Ah...

My faith restored

I couldn't leave things as they were - whingeing about Borderlines' less-than-perfect performance this year. I owe that organisation far too much and all is now as it should be.

We drove through the dark on narrow rutted lanes, often through great splashy puddles left behind by the incessant rain. Few signs of habitation. We might have been in Transylvania.

Our destination was Michaelchurch Escley which is a real mouthful. Estimated population for 2018 was 209. The approach to the village hall was the Bumpy Alps in miniature but the welcome was warm and, as the projector switched on, the audience became silent and remained so for the ensuing 100 minutes. We watched Pain and Glory, an effortlessly impressionistic bio-pic of the film director's life. With any other director it would have seemed indulgent but this was Pedro Almodóvar, Spain's greatest, nay Europe's greatest, nay... (fill in your preference).

He is no stranger to us. We've seen: Tie me up! Tie me down!, Volver, Talk to her (The poignancy!), All about my mother, The skin I live in. I turned to VR as the lights went up and said something which I now forget. She said, simply, "Ah..."

All with sub-titles of course. If you have problems and assuming you can read, you must cast this defect to one side. Otherwise you will continue to miss PA's invention, his sense of fun, and the unbelievable variety of his supporting characters. Doubly missing these things since you will want to see these films a second time.

You wouldn't want to go through life with a PA-shaped hole in it. Honest.

Borderlines sags. Oh, no!

Borderlines Films Festival, now in its 18th year. We've attended most and seen about 20 movies over a fortnight each year. Wonderful memories but for the first time, after six viewings, disappointment has reigned.

Blackbird (Middle-class Eastern seaboarders, including my angel Susan Sarandon, discuss and practice euthanasia. I am not persuaded). Photograph (Wandering unresolved non-love story in Mumbai). Bait (Travails of Cornish fishermen; almost comical chain of technical errors by student film-makers). Little Women (Beautifully shot, beautifully acted but somehow hollow; "self conscious" period costumery).

So thanks for Parasite (Hated by the US president. South Korean blackest of black comedy with serious points to make. See pic.). The Personal History of David Copperfield (Capturing the essence of Dickens but without any of his egregious faults.)

Rictangular Lenses, my current novel, now back on track. 48,336 words

The Platinum Breakfast had included scrambled eggs dotted with flakes of smoked salmon. Lindsay tried a forkful but pushed the tray away; fish seemed alien at half-past-seven in the morning. She drank only coffee and ignored the toast, the croissant and the boutique-ish jar of jam said to contain Tyne Valley strawberries. Were strawberries grown this far north? Were they yet another part of the region’s laborious struggle to find enterprises that would replace the metal-shaping that had once occupied half the workforce?

Lieder, Op. 12: IV. Liebst du um Schönheit

This guy's a tenor, I'm a baritone. He can sing higher than I can but it shouldn't make a lot of difference if we're singing from the same score. For several reasons, some even shameful, I had problems maintaining the necessary pitch (ie, staying in tune) at the necessary solidity (ie, not wobbling) when I tackled this song at my last lesson. Yet it's within my range. The first sung note is A-flat and during my warm-ups (ie, five-note phrases getting a tone or semi-tone higher with each repetition) I can reach a somewhat strangulated F.

I've been working at it ever since, since this was the biggest technical failure I've ever experienced. Gradually I sang more easily. I've also sung along with the tenor but, given his different timbre, I wasn't entirely sure I was hitting the same notes he was. A grievous deficiency after four years.

Finally I recorded myself singing against him. As a pro he had different interpretive ideas about timing so I'm out of synch a lot of the time. But during certain on-the-beat passages it sounded as if we were singing the same note. Finally I got VR to listen and she mainly agreed.

This will be of little interest to many but it may suggest that singing is just a little more than opening my mouth and just bellowing. 

Lacking all grace

Old age: The lesser-known facts
By One Who Knows

You become invisible. This is often your own fault. You don’t go out as much. Leading to: Neighbour 1: You don’t see X much these days. Neighbour 2: Don’t hold your breath; he died last Christmas.

And that’s another. Oldsters die at Christmas. Maximum impact; more turkey to dispose of.

You are more/less vain. Becoming invisible you dress more extravagantly (and more foolishly) – especially with regard to socks. Alternatively, you say: Bugger it! Who cares? Answer the door unshaven, surlily, 6 oz of dried-on porridge in the crotch of your pants.

Trapped by routine. Let’s say it’s 8.10 pm. The package says the DVD lasts 2 hr 30 min. You say: I’ll miss the 10 pm news. The DVD continues to gather dust.

Your conversation shrivels. Eventually reducing to one topic. You can’t guess which? Then you’re already there. It’s old age.

Drug info. With difficulty, because the typeface is tiny, you start reading those minatory sheets that accompany your staving-off-death pills. You ask your GP about the symptoms of dengue. It’s a fever, she sighs.

Fiction. You’re convinced by a sixty-year-old memory that Stendhal writes more convincingly than Ian McEwan. You wake up noticing you’ve reached page three of The Charterhouse of Parma and that News at Ten is only a few minutes away. As the still-open novel slides off the arm of the couch you hear the pages crumple.

Meals. Spoons are more practical than a knife and fork.

The dentist. He says, audibly, your teeth are fine. But you’d swear he added sotto voce, given your age.

Wine. Fewer bottles but at higher prices.

Booze. You favour more complex drinks. Bloody Marys, for me. Hey, we’re running out of celery salt

Upbringing updated

Keighley News district office
Myrtle Place, Bingley, West Yorkshire
1959

Impatience was my driven clockspring then,
Wound tightly by my adolescent need,
I yearned for girls but, even more, I sought
A better smithy for my wordsmithing.

A disliked workplace but, if truth be known,
That modest valley town was innocent,
A yardstick for the things that were to come,
An anvil base on which to shape and bend.

But youth confinèd to a teenage cell,
Finds just the bars and, through them, discontent,
Sees vaguest vistas of a sexual sort,
Dreams stories only wisdom may create.

I took the southern road, without goodbyes,
Swearing to flush these details down the tubes,
And found a wider, more rewarding world,
Plus all the doubtful gains of adulthood.

Yet, like dull bricks that built the house I own,
That old dull Place helped build the life I’ve led,
There’s time and space and even patience now,
The fire aspires and words gain relevance
.
What of that town that I once deemed to hate,
That sleeps, unhated, four hours’ drive up north?
Do lichens grow, are folks content, roads straight
But quaint? Adornment for my mantelpiece?

A bend in the road?

Learning to sing has helped prepare me for death. That might suggest singing and/or learning to sing are forms of ecstasy; they aren’t. Both require concentration, attention to detail, repetition, and recognising I’m out of tune (horrible). Obviously that’s not ecstasy.

Unlike writing, singing involves my physical bits and my mental bits. This comforts me given my physical bits are reduced to not much else. Will I sing as I die? No. The sounds won’t satisfy me and they’ll be unimprovable. Others may be dying nearby and music should be a good thing.

A side-effect is I know more about music’s effects. V and I did solitary work on Clara Schumann’s Liebst du um Schőnheit. Both arrived independently at a wonderful musical interval supporting the German word jedes; we discussed it, you might say, ecstatically. Knowing how it had happened.

Two weeks ago I heard Eric Clapton (just a vague name) playing a duet based on Moon River. Two things struck me: Clapton’s inadequate voice and his far from inadequate improvisation. Improvisation often elaborates; Clapton reduced the tune to its bare bones and they were lovely.

I know nothing about pop/rock. Should I? I emailed my daughters, asking their opinion about Clapton. To some extent both shared my view. Professional Bleeder went further: sent me twelve pop/rock tracks she regards as classics. Would my new view of music help probe their quality?

I played Guns ‘n’ Roses Sweet Child just once, I was short of time. I will play it again. After three-minutes, the group embarked on a voice concerto: a single voice against all the instruments, each playing separate themes, distinct and inventive. Allowing for sound levels, it resembled a string quartet. Often the most demanding form of classical music.

More follows.

A siren song

Arras is a town in northern France that was destroyed in WW1 and rebuilt. The town council took the back page of The Guardian on February 14 to issue the following message. VR thought it “poignant”.

Dear friends and neighbours

Here in Arras and the wider Artois region we wanted to use Saint Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to tell you just how much we love our union.

We love to see you here, enjoying a morning coffee on the Place des Héros, climbing to the top of the Belfry, heading to the market to buy a local cheese or a sweet treat… And in the evening, we are enchanted to hear your accent drifting across the terraces as you sample the local beer, order a local speciality and make the most of your time here.

We often see you on the country roads, too, around the many war cemeteries. Which remind us of our debt to you, and what your young men and your determination gave us a full century ago: Freedom… and a steadfast friendship.

So this year in particular, on 14 February we’re saying “I love you”.

Yes, our home is your home too.

Yeah, it’s a tourism advert: visit our town, help our economy. But perhaps it’s a little more than that.