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Always a hectic week, this, as the annual Kew summer picnic concerts happen. The telephone enquiry line is inundated with calls from people who haven’t read their advance information leaflets, people who’ve lost their tickets, people who are panicking about the iffy weather, and so forth. The 'phone hardly seems to stop ringing for most of each day.
It hasn't been all work and no play, though. On Monday night after work I went up to Trafalgar Square for another of the Big Screen events; managed to find my friends in the crowds, ate too much, and cried my eyes out at Kristine Opolais’ marvellous performance as Madam Butterfly.
On Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, however, I went home exhausted after a solid day of ‘phone calls and no lunch break, and had a stiff drink and an early night.
Last night I was helping out at one of the concerts, handing out fundraising leaflets and directing people where to go, with all the enthusiasm and good cheer I could muster. I was released from this duty at about 8.00pm; managed to find my friends in a huge crowd for the second time in a week, and enjoyed a splendid concert from the inimitable Jools Holland and his Rhythm and Blues Orchestra. I also enjoyed the good company, some rather tasty paella, and probably a bit more to drink than was good for me. I danced a lot, the others danced a fair amount, the music was great, the atmosphere happy, the weather held fair apart from about five minutes of drizzle, and the final ten minute firework display was gorgeous.
Now I’m off to be a ticket tearer for tonight’s concert, so it's on with the bright smile and the cheerful energy again. Vesti la giubba, and all that. Actually ticket tearing is rather fun, in a crazy sort of way; but I am tired, and really looking forward to a quiet weekend after this.
Showing posts with label concert. Show all posts
Showing posts with label concert. Show all posts
Friday, 8 July 2011
Wednesday, 22 September 2010
A low is not just a weather system...
It’s been a bit of a depressing week so far. I tell myself it’s a post-holiday low, but trying that idea out on a colleague I got laughed at wolvishly and told not to take holidays in that case – gee, thanks for the suggestion. But several not-good things have happened since I came back from Cornwall and the upshot is that I feel “stale, flat and unprofitable”, as Hamlet puts it (or is it Macbeth?).
I’ve been ticked off at work (for doing something extremely stupid, so entirely deserved, but no less embarrassing for that), I’ve made the deflating discovery that someone I rather fancy thinks it is funny (& yes, I know disgust would be worse, but amusement as a reaction doesn’t exactly boost the self-esteem either!), the Muse seems to have gone walkabout, leaving me bereft of creative inspiration for weeks; and now I have lost about 90% of what had promised to be a bumper tomato crop, to the vile condition called tomato blight.
The blight is the worst, to be honest, because it is irremediable. It struck while I was on holiday, so I wasn’t able to get straight in there and pick the tomatoes themselves before they were destroyed, and make chutney out of them. When I went away, I had fifteen tall, gangling vines dense with scarlet and green toms. When I came back, I had fifteen crumpled, blackened dead things, hung with blotched wrecks of fruit. It was a heart-breaking sight. So I won’t be pressing bags of my lovely toms on friends and colleagues with proud cries of “Oh, it’s such a glut this year, I can’t keep up with it!” >sigh<
To make matters worse, I feel as though I had abandoned my plants to their fate by going on holiday at the time I did. I know the law doesn’t recognise “cruelty to plants” as a crime, but I feel criminal just the same.
With regard to my Muse, I know she’s a crotchety creature, and I must await her return with patience. I have a tried-and-tested technique for keeping the creative juices in suspension, as it were (that’s probably a very bad metaphor, scientifically speaking – suspension of juice, anyone?). I’ll do a bit of quick sketching, and I will garden, sew and cook. They’re all creative activities. And I’ll avoid looking at the easel or the laptop, and do my best to hush that nagging inner voice that says “What if you never get inspired again?” because it does no good at all to listen to it.
I used to get in trouble at Art College for doing this; I was told roundly on several occasions that it was pathetic self-indulgence to talk about “creative inspiration”, and that any artist worthy of the name had no problem at all working systematically and to schedule. At first I protested, but putting your tutors’ collective backs up isn’t a good idea; in the end I used simply to apologise and say I’d try to discipline myself better. Then I’d go back to the studio and generate empty rubbish, piles of bullsh*t, until the Muse came calling on my brain again.
I wonder if the denial of the existence of inspiration is one of the reasons why so much contemporary art is derivative drivel and cr*p? Ooh, contentious thought there, Dent. But I wonder, nonetheless…
I remind myself that this weekend I am going to a European Food Fair and a concert performance of “Tristan und Isolde”. I can combine my Food-vulture and Culture-vulture hats in one, which is nice, and “Tristan” should be super. Low patches happen, one just has to weather them and be grateful they are not something worse. Autumn is a time of consolidating and digging in, setting the structures for new developments and next stages; the concert and ballet seasons are just starting; the weather so far is balmy and sweet; Kew Gardens are full of cyclamen and colchicums, and the glasshouses are full of gorgeous bromeliads and the like… I can’t complain, I really can’t. Low patches happen.
I’ve been ticked off at work (for doing something extremely stupid, so entirely deserved, but no less embarrassing for that), I’ve made the deflating discovery that someone I rather fancy thinks it is funny (& yes, I know disgust would be worse, but amusement as a reaction doesn’t exactly boost the self-esteem either!), the Muse seems to have gone walkabout, leaving me bereft of creative inspiration for weeks; and now I have lost about 90% of what had promised to be a bumper tomato crop, to the vile condition called tomato blight.
The blight is the worst, to be honest, because it is irremediable. It struck while I was on holiday, so I wasn’t able to get straight in there and pick the tomatoes themselves before they were destroyed, and make chutney out of them. When I went away, I had fifteen tall, gangling vines dense with scarlet and green toms. When I came back, I had fifteen crumpled, blackened dead things, hung with blotched wrecks of fruit. It was a heart-breaking sight. So I won’t be pressing bags of my lovely toms on friends and colleagues with proud cries of “Oh, it’s such a glut this year, I can’t keep up with it!” >sigh<
To make matters worse, I feel as though I had abandoned my plants to their fate by going on holiday at the time I did. I know the law doesn’t recognise “cruelty to plants” as a crime, but I feel criminal just the same.
With regard to my Muse, I know she’s a crotchety creature, and I must await her return with patience. I have a tried-and-tested technique for keeping the creative juices in suspension, as it were (that’s probably a very bad metaphor, scientifically speaking – suspension of juice, anyone?). I’ll do a bit of quick sketching, and I will garden, sew and cook. They’re all creative activities. And I’ll avoid looking at the easel or the laptop, and do my best to hush that nagging inner voice that says “What if you never get inspired again?” because it does no good at all to listen to it.
I used to get in trouble at Art College for doing this; I was told roundly on several occasions that it was pathetic self-indulgence to talk about “creative inspiration”, and that any artist worthy of the name had no problem at all working systematically and to schedule. At first I protested, but putting your tutors’ collective backs up isn’t a good idea; in the end I used simply to apologise and say I’d try to discipline myself better. Then I’d go back to the studio and generate empty rubbish, piles of bullsh*t, until the Muse came calling on my brain again.
I wonder if the denial of the existence of inspiration is one of the reasons why so much contemporary art is derivative drivel and cr*p? Ooh, contentious thought there, Dent. But I wonder, nonetheless…
I remind myself that this weekend I am going to a European Food Fair and a concert performance of “Tristan und Isolde”. I can combine my Food-vulture and Culture-vulture hats in one, which is nice, and “Tristan” should be super. Low patches happen, one just has to weather them and be grateful they are not something worse. Autumn is a time of consolidating and digging in, setting the structures for new developments and next stages; the concert and ballet seasons are just starting; the weather so far is balmy and sweet; Kew Gardens are full of cyclamen and colchicums, and the glasshouses are full of gorgeous bromeliads and the like… I can’t complain, I really can’t. Low patches happen.
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
Good things - list for the day
Good things about this time of year; because I have to remind myself, being essentially a spring creature and not an autumn and winter one.
Russet apples. Picasso painted them, I eat them. Their strange, furry-looking skins and rich-flavoured, firm flesh are a joy of the season. Like the wonderful Discovery and Worcester Pearmain, they are strictly seasonal and are one of my reasons for continuing to live in the UK. Seriously – British apples are a reason to live here. Try Spanish apples if you don’t believe me.
Autumn leaves. Do I need to say more? Sheer beauty, and all the evanescence of spring with the added poignancy of fading and ending instead of new life…
Booking tickets. I’m partway through a binge of bookings for concerts and ballet and opera for the winter. As the weather gets colder and the days get darker, at least I have lots of goodies to look forward to, from Vieux Farka Touré, to two new pieces premiering at the Royal Ballet,
to this
to Stuart Skelton singing Boris in “Katya Kabanova” (can’t wait, can’t wait; have to wait, bah!).
Conifer pollen. I used to have dreadful hayfever in my twenties but it eased off gradually as the years went on, and by the time I started working at Kew it was a thing of the past. At this time of year a lot of coniferous trees are flowering, and if, like today, it is rainy (which is what they need, as it is via the action of raindrops that their flowers are pollinated), the paths and pavements around here are speckled and streaked with the pale gold dust of fallen pollen. It reminds me of the line in Seferis’ “A Word for Summer” – “A few pine needles left after the rains/Raggedly strewn, and red like tattered nets” – only with blonde pollen not rusty needles. As the rest of the northern hemisphere’s plant world thinks “Time to shut up shop for the winter”, conifers are going “It’s that time of year again – hey, let’s make babies!” On windy days the pollen dances off the trees in clouds, like millions of tiny blonde sprites leaping together into flight.
Evenings when the muse is tired, watching movies on my new dvd player. I tidied up my dvd collection last night, sorting it into feature films, opera and concerts, and ballet... In the process, whetting my appetite for a good wallow in all three categories. Next rainy evening, I think I might settle down to "Swan Lake", or possibly "The Devil's Backbone", or possibly "The Cunning Little Vixen" (which I have bought a new copy of since my old one has vanished into the unknown tender hands of someone else who likes Janacek...
Migratory birds. Redwings. Beautful geese flying in from the artic. Chilly afternoons at the London Wetland centre blowing on my numbed fingers, trying to draw Great Crested Grebes in their stark, spare winter plumage.
Winter walks in the arboretum here at Kew, listening to robins singing and nuthatches and goldcrests and long-tailed titmice trilling their signal calls, and soaking up the bleak, misty, dripping atmosphere under the dark pines.
Russet apples. Picasso painted them, I eat them. Their strange, furry-looking skins and rich-flavoured, firm flesh are a joy of the season. Like the wonderful Discovery and Worcester Pearmain, they are strictly seasonal and are one of my reasons for continuing to live in the UK. Seriously – British apples are a reason to live here. Try Spanish apples if you don’t believe me.
Autumn leaves. Do I need to say more? Sheer beauty, and all the evanescence of spring with the added poignancy of fading and ending instead of new life…
Booking tickets. I’m partway through a binge of bookings for concerts and ballet and opera for the winter. As the weather gets colder and the days get darker, at least I have lots of goodies to look forward to, from Vieux Farka Touré, to two new pieces premiering at the Royal Ballet,
to this
to Stuart Skelton singing Boris in “Katya Kabanova” (can’t wait, can’t wait; have to wait, bah!).
Conifer pollen. I used to have dreadful hayfever in my twenties but it eased off gradually as the years went on, and by the time I started working at Kew it was a thing of the past. At this time of year a lot of coniferous trees are flowering, and if, like today, it is rainy (which is what they need, as it is via the action of raindrops that their flowers are pollinated), the paths and pavements around here are speckled and streaked with the pale gold dust of fallen pollen. It reminds me of the line in Seferis’ “A Word for Summer” – “A few pine needles left after the rains/Raggedly strewn, and red like tattered nets” – only with blonde pollen not rusty needles. As the rest of the northern hemisphere’s plant world thinks “Time to shut up shop for the winter”, conifers are going “It’s that time of year again – hey, let’s make babies!” On windy days the pollen dances off the trees in clouds, like millions of tiny blonde sprites leaping together into flight.
Evenings when the muse is tired, watching movies on my new dvd player. I tidied up my dvd collection last night, sorting it into feature films, opera and concerts, and ballet... In the process, whetting my appetite for a good wallow in all three categories. Next rainy evening, I think I might settle down to "Swan Lake", or possibly "The Devil's Backbone", or possibly "The Cunning Little Vixen" (which I have bought a new copy of since my old one has vanished into the unknown tender hands of someone else who likes Janacek...
Migratory birds. Redwings. Beautful geese flying in from the artic. Chilly afternoons at the London Wetland centre blowing on my numbed fingers, trying to draw Great Crested Grebes in their stark, spare winter plumage.
Winter walks in the arboretum here at Kew, listening to robins singing and nuthatches and goldcrests and long-tailed titmice trilling their signal calls, and soaking up the bleak, misty, dripping atmosphere under the dark pines.
Monday, 30 March 2009
A busy weekend...
Friday night, got drunk with Julie and a lot of odd but interesting people. Saturday morning, lay in bed feeling nauseous and dizzy. Why do I do these things? Because they are fun at the time. An evening at the Magpie and Crown in Brentford was certainly lively, intellectually stimulating and at times hysterically funny; and I think their cask-conditioned scrumpy is probably at least twice the advertised strength... Delighted to find a pub where I can leave my handbag on a bench (because I am an idiot) and no-one takes my wallet or indeed my make-up bag which in a previous incarnation was once stolen as it looked more like a wallet than my then wallet (long story behind that).
Saturday afternoon, got on with unpacking. Again. This is getting to be boring. Then went back to my old place to collect my coffee pot, a postcard of Venice (Thanks, Jasanander) and some dvds, most of which turned out not to be mine (in fact all of them bar "Time Bandits", which was mine, were the kind of Hollywood generic made-by-numbers tripe I wouldn't touch with the proverbial forty-foot bargepole. I'm talking about stuff like "My Super-ex girlfriend" and "Step up to the Streets 2"...). Refreshed myself after this by buying loads of packets of seeds for the new garden in Wilkinsons.
Sat on a number E3 bus for bl**dy ages in the traffic in the rain. Got home. Watched "Primaeval" for a laugh with my supper and enjoyed seeing the gorgeous Douglas Henshall (ooh that lovely accent!), ably assisted by his sidekicks and a splendid CGI'd giant eocene crocodile, apparently trashing the British Museum, the terrace café of Somerset House and the entire Festival Hall. Then put the clock forward and went to bed early.
Sunday, ran washing machine. Put washing out. Got on with unpacking yet again. Almost finished unpacking. Improvised a fantastic new bookcase out of two packing cases - I'm not entirely sure it's stable but so long as I don't hit it, sit on it or step on it that shouldn't be a problem. It looks a trifle Heath-Robinson and has an odd lurching-sideways structure, very war-time-make-do-and-mend. Grandpa and my Dad would be proud of me (when they'd finished laughing). Went to Sainsburys. Came home, unpacked the shopping, and then went on with the other unpacking. Went into the West End to go to a concert at the Festival Hall, wolfing my sandwiches on the Level 5 balcony where in the previous evening's tv the CGI crocodile had fallen with a crash to the riverside walk below. No crocodiles (or sweet-voiced Scots actors, sadly), but a fine sunset over Charing Cross Station. Heard the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra playing a rather cool and crisp Beethoven symphony (sorry; I like Beethoven treated as the first wild Romantic composer, not as the last calm heir of Hayden), a lovely "Vier Letzte Lieder" with the wonderful Anja Harteros looking stunning in a red draped grecian number and singing like an angel - "Im Abendrot" especially was haunting, hairs-on-the-back-of-my-neck-prickling-up stuff. That's Ms Harteros at the top, by the way, not me at the Magpie! The Festival Hall acoustics aren't always kind, even now with the amazing "wibbly roof" retrofitting, and the last time I heard the Four Last Songs there the soprano was drowned by the orchestra half the time. Ms Harteros rode over them without hesitation or flaw, displaying both the requisite glorious heft and scale, but also singing of incredibly controlled softness and delicacy... Lastly a really stupendous "Daphnis et Chloe" suite no. 2, fielding no less than 11 percussionists. Yum. Extra yum as the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra have one of the best-looking timpanists I've ever seen. Imagine a skinny version of Johnny Wilkinson in full evening dress leaping about beating the living daylights out of four timps with an ecstatic grin on his face... nice picture, no? Sorry I can't find a picture of him... but you'll live, no doubt, without.
Tonight I think, I really think, I might get the unpacking finished.
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