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

As I was saying...

Since my blog, Tone Deaf, had become one-way traffic I had it put down and resumed writing my previously stalled novel, Rictangular Lenses. Here's a sample of my progress, without any attempt to provide context

... Only to discover that Amber had changed radically. The old certainties had disappeared. Life with Greta and Gerald in a comfortable home, attended to by surrogate parents, the object of generous expenditure and comforted by central heating that remained on during the waking day had dulled Amber’s  poverty-driven beliefs. She arrived at Lindsay’s flat strangely muted, even cowed, and remained in this state throughout the stay. Pathetically grateful for being shown the expensive wonders (A ten minute tour of Fortnum and Mason; behind-the-scenes at the Courtauld Institute; up and down the Thames by helicopter) and even moved to tears by lobster thermidor sampled for the first time. Theoretically this passivity should have simplified Lindsay's duties as hostess but when Amber departed, ten days later, Lindsay found herself diminished

Not that Amber had complained; she was too cowed for that. Rather, behaving artlessly and without any self-awareness, she regularly revealed that Lindsay’s home lacked what could only be described as basic amenities. Certainly the original interior designers had ensured it was capable of winning glossy magazine prizes but at a less visible level it failed to deliver easefulness. No towel rail for the shower enthusiast, Lindsay being a committed bather. Fruit, unprotected from the central heating, rotting at a jolly rate. And – oh, yes - those eminently fashionable easy chairs with their squared-off contours seemed intent on abrading the soft area behind the sitter’s knee. Why no handy electric sockets on either side of the bed heads? And how about that extractor hood above the hob, delightfully tricked out in copper, yet resonating piercingly at the second harmonic of its rotating fan. Close up, a door knob one centimetre too close to the kitchen’s  jamb. Tiny matters which Amber seemed born to discover and to mark with the softest of Oh, ohs.

Alone again, Lindsay gritted her teeth and embarked on a careful re-examination of her under-used homestead and found a further dozen faults, absences and other glitches all enemies of occupier comfort. Proof that Lindsay had merely existed in this apartment, never lived in it; proof  too that she was ignorant about what constituted a home. Money needed to be spent.

But, at least, money was something she was familiar with and it had never been in short supply at McLeod. Sheer luck intervened a fortnight later, in the form of an enormous, virtually unearned, personal bonus. The project had been small scale and at the bottom end of her short-term expectations. A comparatively cheap investment in land on the outskirts of Chester was pleasingly revealed to be the final jig-saw piece in a major property developer’s ambitiously pentagon-shaped grouping of luxury houses. The negotiator’s initial enquiry was casual but rapidly became desperate. Practising a calculated reluctance, Lindsay and the other owner contrived to triple the land’s price tag to the advantage of everyone except the harassed buyer.

Given the brief period between the investment and this agreeable transaction Lindsay tended to think of her cut  as “found” money and thus quickly expendable. So why not simultaneously use it to right the wrongs of her flat and erase her own embarrassment? 

But this time acting as an informed adult. The cleverest customer Lindsay had ever encountered had also involved her smallest ever investment. A few thousand well-secured pounds to help university student ,Werner Raineke, acquire a highly techno whatizzit from Switzerland with which he would analyse and then resolve a molecular problem in chemistry and thus gain him his masters at UCH. Raineke had proved to be a great conversationalist as well as an expert in more intimate skills and Lindsay had waived the small amount of interest in gratitude for the way Raineke had cast new light on how science informed everyday life. And especially the physio-mechanics that lead to reproduction.

Raineke answered her phone eagerly and Lindsay knew she would get good value. After all he was more than familiar with one particular room at Shepherds Bush.

“Werner, my dear, I’ve just discovered that my flat doesn’t work. Lots of the detail is duff but I suspect the solution is less a case of interior design Elastoplast and more root and branch.  Who should I approach?”

“Obviously, an ergonomist.”

“Don’t they work in factories.”

“They work wherever they’re needed. You need root and branch, that’s their speciality: improving the efficient relationship between man and his environment. Including women, of course.”

“But I merely occupy the place. I don’t manufacture.” Adding. “Don’t even cook.”

“I agree. But you do other things. You sleep there. Feed yourself.  Bathe. Pursue leisure activities. Communicate with the outside world. Adjust your living conditions. Change the layout to accommodate guests. Inform yourself. Some of these facilities were added after you moved in and are separate; there may be advantages in having them interact. Others you may never have considered. Plus modifications to bring things up to date. An ergonomist would advise on - even manage - individual features or look at the flat as a whole, a machine to serve you best.”

“Wow!”

“Wow indeed. If you’re serious it’s going to cost big money.”

“I have big money.”

“Good. But there is a difference between a big spend and a silly spend. And I can help there. An established specialist would also bill you for expenses that merely supported his bigness. His rent, his debt, his PR consultant.  UCH educates ergonomists; I could connect you with a qualified student who’s doing research work. He’d be sharp, keen to go the extra mile, looking for work to add to his CV. The cash he spent would be much closer to the work he did. And he could also act as your project manager. What’s more you could have the job filmed and sell it to one of the TV companies; defray your expenses. You could…”

A sense of euphoria was growing. Excitement even. She bought Werner dinner at a Michelin three-star at Windsor. And, since it was attached to a hotel,they spent the night together. A week later she met Jack Lim, scion of a wealthy family previously based in Hong Kong now discontented residents of Lewisham following the Chinese Anschluss.

His enthusiasm was infectious. “Hey there Lin, I’m Lim. We’re a named pair made in heaven. I’m here to write you a schedule that’ll take you straight into the next half-century.”

The interview quickly became alarming. Three minutes of questions led to a forceful proposal that a stud wall be removed in order to integrate the kitchen with part of the dining room.

“Part of…?” Lindsay asked, eyebrows arched.

“Indeed”, said Lim, almost primly.  “It’s all about utilisation. The remainder becomes a study area based on furnishings that are custom-manufactured for folding; thus you could quickly adapt should you ever sit down to dine with more than five guests.”

Eyebrows arched again when a five-figure sum was casually mooted to cover these costs.

More alarming still, given Lindsay’s longstanding preference, was Lim’s insistence that the bath must disappear. “But it’s one of life’s luxuries,” she protested. Lim transfixed her: “Tell me why?” And Lindsay found herself unconvincingly defending an indulgence, then being blown away with a list of overwhelming advantages provided by a tiled shower room. 

On the point of resisting Lindsay found herself fixed yet again by Lim’s look of oriental superiority. She spread her hands: “But then they say one shouldn’t bark when sharing space with a dog.”

“Woof, woof,” said Lim.

As to the storage of crockery, the interlinking of information systems (in their broadest sense), the automated sequencing of clothing, the coding and accessing of published material… Lindsay listened, sighed, drew in breath and interrupted quite noisily. “Give me a round figure to the nearest five thou.” Lim did so. She stood up. “It’s in your hands. When necessary I’ll use a hotel.”

That was two months ago and now, having restored the Porsche to its stable, Lindsay took the lift to resume exploring a new world where she was both sovereign and citizen.

The flat door opened on a command from her phone.

Concealed light sources began glowing in the hallway.

Soon she was sipping from an unfamiliar bottle of champagne ordered by an algorithm which had analysed her own oenological needs.

She could, had she wished, switch on the main TV screen and surprise herself with a readout, automatically updated, of the contents of her own fridge. Or some other invisible and unexpected process

Adult toys to amuse a single person. But was the word “single” the salutary key to it all. Just suppose Alec’s timetable had been more flexible and that he too was sharing her playthings. Would the evening  be more fun? Was she missing out in this area? Even if one discounted the daily work which absorbed so much of life, and regularly left her wearied, too tired even to think about sharing the recessed bed which she’d optimistically specified as king-sized.