Life's Screenshots - A Dylan Tribute (of sorts)

One of the things Dylan's lyrics seem to do again and again is to simply report a scene or an image that seems completely random. Often, that scene will be quite curious, like a boy standing beside a dead pony (or whatever the exact lyric is - i forget).

Well, here are my Dylan images. First:

This is the pedal keyboard from an organ. You have two keyboard 'manuals for the hands (sometimes 3 or 4), and one for the feet. This is the one for the feet. Not sure quite what happened here. I was walking to the Palace Green by Durham Cathedral to go study some music and happened to pass this abandoned piece of craftsmanship. Can't imagine why this had been left to rot on the pavement. Where is the rest of the organ? What I can say with some authority is this was (and remains) the only time I had ever seen an organ pedal manual on a pavement. The image was quite striking. Half of me wanted to take it home and preserve it - to show care and respect for an item created with love and precision, which has produced sounds of numerous variety. The other half, which prevailed, couldn't think how I'd carry it, or where I'd keep it, and what I'd do with it.

Second:

It is possible I am going a little mad. For some reason, I couldn't resist sticking this address label (which was very sticky) over my mouth. I can't say why, I don't know. But I thought I'd take a picture of the act. By the way, the label came from a parcel containing a baton I'd ordered recently. But can you really see a character like this being allowed the sacred responsibility of conducting an orchestra or a choir? me neither.

So those are my Dylan moments. I have yet to set them in song.

Summer's excitements, nostalgias and moustaches

Summer. The interlude of cookery - when we mortals get cooked. It is a time too hot for really motoring through the tasks of life. Sweat is your new friend. Your shower is your enemy, and you tussle more often than usual.

This summer, I find myself somewhere between excitement and nostalgia. It may well be this is no great news. Perhaps it should simply be described as my default position.

Excitement: I always carry hope in my naive mind, when considering what may be my next major steps in my humble life. Will I succeed in the final year of my Music degree? Will my Organ/percussion composition (which I will write in semester 2) be a source of originality, beauty or poignancy? Will I start, continue then finish my dissertation (a study of the language of music) to a point which leaves me the writer sated by the fruits of my intrigue, and you the reader, excited by the simple findings of an ignoramus? Will I meet a woman with whom I think I could consider getting better acquainted? Will I move? We all have these questions. Well, some women don't, and those married men out there shouldn't.

Nostalgia: well, it's a daily phenomenon in my experience. I see a typical English scene: evening sun casting a warm glow over a pretty pub front, some genus of greenery clinging happily to every surface apart from doors, windows and Pub sign. A few jolly (and some not so) folk drink some intoxicating brew with quiet relish and take turns trying to make each giggle or swoon. It's all just part of what I call the stuff of happiness, and almost always carries with it the edge of what I cannot continue to enjoy forever. We all gotta go sometime. We probably mostly hope we get a good innings first, and that we make the most of said opportunity. Most of us won't. I'm not saying we'll fail - just that we'll go through ups and downs of 'success' and 'failure', whatever they mean. We hope the ups are longer and wider than the downs. Depressed yet?

On a more practical note, I have been writing and playing music. That has been great fun. Losing my television to a minor explosion in March was for the best. I haven't replaced it yet, and am not going to for a while at least. The result is I do the things I usually only dream of doing. I'm not claiming to be Germanic in my level of industry but I am doing much more than before, and it's satisfying. NB don't attempt to blow up your own tv. Maybe just turn it off sometimes if you watch way too much (which I used to).

that's my news. Here's a photo of the chaps I've known almost the longest (family and Moxon's not included). It was taken at Paul and Julie's birthday party, where we performed 5 rock and roll numbers:

Mothmatics

It all started very early one Sunday morning. The year was 1978. Many things happened that year.

In January the Dallas Cowboys won Superbowl XII scoring 27 points to Denver Bronco’s 10. February: The People’s Republic of China decided it was time to lift bans on the works of Aristotle, Shakespeare and Charles Dickens (those dangerous fire-starting ne’er-do-wells.) Zimbabwe, which was then called Rhodesia, attacked Zambia in March. On the 16^th of April the Grateful Dead played the Huntingdon Civic Centre. The ‘set list’ included the songs ‘Jack Straw’, ‘Sampson and Delilah’, ‘Iko Iko’ and ‘Sugar Magnolia’ (none of which I know.) It is now regarded as a “totally under-rated show” which “should be considered a classic”.

Charlie Chaplin’s coffin was found about 15km from the cemetery near Lake Geneva, from which it was stolen in May. June was a busy month. Not only was ‘Garlfield’ then created (my favourite cartoon cat), the Argentina football team also found time to beat their Dutch opponents 3-1 after extra time to win the F.I.F.A. World Cup. Louise Brown of Oldham, England, became the world’s first ‘test tube baby’ in July. In August Pope John Paul I succeeded the recently deceased Pope Paul VI. Only 33 days after taking the reins, John Paul died in September. In the U.S.A President Jimmy Carter pleased all lazy/immobile drinkers by signing a bill authorizing the home brewing of beer. Still in September, Pope John Paul II (lots of Johns and Pauls in the Catholic church, and not so many Derricks) took up the ‘holy reins’ in the Vatican.

I’m sad to report that November watched in horror as Jim Jones led 918 people, whom he’d swindled through his People’s Temple Cult, to take their own lives in an horrific mass suicide in Guyana. Officially, 270 of these were children. 1978 drew to an end in December with an ‘almost-war’ – Argentina’s planned invasion of Chile. After 6 years, during which some papal mediation took place (a busy time for the Catholic church), ‘The Treaty of Peace and Friendship’ was signed between the two countries.

The crazy events of 1978 would mean nothing to me were it not for a now demolished Hospital in Fulham.  In St. Stephen’s Hospital, at 2am on the morning of Sunday 16^th April of that year, I first set eyes on the big, bad world. That morning I cried what would prove to be the first of many nerve-jangling screams. I was now cut off from total dependence, via the umbilical cord, upon my mother. To optimists, I was a bird set free to fly, to add my unique melody to the chorus of creation. To pessimists, I was one day closer to death. To my Mum and Dad, I was Thomas Vincent: an unknown quantity (weighing precisely some unkown quantity of pounds).

The Bell by Iris Murdoch

I like a good read. I think some of the best books challenge, or provoke - tease you into considering viewpoints from a different slant. I have just finished 'The Bell' by Iris Murdoch. I found it on the bookshelves of a thrift store and liked the look of it. It's quite magnificent. It isn't long, perhaps 250 pages. What's great is the maze of personalities which unfold in due (not hurried) course. Michael Meade is one of the more interesting (not that any are vastly less so), with his background of denied admission to the priesthood - a trait I share - his intellectual, highly-strung and surprisingly passionate personality and his 'vices', which form a central thread of this delicate tale.

The bell which lends its name to the book's title plays an almost absent role in the novel apart from this: it is an old, medieval bell about which a myth has arisen of curses and witches and carvings and disappearence! In a way, the troubled life of the bell is a metaphor for the novel. Murdoch is less interested in creating a gripping yarn with twists and turns than she is in digging, like a voracious prospector, into the mind and hearts of her created characters. And what you may find as you travel in your minds eye alongside these people, is that your own heart and mind are being gently pricked by the searching light of Murdoch's thorough glance.

I really enjoyed this read. It ends really adequately well. Someone dear to me recently suggested a good ending separates the best books from their less worthy counterparts. To some extent I agree, and I think Murdoch does ok. Perhaps not exceptionally well, but then her tale really isn't about tying off loose ends and completing an unfinished saga. It's about the people, their unique curiosities, their flaws and imperfections, as well as their wonderful individuality. So unless the book carried on for the lifespan of a human, she had to end it somehow.

What's on your bedside table? Reading anything good?

my latest reading...

I love a good read. I'll happily not pick up a book for some time unless I know it is a good one that I'll enjoy. But when I get a good one, I tend to become slightly unhinged. A slightly viscious, ravenous spirit overtakes me until I have devoured every last narrative plotpoint (even if I have to skim over a few indulgant sentences here and there.)

My two most recent victims have been 'Human Traces' by Sebastian Faulks (pronounce that surname - go on, I dare you!) and 'The Pillars of the Earth' by Ken Follet. Mr Faulks has managed to carve out a niche characterized somewhat by a certain severity, if not sensationalism. That is not the prevailing style of his writing, which is otherwise perhaps a little unremarkable, but it is the thing which - I would suggest - defines him. He is willing to flirt with the almost pornographic, but not in order to be vulgar. It seems he likes to ground his characters in the 'earthiness' of reality (although you may here protest and say your 'reality' involves no pornography. If that is you, you may at least accept that a lot of pornography is viewed by many people.)

Faulks manages another subject in 'Human Traces' with some impressive delicacy. The inevitable approach of death. I'm sorry if this isn't cheery enough. Blame Faulks. But he manages the approach to death almost as well as Tolstoy handles the act of death itself (in a few of his books.)

'The Pillars of the Earth' is a somewhat longer book. A thousand pages may seem an unnecessary expanse of compressed tree on which to pen what is essentially the tale of a few families in 12th century England. Trust me, the pages run out too fast. That is, if you enjoy a good yarn. I do (depending on the yarn-master/mistress.) I really like the way Follet submerges his characters in the spoken style I presume was used all those years ago, and in the culture and geography, the work habits and clothing of 12th century english folk. I'm also left curious if there was in fact a cathedral town of Kingsbridge. Oh, and it seems the capital city was Winchester at that time. So, really engaging narrative, and I may or may not have possibly learned something that might be rooted in a certain amount of truth. Beat that!!

Piglet, Spidy and Cat.

This wild moggy is becoming a regular on my blog. He (i believe he is a he) becomes more weather-worn every time I see him. I try to resist stroking him because to do so is essentially to harvest fleas. I have nothing against fleas as long as they are not on me.

But I do love this cat. Quite a self-sufficiant air about him which is only proved hollow by his many returns home for food provided by humans.













The pic below is from a pub in Colchester. Can any of you guess which one? Brian was very lucky to come away with his dignity in tact after a close-fought pool match. He was unimpressed by this mammoth spider. I tried to take a pic on my camera but failed fairly badly. 'Macro mode' doesn't like me. Or I don't like it. Either way, we don't see eye to eye.

So perhaps you can see how productively I have spent my summer vacation: a new-found grasp of the essentials of biology, some musical mutterings here and there, and selling bricks and mortar on the weekends.

One last picture...

This is Piglet. He is probably well-known by all who read this blog. He is a friend of Pooh Bear. He has a timidity which masks his great loyalty and his desire to display some of Pooh's courage (which he rarely does). He has been my travelling companion for many years now. I have to say he doesn't like bathing. But I could stand it no longer. I forcibly dunked him, head to toe, beneath hot, soapy water and gave him a thorough bathing. I think there where moments, between the frantic squeeling, where i caught glimpse of a grin of delight trying to escape his mouth. The picture is not of his sad cremation. I had to dry the poor creature. The only way I could think was to warm him lightly in my new (not new) oven. Doesn't he look peaceful! He's good as gold now. Back to his chirpy self. I'm sure he lets out a little squeel every time I pass by my new (not new) oven (my landlord tells me it's new. If i were feeling like raining on his parade, I would politely point out it is obviously not new.)

I fell off my bike

There are a number of stages to falling off a bike. First, the moment of no return:

STAGE 1 - 'No Return'
I think this stage comes a very close second in terms of the most horrible bit about falling off your bike. Balance is a wonderful friend but he (or she) is ruthless if you neglect him (or her.) Balance lends a feeling of power and invincibility, but it is a lie. There is a critical point in losing balance, beyond which it will not be regained. Then, you must prepare yourself for the worst. There will be blood. There will be pain. Shame will hover in the shadows.
The airwaves will barely obscure a barrage of swear words and verbal violence waiting to take voice.

STAGE 2 - 'Touchdown'
This stage happens remarkably quickly and seems somehow to happen outside the realms of normal consciousness. It is, you may be surprisd to read, the least worst stage. It's nasty, but you only really grimace when you look back at it. This stage is the telling factor in what the result will be. Do you protect your head? Were you wearing a helmet? Do you go hands first? Perhaps you twist, or get stuck in the frame of the bike, or seperate from the frame of the bike altogether and hurtle towards the compacted (hardened) tarmac. This is the 'other wordly' stage. It will happen in a flash and you will then be ready for...

STAGE 3 - 'The Dawn of Pain'
By far and away the worst stage. Here begins pain. First, It dawns on you: you just crashed. Oh S***. Then, you realise your leg shouldn't be where it is - caught halfway up the shin in the bicycle frame (I'm being specific for a reason). The momentary gladness you feel that your head is unhurt evaporates like steam on the surface of the sun as the first wave of pain prods you on the hands and says, "welcome to my world"! Then, and I always hate this bit, adrenalin's effect starts to wear off and your stomach joins in with the sick, heady concoction of shock, agony, anger, distress, etc. Now, you carefully (and thinking all the while you have CERTAINLY broken bones) remove your leg from the unyielding metal frame of your stricken bike. Someone always seems to come over at this point. They are always welcome (unless they came to laugh, which has happened to me in the past) and are semi-angelic in their compassion, but you can't - as victim of this crash - be nice. You have pain and distress on your mind. Best you can do is not swear at them (something I once failed to do).

The crash is over. It happened about twenty minutes ago in Colchester Institute car park. I was multi-tasking. I got cocky. I fell. After, I wandered into the library loo and attended to my minor wounds. I expect to survive this trauma. I have no doubt I will fall off again sooner than I'd like. I can only recommend you don't try, with your right hand, to hang your now removed bike helmet by the straps on the left handlebar. It's much harder than you might think.