I didn't get this Hockney for Christmas but I put it out there for anyone to admire - you 
can even steal it if you like. The Christmas day itself left me unscathed, unlike the Christmas roses which are wilting in the vase perched on the table I am writing on, though the sprigs of holly around the candle look sprightly enough, their shiny leaves and red berries (grown in my own garden) are like me, still bright and shiny, for I am hangover free and with that epiphany feeling all over again - which kind of suggests an epiphany is a lasting experience - and long may it last for I will be in the gym today. Had I known I was going t live this long I would have taken better care of myself earlier (still it was a lot of fun). But now I swear I am getting younger. Mind you that may have more to do with the Basil Hallward painting I found in my attic - go on, work it out. working up to Christmas has been a kind of treat too. For I edited my inaugural address paper for publication and that too was immensely cathartic - because it lead me onto much more and thoughts about a book in the style of Italo Calvino's Six Essays for the New Millennium (which I love). Back on the 20th December I wrote about Delightful Chaos and that got me onto a theme of textual intervention, criss-crossing narratives and how books and ideas and stories all rub against each other; sometimes as lovers; sometimes as enemies; sometimes as friends; sometimes as rivals; sometimes as indifferent bystanders and sometimes with a hint of a smile; or a brief brush of the lips; lingering lightly, not knowing whether the narratives will survive to compliment or collide, crash and die. And then the paper itself twisted from a light jaunt into a defence of modernism in the face of the postmodern debate - and yet completely jargon free - or at least free of the overloaded rhetoric that supported such debates in the past, or at least it has to be hoped for it made perfect sense to me on Christmas eve when I dotted the last sentence. And then when I realised how easy it had been to write an eight thousand word chapter, perhaps I could write six of them with different themes - and then I was thinking, perhaps based around the sense, sight, sound, touch, smell - and the sixth sense of being, of self and other, of strangeness and familiarity, of passion and love and hate and devotion and rejection and broken hearts, broken bones, broken promises and then I thought, goodness that sixth would take some doing. And so, at least I approach 2010 with a quest, pass me that ring Frodo/Luke Skywalker... and then what music could accompany it? And then this clip came to me - I adore this - and if I ever played in a band again it would be like this because it is just like the band I played in when I was eighteen or nineteen:
can even steal it if you like. The Christmas day itself left me unscathed, unlike the Christmas roses which are wilting in the vase perched on the table I am writing on, though the sprigs of holly around the candle look sprightly enough, their shiny leaves and red berries (grown in my own garden) are like me, still bright and shiny, for I am hangover free and with that epiphany feeling all over again - which kind of suggests an epiphany is a lasting experience - and long may it last for I will be in the gym today. Had I known I was going t live this long I would have taken better care of myself earlier (still it was a lot of fun). But now I swear I am getting younger. Mind you that may have more to do with the Basil Hallward painting I found in my attic - go on, work it out. working up to Christmas has been a kind of treat too. For I edited my inaugural address paper for publication and that too was immensely cathartic - because it lead me onto much more and thoughts about a book in the style of Italo Calvino's Six Essays for the New Millennium (which I love). Back on the 20th December I wrote about Delightful Chaos and that got me onto a theme of textual intervention, criss-crossing narratives and how books and ideas and stories all rub against each other; sometimes as lovers; sometimes as enemies; sometimes as friends; sometimes as rivals; sometimes as indifferent bystanders and sometimes with a hint of a smile; or a brief brush of the lips; lingering lightly, not knowing whether the narratives will survive to compliment or collide, crash and die. And then the paper itself twisted from a light jaunt into a defence of modernism in the face of the postmodern debate - and yet completely jargon free - or at least free of the overloaded rhetoric that supported such debates in the past, or at least it has to be hoped for it made perfect sense to me on Christmas eve when I dotted the last sentence. And then when I realised how easy it had been to write an eight thousand word chapter, perhaps I could write six of them with different themes - and then I was thinking, perhaps based around the sense, sight, sound, touch, smell - and the sixth sense of being, of self and other, of strangeness and familiarity, of passion and love and hate and devotion and rejection and broken hearts, broken bones, broken promises and then I thought, goodness that sixth would take some doing. And so, at least I approach 2010 with a quest, pass me that ring Frodo/Luke Skywalker... and then what music could accompany it? And then this clip came to me - I adore this - and if I ever played in a band again it would be like this because it is just like the band I played in when I was eighteen or nineteen:But now I am taking this great advice from a real hero - at the beginning of this clip Joan says, "...exercise that mind..." and I swear she gets younger every year doing just that - hard to believe she is now sixty-seven tears (sic) old:
