Busy busy bee, encore une fois (or, busy poseur, perhaps)...

I want to say that I have been on the go for so long I feel slightly disorientated.  I want to have a little moan about that.  But that “for so long” refers to a period of about three weeks.  There are people in this world whose lives don’t provide them with a break and a decent rest for several years at a stretch, never mind weeks.  Heck, there are plenty of people who never get a holiday in their entire lives.  I should grumble.  Heavens, what a wimp I’m becoming.

Work has been busier this month, which is good.  The weather has been – well, British.  Since I last wrote any notes here I’ve been gripped and thrilled by a magnificent performance of “Peter Grimes” at the Proms (Stuart Skelton in harrowingly good form in the lead, the chorus practically blasting off the roof of the Albert Hall when they let rip, all this and the lovely Iain Paterson to boot); I’ve also spent a blissful afternoon at the Science Museum (no longer just for kids), I’ve written my arse off all the bank holiday weekend, and I’ve dashed down to Kent to help my mum celebrate a big birthday – you know the kind - one with a number ending in zero. 

The latter is a bit of a “good grief, really?” moment for me; presumably a hell of a lot more so for her.  She never really seems to change that much, much less age particularly, and it is weird to realise how the numbers are still stacking up notwithstanding.  Well, I hope I have inherited her life span genes, and not my father’s. 

Mum’s birthday was fun, and would have been more fun if the weather hadn’t been so up itself.  It’s still August, for crying out loud.  What’s with the howling gales, persistent heavy rain and thunder and lightning?  But there was plenty of champagne, as well as both vanilla and maple-pecan fudge (she’s allergic to chocolate) and several kinds of cake, and curry for supper, and bouquets of flowers, and potted phalaenopsis, and a nice stack of greetings cards to prop along the front room bookcase.   And gin and Pringles, without which no family gathering seems to be complete these days.  Whatever did we do before the advent of the Pringle? 

Outings (it being way too dodgy, weather-wise, for the planned picnic on the beach either day) were instead spent partly sitting in the car listening to the rain beat on the roof, and pondering the intricate patterns very heavy rain makes on a windscreen in a very heavy & horizontal wind (like quivering water-lace; rather beautiful in a wet way), and partly indulging in the atavistic pleasure of blackberry picking.  So what with the dear UK climate doing its absolute nut, and the blackberries leaving all of us with lacerated burgundy hands, and champagne going to everyone’s head, it was a mad but very happy couple of days off. 

This weekend I’m cat-sitting (for the cat who is scared of farting – note to self, do not fart at the cat.  As if I needed telling.  But then, I’m no lady, me).  Then next Friday I’m off to Cornwall, for the second half of Mum’s birthday celebrations (I told you it was a big one) – a family week in Polruan.  Beautiful Cornwall, beautiful Fowey River, beautiful clean sea air and peaceful walking, silent country nights, lovely pubs, and good Cornish cider, yarg cheese, and pasties from Niles Bakery... 

Mystified and busy with Grimes and Bourne

Can anyone enlighten me as to why this:
http://imogenscreativefire.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/i-hasten-to-add.html
appears to be my most-viewed blog post ever?  As the saying goes, how weird is that?  There must be a lot of people out there who really love the word "purple"...

It's been a busy patch: work has picked up again; the hot sunny weather got completely overwhelming last weekend and has only just become bearable again; I met a friend's gorgeous new cat and fell for him heavily (he's snow-white and fluffy, very sweet-natured and slightly daft), and then scared said cat rigid by farting loudly after drinking far more cold cider than was good for me on a very hot afternoon; I ate almost a whole Walls Vienetta on my own; I went to a brainstorming session in a pub (good venue!), the new Bourne film (ace!) and a fascinating marketing workshop, and had lunch with Jane; and tomorrow I've got the afternoon off and am heading into South Ken for "Universe of Sound" with the Philharmonia at the Science Museum and a prom performance of "Peter Grimes".

I have also, needless to add, been cramming a bit of writing in around the edges.  Since it is forecast to rain for most of this Bank Holiday weekend, I may well end up doing a bit more of that.

No prizes for guessing why I'm going to "Peter Grimes" - I'll probably have a good cry, since Stuart Skelton is singing the lead.  The glorious Mr Skelton in full flow, and all that stunning Britten music and painful emotion, in the heightened atmosphere (& probably elevated temperature) of the Proms; irresistible. 

No prizes for guessing why I went to "The Bourne Legacy", either.  I would probably have gone anyway, but perhaps not as soon after it opened!  I loved the other Bourne movies; they've been a welcome blast of clarity and grittiness in a field that tends towards the bloated and ludicrously unlikely (see: pretty much any Bond film, ever)...

The latest one is, like the previous three, intelligent and exciting.  The script requires you to pay attention, listen and think, as well as assuming you know what "vector" and "metastasise" mean.  There's a very pleasing sense of a new spiral swinging off from the circles of the previous storyline, and a fascinating touch of "Flowers for Algernon"...  Rachel Weiss is, as always, excellent.  And having always found Matt Damon's who-me-I'm-just-an-Everyman good looks just a tad too doughy-faced for my tastes I am very happy indeed that with the arrival of Mr Renner's grimly brooding hunk of a new hero the eye-candy quotient has been much improved!  Along with the acting intensity.  I'm beginning to wonder if there's anything this man can't do?  I gather he also sings and play several instruments (& does DIY, and can cook, and loves dogs - hell's teeth, I'm looking at perfection here).  Maybe he can't tap dance?...

Tired again, Friday again...

Yesterday I got another rejection note. This one was not for GY but for "Ramundi's sisters" - its first. It was courteous, even friendly, and a very quick response, all of which I appreciate, but the agent in question said the writing didn't grab her imagination. For the first time, a rejection note left me feeling really, really flat.

Up until now I've been rather proud of how well I was taking the prolonged application process and all the rejections. I suppose that was bound to slip, at some point. Now a wave of depression arrives, and I find myself thinking "Maybe I'm unpublishable" and feeling altogether really low-spirited. Maybe I am unpublishable. I think my writing is good; but then, a large number of staggeringly untalented people think that about their own writing, so maybe I am simply as delusional as them. Maybe I am unpublishable despite being a competent writer, simply because what I produce is completely uncommercial. Maybe I am wasting my time. Maybe I should just hide under a stone; go in the garden and eat worms, as my grandfather used to say...

Last night I was at the Prom given by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Interesting experience... I never thought I'd see a Prom turned into a political demonstration. Naive of me, I suppose.

It was certainly naive of me not to think about the political connotations when I booked, and invited several other people; I had my cultural blinkers on, and was simply thinking "That's a fun programme, and Gil Shaham is playing; I love Gil Shaham, ergo I must go to this." It literally never crossed my mind that there might be trouble (I guess I share my Dad's attitude that "Musik ist eine heilige kunst").

There were a couple of small "Free Palestine" and "Support Israel no-matter-what" demos outside the Royal Albert Hall when I arrived, but they were both being very civilised; making their point in a calm way without any aggressive behaviour, simply reminding everyone coming in that there are complex issues involved and people who feel strongly about them. But then first of all someone handing out leaflets began to abuse my stepmum Jane after she told them she's a Quaker - I know people get very hot-headed when they are passionate about a cause, but telling someone they cannot call themselves a Christian and will be damned and spat upon by God because they disagree with you is out of line.

Then, when we got inside, we found that a good number of people in the hall had bought tickets solely in order to disrupt the performance as much as possible, seemingly with at least partly the intent of causing not only the maximum noise and interruption but also the maximum of provocation to the remainder of the audience. As Maestro Zubin Mehta readied himself to conduct each piece, people would stand up around the auditorium, and shout and carry on, condemning Israel and chanting "Free Palestine!". As each protester was escorted out (or carried out, in a couple of cases) another one would stand up somewhere else. It was a well-planned demo, I must say that for it; but a pain in the neck nonetheless.

By the time of the (I think) seventh outburst, from a guy quite near where we were sitting, the level of ill-feeling against the protests had reached the point where another member of the audience stood up and began pushing the protester down into his seat with considerable force - he was subsequently ejected alongside the protester, whereupon other members of his party began to make their own protests, the gist of which was that he had been justified, and two of them were then asked to leave as well. The bulk of the audience were just muttering and booing at yet another disturbance, and began loudly shushing both the protesters and those who were shouting at them to shut up.

I doubt if more than a handful of the audience will have felt anything other than extremely angry with the cause of a free Palestine by the end. And it may be cynical of me, but I doubt very much if the irony will have registered with most of the angry people around me, that in having our normal life disrupted aggressively by strangers for no reason except their hostility towards the fact we were there, we were in fact experiencing a tiny, TINY taste of what it is like to live under an aggressive occupation.

It is a pity, though, since this was exactly the kind of situation where a positive impression could have been made on people who hadn't been really thinking about the issues. Instead the impression most of them will have come away with was of a bunch of loudmouths being arsey. Presumably the opportunity for wide publicity at minimal cost of effort and time over-rides the seriously counterproductive effect on the actual audience on the night.

I am saddened by the cynicism of attacking a soft target like the Proms, rather than the people who actually make the decisions. Governments have legal representatives on foreign soil; their embasssies. Outside an embassy is the proper place for a demo against the government of the country in question. Vide the group outside the Zimbabwean embassy in the Strand, patiently making their point, day after day. But that demo will be a long, hard slog, possibly requiring years of work to really get the publicity mill rolling... Whereas this one was loud, quick and dramatic, easily staged, and didn't result in anyone getting hurt or arrested, and I learned this morning that it achieved its goal of getting the BBC outside broadcast taken off-air partway through.

The orchestra, who I fear must be pretty hardened to this sort of thing when they play abroad, were consummately professional and played on throughout, extremely well. Gil Shaham was of course absolutely wonderful. And even in such strange circumstances, it was still good to see Jane, and The Crazy Intern, and TCI's nice fella G., and The Ginger Scotsman. And we had some fabulous Booja-Booja raspberry truffles at the interval. Interesting, weird evening.

Mad activity everywhere - sadly mad in several senses...

Well, it's all been happening (except when it hasn't) over the last few days. I had a great trip to a Prom that was marred only by having The Smelliest Man in London sitting beside me. I cleaned the whole house. I made personalised muesli and a great curry. I went to a super exhibition of Toulouse-Lautrec lithographs at the Courtauld Gallery. It was a good weekend.

Then Sunday and Monday, great swathes of London rioted, and burned and looted one another, including in an area barely two streets from where I used to live. Two streets away from where I currently live, everyone got boarded up and braced for trouble, only for there to be none. But what an appalling business it all was. I'm not going to try and make any profound statements; I'm totally unequipped and unqualified to do so, and also still too stunned by the whole thing. I've had to reassure my mother repeatedly that I am okay and am not going to knowingly get in any trouble, as she's quite convinced I will start taking silly risks if there's trouble in my vicinity.

We can only wait and see what happens next, and hope that there isn't a backlash that just makes things worse.

Going back to more cheerful news items, this morning I typed the wonderful phrase "Guide Dogs for the Blond" in a reply to a visitor's question. It's a good thing I still read through my emails instead of just trusting spellchecker with them. Spellchecker saw nothing wrong with guide dogs for the blond. Admittedly the idea has a certain appeal, but only as humour...

And if you ever garden or do anything with plants, you will love this:
http://www.thisgardenisillegal.com/2011/06/post-nozzle-drip-irrigation.html

I hope that link posts okay.

More than half in love...

…with Christian Tetzlaff. Who I heard last night at the Royal Festival Hall, playing Bartok’s second violin concerto with the Philharmonia. Seriously, incandescently good stuff. Mr Tetzlaff looks uncannily like a miniaturised version of my cousin Richard (Richard is a very handsome cousin, but he’s also a very tall guy, and Mr Tetzlaff, erm, isn’t). Richard, however, is no musician, and Mr Tetzlaff is a dazzlingly good one.

I’m very lucky to live in a place where I get to hear lots of marvellous violinists; in the last eighteen months or so I’ve heard Christian Tetzlaff, Joshua Bell, Sergey Khatchatryan, Gil Shaham, Benjamin Schmid and Frank Peter Zimmermann, and that is quite a feast, I can tell you, even if they aren’t all quite as easy on the eye as Mr Tetzlaff. Mr Shaham is I suspect part hobbit (& part fiddle-playing demi-god), while Mr Zimmermann looks like a policeman in a borrowed suit, but every one of these men is an absolute joy to hear in action. Bearing in mind that I can also get to hear the world’s great pianists, the world’s great singers, the world’s great orchestras conducted by the world’s great conductors; London may have its down side but the up-side is a pretty big up.

That brings me neatly to the Proms. I’ve been trying to choose which ones to book this year. I’ve worked out a shortlist of six, but I really ought to cut that down a bit. All six have at least one really, really good reason not to drop them; favourite pieces, favourite musicians, things I’d just love to hear live (I mean, come on, the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony, in the RAH, on that socking great organ of theirs? This I cannot miss)… I’ll have to skip “Elijah”, despite the superb line-up of soloists, as it’s on my mum’s birthday, and mum’s birthday is sacrosanct (and is always a day at the beach followed by a good curry or paella supper). But Tetzlaff playing Brahms? Shaham playing Bruch? Stuart Skelton singing Mahler? Britten’s Spring Symphony? Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Janacek, Sibelius? How am I to choose? I don’t think I can…

If I can get the cheapest seats (at the top at the side, or choir seats are okay), then it won’t kill the wallet. And there’s always the radio, after all, my great digital radio that has transformed radio-listening for me; and lots of the Proms are televised these days – I should check what’s being shown on BBC4 before I get down-in-the-mouth about the expense.

Here is my latest I-have-a-purple-crush poem:

To Christian Tetzlaff, playing Bartók

Vibrant disharmony, a pierced sunset
And the wide skies burning like a battlefield.
Slicing between discord and dancing, between
Lyrical terror and song, nothing’s so bright
As this plane of flame, which is sound, which is you
Wheeling undizzied as a gull in the gulf
Of air, with music pouring from your hands.

Bee caught in amber, golden-voiced, longing to dance,
Half of your blood is fire; you plunge
Humming, exploding into furrowed waves
And rise to arrow the dazzled heart. Your wings
Which are hands, are strings, phoenix of sound
Incandescent with energy in your burning field.

Pick-of-the-Proms, and romantic comedies...

There were seven concerts I wanted to go to in this year’s BBC Proms season. Two were sold out by the time I came to book, and one clashed with a previous arrangement. I was able to get tickets for the other four, though. As an experiment, I had seats in different parts of the hall for each concert; this was interesting, and useful, though of course putting what I’ve learned into use next year will still depend on availability of seats.

My first Prom was “Meistersinger”. I like “Meistersinger” although it is five hours plus of bum-numbing Wagner; because it has buckets of thrilling music, because unlike most of his work it has a happy ending, and because I have played in the overture (& I still know the triangle part!). I had a seat to the side of the gallery, with a fair view and pretty good sound, and despite the heat it was a good afternoon.

My second Prom was number 32; Tchaikovsky, Janacek and Berlioz. I went with my stepmother Jane and we sat in the choir stalls. The sound is surprisingly good from here, though of course it is off-balance. Jane is used to this, as she plays regularly in an orchestra herself. I’m less adapted to it, as I haven't done so for years, but I also have a less-sensitive ear. We were right above the percussion section, with a splendid view of them and of everyone else except Maxim Rysanov. Recommended if you like watching the conductor (which I like to do occasionally) and don’t mind being blown out of your seat when the timpani let rip (not a problem for someone whose Dad was a timpanist), and of course provided you don’t have a crush on a string soloist.

Third Prom was Lugansky playing the Rachmaninov “Rhapsody”, reviewed last week. For this I was right at the back centre of the gallery. Seats here sell out ahead of the sides of the gallery, but my feeling was that the sound was worse - small and a bit muzzy - and the view awful. The back of the gallery is great, sound-wise, in the Festival Hall and the Barbican Hall, and even in Canterbury Cathedral (most of which has bl**dy lousy acoustics). Not so at the Royal Albert Hall. I have a bit of an “I-love-you” thing about Nikolai Lugansky and I’m sorry I wasn’t a scrap closer to him; it’s amazing just how far away the gallery is from the stage, in that huge building. It’s like trying to see the action from the back row of the Colosseum (NB not the Coliseum – where the cheap seats have surprisingly good sightlines).

My fourth and final Prom was on Friday, and it was easily the best. Of course, it was my favourite orchestra and my favourite maestro, so there is a remote possibility I was prejudiced... I’d splashed out on a seat in the side stalls for this. For me, that gave the best of both worlds; close enough to give me crisp, clear sound and a really good view, but far enough back that I wasn’t swamped by one section of the orchestra. It was a terrific concert.

It’s available on BBC iPlayer, at least for the next few days; sadly iPlayer slots only seem to last a week. The four pieces were well-matched; the Mosolov thrillingly hot stuff, the Pärt symphony haunting, tensely meditative and melancholy, the Ravel a jazzy treat. The final piece, Scriabin’s “Poem of Ecstasy”, which I didn't know before, absolutely blew me away. And Esa-Pekka Salonen was simply wonderful. Do have a look and a listen if you have the time (you can fast forward, in a rough-and-ready manner, to get through the applause and the talking-head presenter). I know I am a creature of crushes, and very boring it must get listening to me rave about them, but honestly; watch the Maestro, and marvel. Now that is one brilliant guy, and a damned attractive one too. And it is corking good music.

I had a constructive weekend afterwards. I got several small irritating jobs done - like retuning my television, which I’ve been meaning to do for months, and mending the handle of my nail scissors. I did a lot of gardening, bought my spring bulbs and made another batch of jam (strawberry and blackberry – oh yes, it’s good!). But I slept badly and had weird dreams on both Friday and Saturday night. On Friday it made sense; I was hyped-up after the concert, fizzing with energy after the magnificence of the Scriabin, and couldn’t shake the mental image of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s honey-and-silver hair and elvish smile, and his marvellous energy.

But Saturday puzzles me; I’d had a good, busy day, spent plenty of time outdoors in the fresh air, and had a very nice supper of home-cooked fasoladha and roasted squash with feta cheese. Then I dreamed that someone I was at college with had gone to live on the island of Hvar in Croatia and got in trouble. I woke up and said to myself “It’s just a dream”, got back to sleep – and had the same dream again. Creepy.

Last night I really wanted a relaxed, no-need-to-think evening. I cooked a dead-simple supper of pasta, veg and tuna, and sat down and watched tele. So I’m a slob. I ended up with a film called “Sweet Home Alabama”, which I’d heard was a good straightforward romantic comedy. It starred Reese Witherspoon, who is such a delight in the first “Legally Blonde” film (& is so badly let-down in the second by a truly dire plot and script). It didn’t look too intellectually taxing, which was fine, as I wanted fun, not intellect. I have plenty of opera and classic French art movies on dvd if I want to be intellectual.

But it just didn’t work for me. I didn’t really like any of the characters. I felt the heroine was silly, shallow and mean, and so was the husband she had fled from. There was no explanation of why their marriage hadn’t worked, beyond a nasty story about him throwing up at the wedding. I have no doubt that that would be vile, and infuriating – but grounds for separation? Not among grown-ups, I hope. The man who wants to marry the heroine seemed far too old-fashionedly decent and nice to be in love with her. It just – didn’t work. I gave up about halfway through, so I may have missed the moment when suddenly it all came together. But I don’t want to have to sit with a film for over an hour without a single character getting my sympathy.

It’s funny what works and what doesn’t, in films, tv, fiction, you name it. I guess it’s partly a matter of taste. Comedy is such a personal thing, too; and romantic comedy must be particularly hard to write and to play. I loved “Legally Blonde”, I enjoyed “Maid in Manhattan” and “Pretty Woman” – and the latter is about as air-headed a fantasy as they come – and “While you were Sleeping”, and “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”, and “Practical Magic” and “Hitch” and “Mystic Pizza” and “Moonstruck” and “Groundhog Day”… So I know I am perfectly capable of sitting down with a chocolate box Girls’ Night-type movie and enjoying it for exactly what it is. I just wish I’d had one last night.

At least I slept okay afterwards; and no bad dreams. But no lovely orchestral ones, either.

I am officially in love...

...with Nikolai Lugansky.

At last night's Prom he was playing the "Paganini Rhapsody", looking elegant and cool despite the sweltering heat inside the Royal Albert Hall. His playing was delicate and passionate; carrying one away on the swooningly romantic Big Tune, then dancing gleefully in the spikier, more percussive fast episodes; mad and manic, solomn and magnificent, soft and rueful at the end... It was real hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck stuff, utterly, utterly gorgeous. Like Mr Lugansky himself.

A pity the second half was a bit rum-ti-tum; a Tchaikovsky suite that would have made a good final act to a happy-endinged ballet. The finale would be perfect stuff for an OTT Grand Pas de Deux, with lots of tricky balances and big one-handed lifts, a show-off variation for the bloke and something with fish dives to finish off with. Perhaps to tag on to one of those weird (to my eyes) Russian "Swan Lake"s with the happy ending? I know one is prejudiced by background in these things, but I always find the happy-end "Swan Lake" versions jarring... The music is so melancholy in its triumph, so luminously, tearfully transcendant, that I can't match it to Odette's sudden reappearance in a hastily-thrown-on pink frock and happy-bride smile...

For those who aren't mild balletomanes, by the way, that link shows the great Carlos Acosta and Tamara Rojo, at the end of a fish dive; ten seconds before that picture was taken, Ms Rojo will have been above Mr Acosta's head, probably balanced by him on one hand. If they both look just a trifle stern, that's why - they've just executed a complicated and rather dangerous manouevre. In another fraction of a second they would both have dazzling smiles on their faces again, but this picture captures the split second thought of "Is this going to hold?" any sane person would have if they were doing this. For comparison, here are two stars of ABT, also looking more determined than smiley, and here is Alina Cojocaru and another chap from ABT, also looking slightly worried. It seems to be a move that gets to everyone, even the greats.

Haven't been able to find a picture of Marianela Nuñez, she of the 1000-watt smile, doing a fish dive. It's hard to imagine anything making her frown, mind you.

First signs of autumn

It's odd; the newspapers and the BBC are saying all the signs are that this will be a late autumn; yet everything I have observed suggests the opposite. A straw poll around the office (very unscientific, I know) produced similar thoughts to mine. Everyone has seen prematurely yellowing leaves, early blackberries and plums, and so on. This morning there was heavy, sparkling dew on the long grass, and for the first time this year I saw cobwebs covered with dewdrops, too.

I've noticed that the first blackberry-gathering expedition has got steadily earlier - when I was a kid it was a September activity, about ten years ago I remember picking blackberries on my mother's birthday in late August for the first time; now I am planning a session this coming weekend.

But this year, the official version disagrees with my amateur phenological observations. No matter; I know what I've seen. They look like good blackberries, too.

Not much else going on; chugging along at work, which is steadily busy at this time of year; a terrific Prom on Monday with the gorgeously (& most appropriately) Byronic Maxim Rysanov doing a lovely job of the delicate and difficult solo part in "Harold in Italy"; nothing yet from the first literary agent I sent "GY" to; and I've had my first courgettes, runner beans and french beans from the garden, but no tomatoes as yet.

And I've had some more bizarre horoscopes. Yesterday, a long-lost beloved was meant to come back into my life, a changed character. I must admit to being pretty relieved that this didn't happen. I'm honestly not too sure I'd want some of my past best-beloveds back. With the benefit of hindsight, I have usually ended up thinking "Thank goodness that didn't work out the way I wanted it to!", about a year after a relationship has ended.

Today, I'm meant to have a chance to make a romantic connection with karmic overtones. Oh, my!...