As most of you will know it's about music, specifically singing. But it's also about changing course in old age. At the time lessons seemed like pure whimsy, now singing has taken over my life and V thinks I've made good progress. Certainly I can now enjoy the sound of my own voice, although presently I'm grounded by a surly cough.
It doesn't have to be singing. To be seized as I have been is to say a fig for growing old and incompetent. It's just that singing is a physical, aesthetic and intellectual pursuit, thus body and mind get a work-out. I'm quietly proud I had the moxie.
BUT I DO have other interests, as my Christmas prezzies show. Wine continues to fascinate and I wouldn't be the man I am if my trousers didn't stay up. These braces are swanky and may encourage me to wear them outside my shirt.
Christmas was raucous in the extreme with a full house for two nights. To ensure Professional Bleeder slept in comfort we bought an inflatable mattress with its own built-in pump. Deflation - an often forgotten chore - is done in just over a minute.
PB heard her first opera (Britten's Turn of the Screw) with us a couple of years ago. Now she has 23 of them under her belt. Last night we watched Das Rheingold, three more to complete Wagner's Ring cycle.
Book is not available on Amazon.us.....I think we encountered this glitch last time. Braces huh? I've heard that...grew up calling them "suspenders" though...they work well for as long as one has shoulders. "Bibs" here are sleeveless "overalls"...trousers(pants)with integrated braces. Handy for carrying pencils, eyeglasses, or as a standard bib to catch dribbled food. Works for wine too! Happy New Year and "Cheers".
ReplyDeleteMikeM: My publisher, a personal friend who has published many books and listed them through Amazon, will look into this. What about galluses?
ReplyDeleteBe sure to let us know when it is available in amazon over here in the U.S.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of changing course in later life. One of my novels is about an older woman who changes, and I was surprised by how many people mentioned like the choice of an older heroine and the idea that change still comes to us later in life...
ReplyDeleteColette: My publisher admits to being puzzled but I have every confidence in him. He tells me that a Kindle download of Opening Bars will be prepared shortly.
ReplyDeleteMarly: Of course anyone can pick up a new interest; what makes singing different for me is the way it stuck. And has evolved.
While I was in the USA I wrote a very simple novel about a middle-aged woman who discovered her husband was unfaithful and who chose to give up a very comfortable life in Garden City, NY (an environment I lovingly described) and do different things. Notably have an affair with a twenty-year-old whose favourite reading was Sports Illustrated. I submitted it to an agent in London when I got back and he took me out to lunch! Later he submitted it several publishers who said, yes, it was well written but hardly revelatory. Twenty years later, in early retirement, I decided to build on this. Always a late starter.
Great minds, eh?
Have ordered the book. Comments, and review on Amazon will follow when I have managed to digest the rest of Mabinogion for my reading group. This is a translation of Celtic (Welsh) folk tales. I know it is important stuff, but I just can't do fantasy about kings turning people into animals and having them come back after twenty years, etc., etc.
ReplyDeleteSir Hugh: Heroic stuff. I doubt I could read Mabinogian under any circumstances. Absolutely at the wrong end of the spectrum of my reading preferences. And yet, and yet... Two nights ago VR, Professional Bleeder and I sat down to four-and-a-bit hours of Die Walküre, the second of the four operas that make up Wagner's Ring, and the subject matter wasn't a million miles away from that of "people into animals". Except that, by now, the music has become transcendental and the moral arguments powerfully clear.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with the Ring is that it took me time - years, in fact - to arrive at this point. Richard was urging me towards the Ring forty years ago and then I was utterly resistant. Now I feel rather as I did with Proust. I would never, never recommend Proust or the Ring to anyone, couldn't bear the responsibility. Yet you read Proust, I think, because I had and enjoyed him.
Shocking thought: it may be too late for Wagner unless you are willing, on your own behalf, to immerse yourself in him unthinkingly and unprotestingly. To accept that the operas are masterpieces without any prior conviction.
I am grateful for your order and I hope Opening Bars makes sense. As Walküre rolled on I realised that what I'd learned during the singing lessons was helping me. As Bryn Terfel (as Wotan) sweated and put forward the debate.
"Hardly revelatory?" Interesting. As if there aren't reams of novels that have elements in common. Reminds me of a friend who wrote a novel inspired by her brother's death from HIV infection. She was told something of the kind--that she had "missed the boat" on such stories.
ReplyDeleteMarly: "Hardly revelatory" was my umbrella phrase to cover the snail-mail responses of several publishers to the agent who'd submitted my MS. In their defence I have to say they were far from dismissive; the tone was professional and the scope wide-ranging. Given this was the first novel of mine that had ever been exposed to the market (in 1976 as I recall) I was mildly encouraged. The likelihood of such responses occurring in 2018 is very slight.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with publishers (and with agents whom I deal with) is they only view MSs in terms of their ability to make money and this makes them seem crass. As in your friend's case they haven't time to be encouraging about style, profundity or personal grief. That was why I was so surprised to get a proper response from one agent to whom I submitted Opening Bars.
Fine, but if I can't write non-fiction after all these years that would be, as they say in Yorkshire, "a poor do".
But what I really wanted was an up-to-date intelligent assessment of my ability to write fiction. I knew Opening Bars was probably too short to be commercial but my publisher (a friend) was convinced it was long enough to be printed "perfect bound" rather than "saddle stitched" as I'd gloomily suspected. And now I've had it in my hand I am bound to say I agree with him.
Verily the thing isn't done when all revision is at an end.