Incongruities

Travelling activities, and other present participles.

1) Listening to Mozart's Requiem (find it here) very loudly in a dingy, eerily deserted, bomb-threatened railway station miles from where I wanted to be on Friday evening. Weird experience. It was entirely coincidental, but the soundtrack of the armed policemen doing their 'thing' was the Lacrimosa - if you know it, you'll know why I wanted the gun-wielding men to move in slow motion. It would have worked quite well, as a film edit. Thanks ABP & CEH for coming to rescue me from the station, at no little inconvenience to themselves!

2) Reading Twain's Adam and Eve on the train. It would have been the right length for the journey, but the three hours stuck in aforementioned station messed up the timing. It's published in a few different forms, but I was reading this one. I do like this wee piece, particularly the first couple of sections - as quiet, irreverent but loving observation, it's something fun and real. Do take a look, it is touching and very short. Funny what can be done with three chapters of Genesis, and the comparison of the way other people treat the same subject isn't a waste of time - Twain versus Milton, anyone?

3) Reading Simon Armitage's translation/rendering of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight on the return journey. This is a brilliant rendition of an already brilliant poem. Just like Heaney and his Beowulf, Armitage strikes a wonderful balance between the feel of the original text and his own distinctive poetic voice. His use of language to allow images is as gleeful as the source, and reading this is an easy pleasure. This text is a viable alternative Christmas story, if you get fed up of A Christmas Carol, The Night Before Christmas and Handel's Messiah.

4) Listening to Karl Jenkins' Adiemus: Songs of Sanctuary whilst unpacking, washing up and generally being domestic. Jenkins is often regarded as something of a 'chocolate box' composer, and I have some sympathy with that (having sung and played some of his work, repeatedly); but this is a CD worth listening to. It's a fusion (no, don't run away from that word) of 'classical' western music forms (structures), and 'ethnic' (primarily African) harmony and vocal technique. It's very listenable to, which I suspect is why lots of classical music snobs object to it. It's peaceful (a good start, given the title!), but not soporific. Something very different is his The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace - best heard live, in a BIG enclosed building like a cathedral, this is moving and pertinent and awful and hopeful. It has chocolate box moments, but I think it's one of the most important pieces of music written in our time. If there's a big version of it going on in a cathedral (or similar) near you, don't miss the opportunity.

5) Leaving a sunflower in a vase after it should really be there. There was a sunflower on my desk last week, making me smile, and I left it there over the weekend. It has died (predictably), but a curious thing has happened to its stem: all the fibrous exterior has loosened so it's like a big brush, and there's a gooey gelatinous core that's slowly dissolving away. No idea what it is, or why it's happened (other than water over-saturation, which is obvious enough), but it's not something I've seen before!