Happy New Year!

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.. going to bed!

Cantilena

Here's something still for a reflection on the past year:

The Cantilena from the Poulenc flute sonata played by the composer and Jean-Pierre Rampal (for whom it was written). David Isitt, who died earlier this year, introduced it to me, he heard Poulenc perform. I'm not sure if he heard this piece under Poulenc's accompaniment but he played it well.

Preparing for the New Year

I found this prayer in a recipe book(!) - a book with hand copied out, by me, recipes with this among them:

A Winter Solstice Prayer
God of all creation,
of bare forest and low northern skies,
of paths unknown and never to be taken,
of bramble, sparrow and damp, dark earth.
We thank you for loss, for the breaking of the dimming year,
We thank you for light, even in its seeming midwinter failing,
We thank you for life, for its hope and resistance,
Like a seed dying and living.

Rachel Mann

It was on a sheet with a draft rota for December/January 2008 so I guess I must have used it last winter. I hope it fuels you too for 2010.
(A further note - I've just found the prayer in Nicola Slee and Rosie Mills' Doing December Differently - I guess that's where i copied it from!)

Gaudete

Tim Hart of Steeleye Span died on Christmas eve. This video is from the Anniversary tour.

Teaser Tuesday - 29 Dec

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

"Your son's a fine guitar player," Father Jack said.
"That's the racket I hear upstairs?" Teddy asked, but Jamie wasn't in the mood to be teased.

Maile Meloy's novel 'Liars and Saints' about faith, failure, sanctity and secrets within an American Catholic family. It's our book group (BATS) current book and, at the moment, I'm rather enjoying it!

Is there reality at the other end of an email?

Back in February I wrote a piece which quoted a couple of blogs on the subjects of Afghanistan and Iran as a follow up to some reading and a viewing of Persepolis. I have an interest in both contemporary 'classical' music and mathematics so I was interested to see a blog about an Iranian composer/mathematician Keyvan Yahya. A couple of days ago that entry acquired an anonymous comment which suggested that Keyvan Yahya was not all he seemed, I went to the Wikipedia article which I had quoted and discovered that the mention of Keyvan Yahya had been removed around the same time as the comment was posted probably by someone from Iran. I initially gave the comment a rather dusty answer - my first guess was that the commenter (and possibly wikipedia editor, if they were one and the same) were likely to have Iranian government connections and they were trying, effectively, to un-person someone who might be deemed to be too Western influenced. However, doing some web searching just came up with rather similar biographical details, I also found that the Satrap Philharmonic Orchestra which Keyvan Yahya claimed to have founded had had its wikipedia page removed (the same day) with a note suggesting that it (the orchestra) might not exist.
I emailed the owner of On an Overgrown Path who blogs as 'Pliable' and he was similarly mystified. He's contacted the composer Jeff Harrington whose work was meant to have been performed who has had no feedback on the performance. Mike Roberts, a Canadian composer was also promised a performance by Keyvan Yahya, I'm still trying to find out whether anything has happened there.

I realise contacts betwwen Iran and the outside world due to the political situation have been a little problematic in the last few months but the situation is far from clear.

There's been a blog entry More questions than Answers at 'On an Overgrown Path' supplying more musical background than I can supply - I'd recommend a read there on foreign contacts who may not deliver what they promise! The Keyvan Yahya material comes about half way down that item. So if anyone knows of documented performances or mathematical papers by Keyvan Yahya, I'd be very interested!


(amarok's random play came up with the Parsi/English Sorabji's The Perfumed Garden - whilst I was composing this post, now there's an interesting coincidence!)

Prague

I'd missed this 18 gigapixel panorama of Prague from the TV tower
there were competitions running where if you spot the desired small feature (or rather 30 of them!) you won a prize. Wonderfully zoomable with incredible detail even down to cracks in the pedestrian crossings indentations in kerbs and contact telephone numbers on the sides of cars.

A late arrival

I tweeted about this at the end of November and meant to add a weblog entry but got distracted with the way things were in real life then.
Here are the muppets doing Bohemian Rhapsody - watch to the end!

Mutterings - 27 Dec

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Classified :: Directory
2. Praised :: Lauded
3. Censored :: banned
4. 2010 :: good question
5. Lamp :: Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP
6. Alternate :: Entries ( the name of that blog)
7. Script :: bash (oh dear this is getting dreadfully geeky)
8. Handsome :: is as handsome does
9. Eager :: beaver
10. Meeting :: point

Musica Callada

I was given the score of Mompou's Musica Callada for Christmas. Spare transparent music about which Stephen Hough blogged recently. Spiritual, minimalism before minimalism. Here's book 1 no 1

Especially for those walking with or remembering dogs on a Boxing day walk tomorrow.
I must try recording some of these myself, but maybe this week is a little early!

Christmas Eve - clouded and dingy

"Yet it would make those carolling angels weep
To think how Incarnate Love
Means such trivial joys to us children of unbelief?"
No. It's a miracle great enough
If through centuries, clouded and dingy, this Day can keep
Expectation alive.

from Cecil Day-Lewis Christmas Eve

Winter

Terragen 2.1 is out. Extra features and speedups. Here's an appropriate seasonal image I rendered this morning with the new version (and using Linux and Wine) - as opposed to what one might want to do with Mistletoe and the other substance!

This image took about an hour, I did a similar one with fewer layers yesterday and than took 3 hours!? Maybe it was the restart or the changes I'd done up to then?

A reading meta-challenge!

I've not done a reading challenge for a bit - I tried one in the summer but it rather ran into the sand. So with a New Year approaching and finding something that appealed on Joy's blog so Lesley at A Life in Books comes a challenge to read a number of books about reading during the year 2010, so books about books. It is fairly flexible and there are 3 levels:

• Bookworm (read three books)
• Litlover (read six books)
• Bibliomaniac (read twelve books)

Not sure what I'll read yet (or how many) but I will tag relevant posts with the 'challenge' and 'Bibliophilic' tags. Schlink's the Reader is all I can think of at the moment (and I've read it but would enjoy a re-read!) but the subject area appeals...
If it appeals to you, head over there and sign up!
(only a few more posts to beat last years record - for me - number of blog entries...excuse me while I witter!)
(Feb 2010 - fixed the link to Lesley's original post! - am about to get around to this!)

Teaser Tuesday - 22 Dec

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

During the night, sympathisers hung a banner from one of the buildings at the University of Tehran. It showed Jamileh as a strong goddess with a rifle slung over her shoulder.

My reading is still a little patchy what with my daily commute having stopped so I'm still in Kader Abdolah's My Father's Notebook (keep on trying to type Netbook here!) - I quoted from it last week nearly complete, I thought it was an interesting read - not least for the Iranian history.

He's seen you

He's seen you
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Squirrel on the bird table with an admiring cat below. We had to intervene to lower the danger of shredded squirrel on the lawn. No doubt he'll be back for more food today!

Mutterings - 20 Dec

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Interest :: Keen
2. Chase :: Hunting (and then there's Bishop)
3. Itch :: Scratch
4. Soothe :: Drink
5. Lamp :: Candle
6. Tutor :: Form
7. Nicole :: Papa!
8. Sloth :: 3 toed
9. Burn :: log
10. Bug :: bed (microphone)

White Pine

Trees have been witness
to my life, have been emblem.
I've wept my griefs
into the high darkness
of their arms, cheek against
a cone's rough open scales.
The seeds that took
in my year, 1950,
have grown a foot a year.
My eye walks out
along a branch shining
in rain, and looks back
from a long way away.
In the twilight,
night's shadow means sleep,
and no one wants to.
We all want to stay out
playing kick-the-can,
wild for another half hour
with some new kids.

Again from Chase Twichell's The Snow Watcher as we wait for this evening's snow - which has just arrived. Not quite mine - I was born in 1951.

Friday kitty

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Winter

And again, on a wintry morning, from Parker Palmer's book on vocation - Let your Life Speak:

Winter has an even greater gift to give. It comes when the sky is clear, the sun is brilliant, the trees are bare, and the first snow is yet to come. It is the gift of utter clarity. In winter, one can walk into woods that had been opaque with summer growth only a few months earlier and see the trees clearly, singly and together, and see the ground they had been rooted in. ... Until we walk boldly into the fears we most want to avoid, those fears will dominate our lives. But when we walk directly into them - protected from frostbite by the warm garb of friendship or inner discipline or spiritual guidance - we can learn what they have to teach us. Then we discover once again that the cycle of the seasons is trustworthy and life-giving, even in the most dismaying season of all.

May we all see clearly in this most demanding of all seasons.

Round robin

For friends who don't follow my feed on identi.ca or twitter or other social media.. our Christmas newsletter is on the home webserver as a pdf - I guess most of it has appeared on this weblog at some time or another but it's nice to draw together the main events of the year.

The fruit of his own labour?

From an article by Anna Masera in today's Guardian:

In an interview with La Stampa, the president of the Democratic party – known for her deep personal animosity for Berlusconi, especially since he said on public television that she was "more good-looking than intelligent" – couldn't withhold a thought that crosses the minds of many Italians who dislike Berlusconi: violence should be condemned, but the premier is not a victim, he is responsible for the creation of a violent climate.

Berlusconi has fostered a culture of aggression, confrontation and fear and alas for him, he has fallen victim to it.

Teaser Tuesday - 15 Dec

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

He knew that his father needed to write about the things he didn't understand or wasn't able to explain in sign language. Inacessible, incomprehensible, intangible things that suddenly struck him and caused him to stare helplessly, or to stand transfixed, or to sit down and ponder.

I don't think that's too much of a teaser, it is from Kader Abdolah's My Father's Notebook the story of growing up in Iran and the politics of that country.

Schubert

I'm currently working on the Moment Musical No 2 - David Fray played it yesterday on the Radio 3 lunchtime concert (available via iplayer for a few more days) and here's a video of him playing it at Verbier.

There were things I liked very much about this but some of the mannerisms and gazing into the distance I could do without - I suppose it is difficult not to pick up these things when creating an platform identity - probably go for the iplayer version unless, like me, the fingers are worth close study.

Christmas has come early!

Part one of a new Simon's cat!

Lunch!

Lunch!
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Lunchtimes at home can be exciting. This squirrel appeared to want to be around the trellis and the tree as it went away (with a cat - Sid - in hot pursuit) and then returned. In the shot you see it walked along the trellis towards Hecate, the cat with her back towards us. When it wasn't taunting the cat it was arguing with a blackbird also in the tree. The cats were just enjoying the prospect of either type of lunch though both the 'victims' appear to have now escaped.

Church St

Church St
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Sparked by this item on James Rosenthal and Nick Sagovsky being denied admittance to Yarl's Wood:
Without Right of Abode
Her Majesty's Prison, Haslar, Gosport, UK

Refugees from tyranny
plead for asylum.
Prison closes around them
while they wait.
Language is a useless tool:
no one understands.

Outside the wire
encircling winds worsen.
Gales rock the hillside,
seas advance. Around the world
top statemen double-talk,
confuse and threaten.

Christmas gains admission
without visa and tinsel.
The dispossessed share common ground.
Ancient chants and modern prayers
harmonise in a Babel-mix of tongues.

Hope lights the chapel for an hour,
passed hand-to-hand.

Edna Eglinton (from Doing December Differently)

Overhead

For some reason, today's Dilbert rings bells.

Mutterings - 13 Dec

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Up :: Buggered
2. Scram! :: Shoo!
3. Smell :: Awful
4. Belong :: Everything (Richard Rohr book)
5. Doug :: Chaplin (blogger)
6. Collar :: Dog
7. Squirrel :: Red (away)
8. Chinese :: lantern
9. Tracker :: dog
10. Apartment :: flat

Listening

More from Parker Palmer's book on vocation - Let your Life Speak:

Vocation does not come from a voice "out there" calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice "in here", calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God

.
And while in thoughtful mood, here is Stephen Hough on Advent and Mompou:

We are dealing here with the most intense contemplation – even a metaphysical depiction of reality: the accidents have disappeared and we are left only with the substance. It is as if the person watching the fountain or hearing the bell is being evoked, his or her soul at rest in harmony with the vibration, or purified in the cleansing water.

writing about the composer's 'The Fountain and the Bell’ contrasting it with Liszt or Ravel. I need to be a lot more reflective when playing Mompou..

Another leaving do

.. and Russ
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

I was at the Rain Bar with TNEI friends this evening before wherever I go next. See here for the rest of the set. (Much Later)During the course of the evening it emerged that our colleagues had been told that Gary and I left 'because our contracts forced us to' - a complete pack of lies!

El Orfanato

A trip last night to the Silk Screen in Macclesfield to see Juan Antonio Bayona's El Orfanato (The Orphanage). A Spanish gothic horror which draws one into a world where children are simultaneously innocent and unknown. I found myself thinking of James' Turn of the Screw. There was a lot of involuntary audience participation last night! Wonderfully acted by Belén Rueda in the main role. Here's the trailer - in Spanish, I'm afraid I couldn't find a version with sub-titles and I really didn't want the dubbed version!

Vocation

Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

from Frederick Buechner's Wishful Thinking. I'm in the midst of reading Parker Palmer's book on vocation - Let your Life Speak (if anyone reading this has my copy - I'd like it back - or at least to know where it is - I've just borrowed someone else's). He writes this:

Vocation does not come from wilfullness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about - or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions.

Teaser Tuesday - 8 Dec

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

After the frivolity of last week's 'boating for beginners' extract, here is something very dark:

However our first impressions of the Germans were most reassuring. The officers were billeted in private houses, even in the homes of Jews.

Elie Wiesel's Night, the horrifying story of Wiesel's being robbed of his teenage years, his family and his faith in Auschwitz.
This is my third read of this deeply uncomfortable book, I wasn't aware when I started reading it yesterday that tomorrow, (according to Wikipedia which cites this Hungarian article - no I don't speak the language!) Wiesel returns to Hungary for the first time since 1944.

Ink Stone

Another Advent Sunday, another poem and again from Chase Twichell's The Snow Watcher -

It's a green river stone,
without adornment
except for a single
twig of pine
in an empty pool.

I like to scramble up the hill
in the summer dusk,
sit on a long stone left by the ice,
and watch the sky go dark
in a puddle of yesterday's rain.

Samantha - driving lessons

I've not put one of these on the weblog for a few years - I apologise for those who left then are are now thinking it is safe to come back!

Doudi brilliantly takes off teenage girls, I have a dvd of the series somewhere I must dig out. This is good preparation for the relentless chirpiness of Happy-Go-Lucky on C4 this evening.

Mutterings - 6 Dec

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Hotter :: Hans (opera singer)
2. Negotiator :: ACAS (rang them this week)
3. Crimson :: King (pop group long ago)
4. Loses :: big time
5. Tide :: Time
6. Alan :: Marshall (my father)
7. Fool :: April
8. Pink :: Panther
9. Palm :: Tree
10. Lipstick :: Lesbian

A dark and non-globally warmed night

The Slate has announced the results of a Write like Sarah Palin competition there's some wonderful (? ed) examples there. Here's part of Anne Sensenbrenner's winning entry:

One night after a long day of campaigning, when the haters had made my spirits reach a nadir, I looked into Todd's eyes, which were as blue as the stripes on Old Glory, and too representing truth and loyalty, and he looked back at me with a twinkle of determination which I hadn't seen since I told him my goal of having another baby in my fifties and naming it Tron, then did I know for sure

(etc), but go and read them all. Thanks to Chris Ambidge for the pointer.

Canciónes y Danzas No 6

I'm currently learning the Mompou Canciónes y Danzas No 6 so here are three rather different versions!
Firstly, and slowest, Eulalia Palomero Saber

and then there's Paolo Spagnolo - embedding isn't allowed I'm afraid, and finally here's Konstantin Bogino:
unfortunately not including the Danza.

There's been a coup!

Or maybe not.. but searching though my spam bucket, I've just found this gem:

Based on our investigation department, we wish to warn you against some Miscreants, Hoodlums and Touts who go about scamming innocent people by claiming to be who they are not and thereby tarnishing the image of this wonderful country. I am Lt General Peter Smith (Rtd), National Security Adviser to the new Prime Minister of Great Britain.

inevitably it continues as the normal Nigerian scam.

Insufficiency

'Können Sie was lernen' - from the Brecht/Weill Threpenny Opera.
Try to ignore the crunch around 20 seconds in.

Local(?) job opportunity sought

Following on from this post, I'm afraid I have to report that I received the termination letter today. I just need to decide what to do with it... So I'm now definitely in the job market again, and here's another cv link.
But I probably don't want this local opportunity:

A BRITISH couple struggling to afford their dream wedding have appeared in porn films in order to finance the venture.
L*** B****, 34, and T**** B*****, 36, from Macclesfield, Cheshire, have already earned more than $2000 from three X-rated movies.

Names *'ed out as I'm sure they've already had quite enough publicity. Hat tip to the Mad Priest, I advise a trip there for the cartoon!

A Space for Hope

Rowan Williams and particularly Patricia Sawo on World AIDS day.

Dark morning

December morning
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Taken yesterday, on my last early morning walk down to the station for some time - at least I guess so. I may well though head down there when it is just getting light and the mornings, like this one, are cold and clear.

Teaser Tuesday - 1 Dec

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

As far as Mrs Munde could see, her daughter had no ambition and no faith. It had never occurred to her that Gloria had chosen to be nothing in order to avoid being her mother's something. Only by remaining in a vacuum-sealed diving bell could Gloria hope to avoid the storm at sea that was Mrs Munde.

Jeanette Winterson having far too much fun with the story of Noah and Genesis in 'boating for beginners' (a re-read here but I've not read it for quite a few years).
The woffle on the back says: 'If you find Monty Python The Life of Brain amusing, then this is your comic book of revelations' But go and read the link I've provided to what JW says about it on her website.
Yes I know it is three sentences, do you think I could miss out sentence three?