Not exactly a culture-fest

Aachen, Part two

It would be nice to pretend we went to Aachen for quasi-spiritual or even pseudo-intellectual reasons. We did pop into the Dom (cathedral) where I took a lousy photo of the stained glass which I am not posting. We also photographed – but did not visit – the 200-year-old theatre emerging from nighttime into roseate dawn.

Alas, our motives were materialistic, if not downright crass, and are better represented by the bun-shop window display. Those on the left are Plunderkranz, or Rubbish-Garland. Their taste remains a mystery.

Because we had the car our shopping could be profligate. VR, who dislikes chocolate (all chocolate, even the expensive sort), spent the equivalent of Gambia’s GDP on kilograms of the brown stuff which will end up as table presents for the family.

I had fun buying vegetables from Jean-Pierre’s wide range. Did he have salsify? I asked. J-P fingered his translating smartphone and, yes, he did have Schwarzwurzel. Even rarer, to me, were miniature red cabbages. Also Jerusalem artichokes; not quite so rare but these were an easy-to-peel variety and have already been consumed as sublime soup. Occasional Speeder was impressed by the amount of money which changed hands.

J-P could thus afford to share my sorrow about Britain’s parochial departure from the EU. Unfortunately my interest in his wares suggested my German was better than it is. I couldn’t follow a story which summarised German attitudes towards the UK, other than the punchline: “The carrots are small; we call them Brexit carrots.”

I thanked J-P for his entertainment and he revealed he was Dutch. “The folk who speak a thousand languages,” I said, and he laughed. That’s ultimately what I was after.

Note to Sabine: I'm aware the Wagnerian reference lacks umlauts.

Webspin

Goebbels awoke, nodding with approval.

Only yesterday. He'd issued a communiqué about overwhelming success in Stalingrad and had gone out for a little air. The man had appeared from nowhere, dark skinned, Mediterranean, gesturing towards a box, the front a frame of grey tinted glass, a mysterious impermeable window.

"Ask the box a question."

Why had he not called for guards? He was after all Reichsminister for Propaganda.

The man added, "An answer only you would know. Speak clearly."

Was this a command? Goebbels spoke clearly as ordered: "The subject of my thesis at Heidelberg." He had had his records at university destroyed; then, his Aryan purity had been less pronounced.

His question was spelt out in luminescent scripted German seemingly within the glass. The answer, similarly displayed, said, "Wilhelm von Schütz, dramatist."

The man smiled faintly. "The machine is not limited. Ask about a present concern."

One in particular, huge and worrying. "Eventual German casualties at Stalingrad?"

No pause in the unfolding script. "Total Axis dead, wounded, missing and captured: 800,000."

Unnecessary to ask if this added up to a defeat. More urgent questions arose: "Does this machine exist?

"It will."

"In German hands?"

“No.”

The man coughed discreetly. “I will leave you, Herr Reichsminister.  Keep the machine. The battery has some life left.”

Goebbels sensed the machine’s power - how best to use it for the Reich? Priorities! Yet to use such power safely he himself needed to be... invulnerable. He said, “Machine! Anne-Sophie Wasserman, Reydt, near Mönchen-Gladbach...”

Already a response. “Where you were born, Herr Reichsminister. Two things: she still lives, her ethnic background is what you fear.”

Now he addressed the guard, told him to find a sledge-hammer.

The pillow felt soft. Just a nighttime fantasy but the correct decision nevertheless.

Easeful afterlife, anyone?

The poisons from my chesty cough and the ever-increasing power of the drugs I take for sciatica can create a mild delirium  as I begin to wake up from a night's sleep. The delirium consists of insistent abstract images combined with high-pitched sounds cleverly arranged to cause me acute mental discomfort.

One morning, however, I enjoyed a pleasant delirium. I found myself using hands and eyes to explore the contours and the softness of the duvet while composing a verse that sought to describe the delights of this experience. Somehow the single words which constituted the verse attached themselves to the gold-glowing duvet and were intermittently visible as the duvet pulsed like a living thing. Reality seemed to intervene when I was unable to find a new word to succeed the last addition, now forgotten, except that it began with "tin-".

The following day I read that the Pope had said Hell didn't exist.  Which set me thinking, yet again (See my March 28 post, Long, yes, long), about the nature of Heaven. Not, of course, the Pope's Heaven which always resembled a slightly softened version of West Point or Sandhurst. Rather a state of mind, arrived at via drugs or through one of God's ordinances, that promotes incorruptible pleasure which please the lucky dreamer and harm no one.

Like my happy delirium in fact. In prescribing our own Heaven we tend to depend on earthly delights: long untiring walks for Sir Hugh, the disassembly of some inexplicable machine for MikeM, a vintage motorcycle mystically endowed with 2050 reliability for Avus, and a willing literary agent for me. But such wish-lists lack two engaging qualities: surprise and novelty. My delirium had both, was cheaply achieved, and offered a strong dash of surrealism.

A consummation devoutly to be desired.

Variations on an old theme

The News Reader
or
Does this make things clearer?

Some day when Kim Jong-Un acts childishly,
And purple clouds obscure the Golden Gate,
As heat and death flow down Ol’ Sixty-Six,
And Napa grapes show strange maturity.
When mutants shag high flies at Candlestick,
And bats out-number folk at San Berdoo,
As I routinely turn on News at Ten
And note apocalypse proclaimed by you.

Oh you, all textiles to your neckless chin,
Poached-egg eyes to lend a false solemnity,
Left arm outstretched to prop your gravitas,
Decay delayed with thickened maquillage.
A stuffy herald for our piping times,
World’s end described in awe-free, wearied words,
“We’ll analyse,” you say, but dust is dust,
And Bridgend lilt can only bring more dust.

As Californians curl up and fry,
We’ll need a Milton or a Stratford Will,
Instead there’s you and “What’s your sense of this?”
Dulling the edge of death with Gelusil.
This end, our end, should be both dark and grand,
An austere welcome to oblivion,
More than a kiosk and a rubber stamp,
More than the forming of an ordered queue.

And when your chalk-stripe suit is touched with flame
Will light obliterate more of the same?

Too tired to read it yourself? Click HERE and I'll do it for you.

Valhalla's now a parking lot

Oh no, you say, not more bloody Wagner. And not that one with all the umlauts which most fail to acknowledge. Twilight of the Gods? Isn’t that what Europe is presently experiencing?

I sympathise. Honestly. Think of me not as John The Baptist to the Bayreuth Tyrant. But as John further down the road, post Salome, headless, wandering round like a chicken. I am not here to proselytise. My wheelbarrow is full of horse manure with which you may – if you wish – encrust your musical garden. And think on these things:

● The high definition transmission from the NY Met to our local theatre started at 17.00 GMT. It ended at 23.09.
● I was – am – ill with a malady which, in my gloomier moments, I see eventually carrying me off to my personal Gőtterdämmerung.
● The theatre car-park was full and I had to park near the soccer stadium. Oh-hoy, went the crowd, a bit like Siegfried.
● The TV broadcast is sponsored by Bloomberg so there were commercials.
● A plump blonde with immaculate teeth suggested I might like to make a charitable donation to the opera company in the richest city in the world.

Neither Mrs LdP nor I anticipate Wagner as we do Richard Strauss. It is an act of faith. And whereas Mrs LdP can handle trolls, giants and dragons I can’t. Happily the music absorbs these misgivings and our concerns become familiar: love, power, greed, jealousy, moral weakness. Siegfried is a pain-in-the-ass hooligan and must die. But it helps if you make him innocent, even playful. Debra Voigt (Brűnnhilde) sings endlessly, glowing, a reminder that love is more than sentimentality or mere desire. And Wagner’s loud enough to cough in without disturbing others.