantification of this group but I suspect - gloomily - that it is larger than most would imagine and may even be the majority.

The final crust is very thin. Data is accumulated via controlled selection and is used to arrive at home-baked conclusions. From this, certain skills - often not always recognised as skills - emerge. Such as an ability to recognise national or even global contradictions or to make allowance for bias in the sources of data suppliers.

That's the thesis. Obviously it needs examining, preferably via dialogue with like minds. If I can recoup the energy - very much in short supply these days - I used in creating this once-over-lightly categorisation I may resume. Otherwise I shall continue to study discs in my boxed set of The West Wing, a TV series that amazingly ran for seven years and was based on a very close examination of governmental and political processes.

And yes I am aware that "data" is a plural noun and that associated verbs should conform. I have written about this and in my view I think the pedants got their arses kicked. the battle for "datum" is lost.

Irreconcilable?

Last night, rather reluctantly (of which I am now ashamed), I started to watch a 90-minute TV programme about life at Auschwitz, the wartime murder camp for Jews. More specifically, the unexpected role music played at this hellhole. Quite quickly I was gripped.

Inevitably the music tended to be by German composers and the lyrics of the songs were rendered in German. The parallels between this and the singing instruction I've been receiving over eight years were inescapable. To the point where I find I'm just as familiar - and moved - by singing in German as in English.

Yes; moved. These lines are are from the eleventh song (Fruhlingstraum - Spring dream) in Schubert's song-cycle Winterreise (Winter journey)

Ich träumte von Lieb um Liebe, 
von einer schönen Maid
von Herzen und von Küssen
von Wonne und Seligkeit

(I dreamt of mutual love

Of a lovely maiden
Of embracing and kissing
Of joy and rapture)*

Reminding me of recent visits to German Christmas markets, of the warmth I'd experienced and the puzzled affection shown when I asked about German reaction to Britain's decision to go Brexit. Of the decision, taken post-war between Germany and France that laying the foundations of the EU might well act as a bulwark against future warfare in Europe. Of the present-day disturbing signs of the re-emergence of an extreme right.

One encouraging if possibly minor change in labelling: in the programme I watched and elsewhere in news bulletins, the BBC is careful to make appropriate distinctions between German and Nazi

*Translation copyright Bärenreiter, Kassel

Nicely done, in the old-fashioned sense

Declining health and very old age leave you a passenger at Christmas. But I'm hugely grateful for younger, fitter and more congenial offspring who took the strain and left me time to think about the exact present for VR, my wife.

VR's early years during WW2 were fraught, living in Dover, on Britain's south-east coast, a mere 21 miles from Nazi-occupied France and shelled continuously. Much of her upbringing was governed by Gran - a protean figure in her life and who taught VR to read. Gran was poor, start-up books were non-available, and so Gran used what was to hand. And that was: Insect Ways on Summer Days. Not exactly a classic

VR idolised what Gran did for her and that book title has been regularly mentioned in our married life. Even so it took several days before the penny dropped. But what were the odds? Probably printed in the twenties (actually 1887), unlikely to have run to another edition.

But ABE Books UK has never let me down. They had it at less than four quid. I could have gone to four hundred