FiftyFive ~ # 31

Being without broad band these past few days – or at least wireless which lets me work undisturbed in my study or in the kitchen – reveals to me that I like being in touch and kept in touch; and also how easily I have succumbed to the Internet umbilical that connects me to the rest of the world. From my desk chair (a rather rickety wooden affair – wouldn’t like to give the wrong impression) I can listen to great music, read the wonderful Emily Dickenson, stay in touch with the important people in my life – and the not so, of course (why do students send you emails at the weekend, there is no separation anymore). And to be truthful much of this blog has been web and internet sourced, especially the wonderful music sites, which I love. The good news is the sun has been shining all day and just to show I remember what that is like, this is a sunny picture of a Greek philosopher (dodgyknees), sitting on his favourite chair, phone near to hand, books and CDs nearby and lots of light streaming in the doors. And then to top it all I choose a sunny track by Joni Mitchell because I am feeling in a sunny mood. Last night I received confirmation that my Inaugural Address – Jesus, Judas, Jimi and John: in delightful chaos is to be published by the highly creditable Text journal – see http://www.textjournal.com.au/ it will be forthcoming this April and that has just set up my spring. Winter has gone, the sun is shining, words are going out to be read and then tonight I am going to Jamie Oliver’s Restaurant in Brighton to eat – to celebrate A. becoming the UK Masters Champion. I swear to god, if I fall off the Pier tonight I will come out with a haddock in my pocket for tomorrow’s supper, along with some samphire for the vegetarians and no doubt a full bottle of Chateau Neuf, uncorked and glinting in the sun will have been washed up on the beach, mmm..., what a good day to be me (and how smug is that) – take a Night Ride Home with Joni - its is an announcement of summer.

FiftyFive ~ # 30

Today I find myself dreaming about weather and sunny climes and warm beaches and t-shirts and my belly in the sun. Dugald Stewart, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh wrote in 1813, saying: considerations of the weather and of its common prognostics lead the fancy... to those more extraordinary phenomena which, according to the superstitious belief of the vulgar, are the forerunners of political revolutions... so in thinking about the weather am I really rebelling against the status quo, rebelling against settling for what is and seeking what could be. Hmm, interesting thought - which just goes to show - those philosophers get everywhere. Though I like this one, one from Brendan Behan, because he simplifies sun on the belly to a more basic drive, where "...the most important things to do in the world are to get something to eat, something to drink and somebody to love you." and if it was still Christmas I would post A Fairytale in New York in celebration. But when we think about it, we are pretty lucky to get these things, are we not? And I am not lying under some Haitian car park, or surfing a tsunami, or (well you get the drift) so in that sense then, thinking about the weather is indeed a puerile display of discontent - and how could I be discontented, for I had a seriously fantastic day. I wrote, I worked, I ate and I will drink something later (something more than water and tea - which I am awash with) but most of all - and a Scotsman will walk a long crooked mile before he will admit to being loved - but that happens to be the case - and its nice. And then it all comes around - I want the sun on my belly to heat the outside, just as the inside is warm - and there is the symmetry of the thought for the day. And I am not convinced this will play but it makes me smile - Ah we're drinking and we're dancing and the band is really happening and the Johnny Walker wisdom's running high...

FiftyFive ~ # 29

This might be my last Folon for the week - who can tell, fickle is as fickle does. But yesterday was a day of pondering and thinking and working and I framed this picture too which is now nicely sitting on my wall, facing me as I write - doesn't it have such a haughty look in its eye, beak stuck in the air. But I post it for its upliftings, for the way it lifts the spirits when energy flags. And I think the same about this music clip - from the fantastic Jeff Beck. The whole rhythm of this piece is just right for me - and the playing is sublime, of course and this was representative of us on Saturday night at my lovely friend Kate's fiftieth birthday party in London, all of us friends for most of our adult lives, sharing music and books and walking and talking and beer, lots of beer and now contemplating children flying to University - I will even be teaching one such child next year. And all of us were smiling and happy and dressed in the colours of this bird and laughing and holding nostalgia at bay as we lived in the absolute present. And this track played on the stereo on the long drive back home - no one does it better.

FiftyFive ~ # 28

Imagining a world so massively huge that you can't even begin to question what it means to be living, is indeed a daunting prospect. And this morning, as I wrote, I am overwhelmed by distance and size and space and language. And I was thinking about this when I tried to get these lyrics translated (see below) I adore the song, the melancholy of the melody and it feels like a lament to me - and yet I have absolutely no idea whatsoever - having failed miserably to translate it. But I accompany another version of it with a picture of Folon's guitar too - and for no other reason than I like it and still I will wrestle with the song with its wonderful guitar playing to try to understand it and hear it with knowing ears - but for now it has to be taken in ignorance - though I am aware of Martin Luther King's words, "Nothing at all in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Note to self - must try harder! Can try harder! Will try harder!

fôlon, é té nyinika

fôlon, né té nyinika

fôlon, a toun bé kè t'ni dén

fôlon, ko kow koun bé kè

fôlon, môgow ma koté

kouma diougou bé môgo mi kono

hèrè bi môgo mi kono

kongo bé môgo mi laaaaa

fôlon, kow ko koun bi la

fôlon, é koun té sé kô fô.

sissan, é bé nyinika

sissan, né bé nyinika

sissan, an bé bè nyinika

sissan, ko kow koun bé kè

sissan, môgow ma ko bala

FiftyFive ~ # 27 (again)

And then the more you seek the more you find and see and hear and remember and then you get sent things and remember things and the whole delightful chaos of connecting images and ideas becomes another movement - like in Alice's Restaurant; because it becomes clear that in seeing the world in solitude and solitary you do not see the world as a whole but can only pretend to. Continuing the Baudrillard idea of the other, I remember Jacques Derrida writing, "To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend..." and this flying man, this birdman, this Icarus figure is experiencing something other than pretence which takes great guts and courage. Camus said, "You cannot create experience, you must undergo it..." but is there time enough for all the flying we desire? And I was reminded of this clip (and another which I will post later) but this film has a great Icarus ending to it - sublime - with a great song too - worth seeing it through to the end - how my heart behaves:

FiftyFive ~ # 27

And another Icarus - or is it a blue angel? Folon called it Les Oiseaux so it is definitely feathered and is that an egg he his holding (or offering). Either way I adore it too - he has a way of capturing ideas that I really like because they are never obvious - in that French way, although he is Belgian (should be was for he died). And then such joy because I stumbled across this little film and the serendipity of it is wonderful - all those men flying and if you follow the last to fall his initial is A and it is a strange coincidence, is it not? But today I post two pieces of music both dedicated to the Folon idea of life - one is a Folon animation and the other is the wonderful Salif Keita and Folon. Sigh - such delightful chaos, making connections and connecting. Buadrillard said, "...the secret of philosophy may not be to know oneself, nor to know where one is going, but rather to go where the other is going; not to dream oneself, but rather to dream what others dream..." Such delightful chaos!

FiftyFive ~ # 26 (again)

Having posted a Jean-Michel Folon I found another that takes the Icarus in love theme seriously (the girl with the faraway eyes I mentioned in the last post) and I am more and more tuning into this idea and turning to it as inspiration. And I absolutely adore this, the seeming simplicity but the theme, all heart and no head for he is already gone, flying solo so high. And I posted it because I also mentioned last time that I was colourblind and was very kindly sent this clip and it is lovely and I had never heard it before and I like it very much. " I am color...blind/ coffee black and egg white/ pull me out from inside I am ready, I am ready, I am ready... I am fine"

FiftyFive ~ # 26 (again)

Ideas on Icarus, images and poems about Icarus have been occupying me for some time - it is the enigma of the whole story because the thrill, the feeling of flight before the fall fascinates me. Most of the stories we read fail to try and enter Icarus' story and that intrigues me - for the Ovid line, "Icarus was much taken by the pleasure of his wings..." flies just about as close to jouissance as a man can. I see this picture almost every day in life because I have it on my wall in my study - indeed I can see it now - it is by Jean-Michel Folon and I adore his work - especially the colours which seem to resonate with these colour-blind eyes of mine (can colours resonate - hmm). I posted the Auden poem before and here is another fave from William Carlos Williams - which like (and who I like) very much:

According to Brueghel

when Icarus fell

it was spring

a farmer was ploughing

his field

the whole pageantry

of the year was

awake tingling

near

the edge of the sea

concerned

with itself

sweating in the sun

that melted

the wings' wax

unsignificantly

off the coast

there was

a splash quite unnoticed

it was

Icarus drowning.

But like most views we have no idea how Icarus felt and I wanted to understand that, and also about falling and bruising and broken metaphors and bones and rhythm and rhymes that chime through stories. But in the interest of levity and just to show I can do postmodern - a country song from my younger days which I adore and from my favourite pop group too. But in listening to it I wonder if this is what Icarus was singing - "I had an arrangement to meet a girl, but I was kinda late, and I thought by the time I got there she'd be off with the nearest truck driver she could find..." was Icarus charmed? Was he running red lights, what was he thinking, was it a girl with faraway eyes? Hit it, Mick!

FiftyFive ~ # 26

I have an imperfect memory and I can be forgetful but some things never fade and the picture on the right is D and I, sitting on the floor in the living room, watching his first ever world cup in his PJs. Of course Scotland had failed to qualify again but that didn't matter what mattered is signified by the relationship we still have. And he is older now and taller than me too - see the picture on the left. But as that picture shows, this is his favourite group right now - and indeed with his long hair he fits the bill. Hard to believe he is the same wee boy - but he is.

FiftyFive ~ # 25

I like living in this town - there is always something new to see and I can walk to this view in about ten to fifteen minutes. Or run it, which I have done too and I remembered something I once wrote about running along the seafront and thinking I had captured it but like this picture its only a snapshot because it changes and the seafront today was not the same as yesterday. That said, I am still the same, I think, though ever cheered down but the depression that now constitutes the news which I now try to avoid. Of course, as Coleridge was to remind us, abstruser musings can only take us so far in life (Frost at Midnight again I'm afraid) - though I have to say, Noyes' English Romantic Poetry and Prose is the most important book on my desk, along with Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams, for my screen is sitting on them and has been these last seven years while the stand I promised myself, to raise it to eye level, has remained unpurchased - but its better this way. But in the way of dealing with the news I remind myself that all is not well by often listening to Lucinda Williams - who does heartache and the Hall of Pain better than any living person well, this week. And so to it is to her I turn as the Haiti story and the Iraq story and the Afghanistan story and other unspeakable acts continue to dominate. But here is a curious thing - I picked up the Romantic Poetry book and a letter from my dear friend Alison dated 7/11/1995 popped out - I love keeping letters in poetry books, postcards too, they make great bookmarks and I stumble over them again and again, especially when they are filed with favourite poems. Anyway Alison had been to stay and it was great having her down - and a belated happy fiftieth dear Edinburgh girl - and then today, blow me down, her husband Gordon wrote me an email - and coincidence, serendipity and all that stuff is such a sweet haunting. I almost feel ashamed at marking the moment with Lucinda - though she reminds us how much we should mean to each other... but the picture above is for Alison and her fiftieth and the reminder that she is welcome back anytime...

FiftyFive ~ # 24

Yesterday was a red letter day, no question. A. won the U18 Girls British Masters Tennis tournament and I was extremely pleased for her because she works so hard. But at the same time, D. too declared he had a very good day and he too was happy. And this got me thinking. I think the most pleasing thing for a parent is seeing your children happy, and doing things that make them happy. For life would be a troublesome place if we couldn’t pass some of our own, adult, well earned happiness onto others – for I have come to the conclusion that I am, indeed happy. How often do we get a chance to say that to ourselves and others – actually how often do we take the opportunity to do so. Give me a banjo in the kitchen with a tune in my head, words in my breath and the old black dog disappears, whimpering. And if my banjo makes others happy too, well then, all the better. There is, according to Italo Calvino, an adjective that doesn’t exist in English – icastico, which is an evocation of clear, incisive, memorable visual images. And we have to evoke the image of happiness for we can’t see it – it doesn’t lie in a smile that could be on the scale of jouissance to a grimace, or a gesture, or a confession, and yet I maintain the idea that we have to maintain happiness in the face of suffering elsewhere, we need to keep the equilibrium and the balance of nature has to be right for fear the world will tip over into the cold war of melancholy. Therefore I selfishly, and without fear of reproach, declare myself happy for all to see and to reflect on and perhaps share… and now an antidote to seriousness:

FiftyFive ~ # 23

Last night I surrendered to cheerfulness and played all four of these in succession and my only wistfulness came from not being in the room with three others so we could knock out a few tunes together as we had once done. And sometimes those were the best gigs where the spontaneous taking up instruments and following the lead of someone who had a new song to air, or work out, or he had a verse with no chorus and we would finish the whole thing in five minutes. We once wrote a song ten minutes before going on to play a gig and rehearsed it in the back room before playing it live, complete with guitar parts and three part harmonies - rustic and rusty but such fun. Last night I was improvising on the banjo and it is such a cheerful instrument - even the blues has a nice ring to it. But this scene meets me smile:

FiftyFive ~ # 22

Lest anyone should think I am forever pensive and over thoughtful in poses like this, I enclose a music clip that I have enjoyed over the years. Though I confess, I am writing this at 6 in the morning and listening to William Byrd's Mass for Four Voices: Kyrie which I adore and which echoes the silence and the peace in this quiet house at this time of the day. The clip below is an evening clip - best played loud at around 8pm just as you pour a glass of wine, which I did last night as it blared out of my laptop. The news from Haiti is bad and every now and then we have to remind ourselves that we are, indeed, happy - and there has to be that balance. Not ignoring the troubles elsewhere but acknowledging how lucky we are. Which is why I hate the "grumpy old man" idea that permeates through our culture - there is even a television show, which I would never watch (how can it be entertaining). Basho, Matsuo (1644-1694) wrote this haiku and the one permanence all over the world is the moon. A morning moon for me, at this time of day, can still be seen down under in their evening and i love that idea. And this seems to grasp the Haiti nettle too.

Clouds appear
and bring to men a chance to rest
from looking at the moon.

We are lucky we can look at the moon with a smile - and while the occasional cloud will obscure our view it is only to give us respite, a time to reflect and to listen and to give... life's been good to me.

FiftyFive ~ # 21

There can be little in life more unsettling than natural disasters. As a country we are at war, man made atrocities and the human race seems to be incapable of learning to live in peace. What an odd sense of purpose we have - and this fatal flaw that gives us views that lead to bloodshed. But surely a natural disaster reminds us how fragile we really are. Haiti has been devastated by the most horrible earthquake, which also exposed how cheaply people lived for the housing and buildings were never designed to withstand such a disaster - poverty piled on disaster piled on poverty and more disaster. The only really postmodern thing about 2010 is this repetition. Foucault had it just right when he said, "All other people that don't speak the language would then be oppressed." Poverty deprives these people of the language they not only desire but need and deserve; and they are forever destined to pace around the treadmill going forward a little, then back again, in an endless repetitious cycle. The woman pictured here is one of the lucky ones - such irony... and the beautiful Kate Rusby, below, takes it to heart with heartache:

FiftyFive ~ # 20

It snowed again last night - there I was, 5am in the morning, letting the aged (cat) out and the first flutters fluttered by and then it began again. And instead of cursing it I let it fall past my smile and blinking eyes for the wonder is still there. And briefly I was a wee boy in Gorebridge, standing on my bed and peeping through the curtains, watching the wonder of it overwhelming the world for it snows now as it did when I was a boy in Scotland. And little did I know then how good my life would be now and how good it has been, for it has been great and still is; and I find 2010 has enriched me with a symmetry of thoughts and ideas and actions and a renewed look on life, when still the snowdrops fell and still the snowfall enchanted and weaved its secret ministry of frost and contentment, wonder and awe. And I remembered this song and its heart aches with longing and need and I absolutely adore it because it reminds me what it was like to be young and what it is to be alive, with a longing to constantly remain curious about the world and living and loving. For when we stop and think we know it all the wee boy that was will kick us out of out complacency - and that is how it should be. This morning I looked down the garden, down to where the fairy grotto lies entangled in ivy and snow, and I swear I could see my younger self staring back - and we were smiling to each other.

FiftyFive ~ # 19 (again)

And then sometimes I think I am the only person in the world who likes this song - I play it on the piano and my piano playing is poor - tho destined to get better - but can she sing and, och, well, I just love this song that says everything and nothing - poor Minnie for she died so young - I hope she loved as she sang becasue I love her voice - and surely this is a Heloise and Abelard song:

FiftyFive ~ # 19

Every now and then you come across somebody new and I stumbled upon Ke-Hsin Jenny Chi because I was looking at images of Heloise and Abelard and her work is quite astonishing. At first glance, you can see Rubens and Veronese - the strong lines, the slight coldness of the flesh tones, the voluptuousness of the figures themselves. And yet the faces and expressions are contemporary: these are images of our own times, when to describe someone as Rubenesque is likely to mean a black eye - and the word volumptuous - well. But while the image does depict the celebration of their love, look at their expressions, not happy but more forlorn, as if anticipating their doomed fate. And yet, I still find myself drawn to the mandolin in the foreground, which has always been one of my favourite instruments, and I wonder what songs they played to each other on this - or indeed who played and who listened and I like that idea too, that this great romance has soul, music and singing. All too often it is reduced to the sex but it has to be more than that surely - well that is what I think. But hey - you can take yourself too seriously - like Heathcliffe and Cathy - who got a mention yesterday and deserve to be saved today - this be sublime - leotards or Lyotard anyone - falling from a wuthering height, Icarus? Not a mandolin but a ukulele...

FiftyFive ~ # 18

It is snowing again and just writing that down is getting obsessive and so I was trying to think about other parts of the world or other parts of life and then I was sent this picture - which I adore - look at those two trees nudging each other under an unforgiving sky. Yesterday I had occasion to think about snow and connections and remembered the character Lucy Snowe in Villette and a scene in the art gallery with M. Paul Emanuel. But there was a whole host of images surfacing from the novel, which I confess I haven't read in 15 years and had all but forgotten - though the ghostly nun is ever present. but I especially remember the immensely touching scene when Lucy faces her love for Dr John Bretton but conquers her affection for him by symbolically burying all his treasured letters to her, saying, and how could this not melt hearts: “Good-night, Dr John; you are good, you are beautiful; but you are not mine. Good-night, and God bless you!” And we don't write letters anymore, do we and I wish I had letters like those - tho I have some memories. And could anyone bear to part with them - stick them in an old biscuit tin (gluten free - for that is me) at least she could dig them up again, I suppose - like Heathcliffe did Cathy - hmm, best not go there. And a spin off from this is Wordsworth's Lucy Poems - enigmatic and lovely: "Strange fits of passion have i known: And I will dare to tell, But in the lover's ear alone...What fond and wayward thoughts will slide... " sigh - poetry should be made compulsory on Sunday mornings - fit it in before the Sunday papers and that trip to the gym you promised on the 1st of Jan - soul-mining. Tis a pity the start of this has been clipped off but its another nostalgia song - last time I sang this live it was in The Whale Hotel in Eyemouth which is about as close as Scotland can get to England and it snowed that night too - we were snowed in, in a bar with beer and guitars, heaven and it was 1975 - and I know this because it was my 21st birthday and we had a gig and it truly was heavenly - and the guys i sang it with were Davie (Black Jack Davie) Jack and John (Sticky - Lightening Slim) Stirling - lads, I will be in touch:

FiftyFive ~ # 17

It snowed again last night and it is easy to dismiss it all as too much - and yet to do so is to deny the beauty of it. And it has other benefits too - like how great it is to be snug, nestled deep inside a duvet. A heatwave in Australia right now gives off the opposite vibe - dying for breathe and water and a little breeze. Perhaps if they were all to blow some of their air our way and we theirs we could strike up a balance. In fact if we all blew kisses it would be all the better. It could be a new peace movement - "BKWP - blow kisses for world peace" if everyone blew a kiss at the same time it would be like Alice's Restaurant (remember that song - Arlo Guthrie) - though it is likely they would be hijacked on the way. That's life! And it has ever been thus - in some ways Being Icarus is about that too (yes still on that theme) for Icarus expects too and the world turns on an axis of conflict - its that basic human trait, a selfish gene where we push the right of our own cause to survive, succeed, dominate and so on. And still it snows and in other places the sun shines relentlessly and Icarus is up there about to fall under the weight of all the blown kisses he has been collecting over the centuries - what a lucky boy he is to have caught so many - meanwhile Daddy Daedalus sneaks off to the pub or to hide under his own duvet, unaware or uncaring, not knowing the BKWP is a movement that is already taking flight. And talking about Alice - everyone my age used to know this off by heart - I can still play the guitar part but if you have twenty-minutes let the the poor sound quality take you back to my teenage years:

FiftyFive ~ # 16 (again)

I have never wanted to be sixteen again - terrible age, terrible time and yet thinking about youth has much to offer - if I could go back to being sixteen knowing what I know now life would be so much easier - wimin for a start would be less surprising - though is that true for I never cease to be surprised. And would knowing more at sixteen or indeed fifty five help us through life - i don't think so, now that I think about it. Because being Icarus - nice title for a book/song/poem - Being Icarus - hmm - being Icarus-like, surely the seeking, the finding out, the looking for is the quest of life - where are those feathers and wax? Here is something I came across - isn't it great that singer-songwriters continue to invent... love it - btw the wonderful Frank McGuinness has a new play at the Tricycle - Greta Garbo Came to Donegal http://www.tricycle.co.uk/current-programme-pages/theatre/theatre-programme-main/greta-garbo-came-to-donegal/ and everyone should go if they can:

FiftyFive ~ # 16

My friend H. showed me her Living Lowry picture this week - it is Alexandra Palace but Lowry it is indeed and I Iove it, just as i love to see snippets of other people's lives and I am stealing the picture - well borrowing really. But now time is pressing and i must run to other places so I will just post this for now - oh and this song cos i like it and it has the best first line ever - full of hope, which is the best way to travel - methinks:

FiftyFive ~ # 15 @ 4pm

With my glasses, hat and smile askew the world looks slightly different. Though the snow is familiar the greybeard (3 days and growing) blends in nicely with the whiteness, though its not keeping my chin any warmer. Its been an odd day thus far for I have been writing but even as I stop for lunch everything seems incomplete - I am Aristophanes' decentred man, in my bits and scattered around the garden. But isn't work ever thus - unless you are building a wall or paitning a door (or learning to spell) we are forever tweaking and re-writing and correcting and thinking and then vacuuming the floor - for prevarication is sometimes the only cure. It has now been snowing solid since I woke at 5.30am and perhaps long before that too. And though it is wet snow it is piling up and will freeze come 4pm - which is now and the temperature has definately dropped. So I have put the fire on and hopefully these will be the last of the winter pictures. And then I will need some mood music and a laptop to work on and the cold can go the way of ghosts. Mary Black might help - just once in a very blue moon:

FiftyFive ~ # 15 @ 6.30am

From the sublime to the downright silly. Yesterday I posted a picture in the sun and the day before a sunny picture in the hope that we had turned the corner and had begun looking towards spring. It was not to be - it is snowing again and getting to be a little tiresome. Though I have to admit the garden is very beautiful again. Dressed in its winter glory, still bathed in darkness yet juxtaposing the whiteness of the snow in perfect contrast to bring out the blue that is the dawning sky. And so for the last hour (it is 6.30 am) I have been sitting in my kitchen watching it fall while writing and thinking and musing while the house sleeps on. The school sent a txt (isn't new technology great) to say its closed - yippee, snowballs, snowmen, sledging... ah the folly of youth. And then I remember what this blog is about - for it is not youth but a reflection on having reached FiftyFive and I remember Sandy Denny singing this song, which I absolutely adore and it does seem to ring the FiftyFive bell, who knows where the time goes - though sung by the wonderful Kate Rusby:

And then I couldn't decide whether to post Sandy Denny's version - a little rough in the recording but her voice is so wonderful and tragic for she lived such a short life:

FiftyFive ~ # 14

January is the month of decisions, is it not. Like for example, getting rid of the Christmas version of the blog to bring it back to the crisp whiteness. And to clearing the decks of last year's papers and entrails. But it never seems to happen like that and stuff lingers, hangs around, stubbornly refusing to be shifted. So with plans for the New Year well in place, new books to write and papers to edit and articles to write I should be surfing the keyboard. But I am not, the dreaded lurgy lingers still and there is still tidying to be done. And then there is the Icarus dilemma. At this time of year we crave flight, the soaring to new heights, with new promise and renewed hopes while still being shackled to King Minos' wrath for allowing Ariadne to assist Theseus. Though our esteemed Poet Laureate may have it differently in this (not her best poem) Mrs Icarus

I’m not the first or the last
to stand on a hillock,
watching the man she married
prove to the world
he’s a total, utter, absolute Grade A pillock.

Though, in the Brueghel spirit, why is Carol Anne Duffy's Mrs Icarus standing watching while the men are working - does she expects him to fall, no matter how hard he tries to impress he will always be her pillock. And despite her efforts to love him he has his grand schemes. But its a terribly weighted poem, surely. She the bedrock, the solid equal in the face of Icarus' grand schemes - and I guess me reading standing up doesn't impress either. Which I guess is the point of the poem, not great for either sex methinks, for it suggests the poor plight of men all over the world, we are born to it (grand schemes/grand failure) so I guess we should just admit that we spend our lives like birds, preening our mating feathers, showing off in front of other would be suitors, looking to impress, not knowing that all the time she was already trying to treat us as equals in the nest; and when the time comes they too would fly with us. Actually, though, that is me trying to rescue her poem which could only have been written by a woman who doesn't seem to have much time for men at all. For surely not all flights of male fancy result in failure and sometimes we are only a short step away from the top of the hillock as opposed to being a pillock - and it need not just be men who take the step. Time for the Sisters of Mercy, methinks:

FiftyFive ~ # 13

Sometimes the email inbox sends me a treat, its not a chocolate bar or a glass of Claret but sometimes it has the same effect and today I was sent some Australian culture. This picture, "House With Native Tree" by Howard Arkley for a start, simple and effective and look at the colours which I adore. This i would hang in my study at home, for it would fit there perfectly and I could watch it from my winter perch, as I try to keep warm and remember that the sun is just around the corner. But this music arrived at the same time too and I have never come across Archie Roach, though I wish I had because I love this song - and he is being accompanied by the wonderful David Bridie on piano and Helen Mountfort on cello. Both from the band My Friend The Chocolate Cake - which is surely a great name for a very good band indeed. And then it brings something home - how small the world has become when we can all tap into each other's culture without having to do as we did in the past - conquer and steal and colonise - which are all bad things in their own way. Surely this picture and song are reasons why we should give the Elgin Marbles back. I send both out into the ether with a "chorus of smiles" which is a new phrase I have learned and learned to love too - and my ears and eyes are open for everything new the world can send me in 2010 - and I will definately be looking for more Archie Roach.

FiftyFive ~ # 12

The BBC are broadcasting Hans Christian Anderson's The Snow Queen here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pgyd8

and its such a great story from a master storyteller and with Dirk Bogarde and Diana Rigg in the production how could it go wrong - I love it. I also like this picture that accompanies the details on the BBC website. There is something splendid about her coldness and that jagged piece of ice she holds so menacingly. And yet the tale of innocence and of experience is a familiar reminder of the world's responsibility to the very young - and not so young, didn't the grandmother repeat, "Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18:3)... I will say more about this but my man flu has rendered me fug laden and dim of wit and words - alas. But happy new year - 2010 has a good feel to it already...