Icarus @ 59 # 183

Another room with a view - this time the other side as a storm gathers overhead. I love a good thunder storm, the noise, the lightening the sheer brute force of nature with the hump at the world for being so blooming wonderful. Little does it know we love this too. But that was last night and this morning has bloomed into warm Spanish sunlight and later I will give my paper, quoting Brecht and Euripides on conjoining critical and creative research (needs must if we are to change academic opinion there). But hey ho, its not another day at the coalface and I am still taking my Dad's idea to 'work on the surface'. And I found myself listening to this as I read myself to sleep last night, just the music to calm a storm. I always celebrated my mother's birthday a day later than everyone else, it was a joke between us. She  would have been eighty-one today (yesterday really) and she loved music:

Icarus @ 59 # 182

A room with a view in Madrid, not a huge amount to shout about view wise but the room is just fine. Its hard to get a handle on the city at the moment because at ground level there isn't a huge amount to see. Conference starts for real tomorrow, today was just a toe dipping in. But it will be good to take in some of the other things when I am here. I have a trip planned to the Museo Reina Sofia - which is near the hotel and I can walk up. Its just a case of fitting it in at the right time. I give my paper on Thursday morning and fly out on Friday so time is tight all round - but that's alright mama.

Icarus @ 59 # 181

This morning I am thinking about my son Dan. He is far away in Australia and in an hour or so I will fly to Madrid. This picture was taken in our favourite restaurant in Barcelona. Goodness, how cosmopolitan are we, we have a favourite restaurant in another country. But Madrid is a new idea, and I will be in a hotel just round the corner from the Santiago Bernabéu and he is a Camp Nou man. But aye well, he is in Australia, heading for hippiedom and Byron Bay so he can't complain. But one day we could watch Real versus Barca at the Bernabéu so I can just say I am checking it out. I love to travel, in fact we both love to travel and hopefully we will do more of it through our lives, especially together. Now I wonder if he will visit any art galleries in Australia or if he just indulges me... hmm. Drat, I forgot to tell him to look out for Archie Roach - note to self, email him - oh, took the children away, heartbreaking - how could anyone bear it:

Icarus @ 59 # 180

Yesterday was quiet a Sunday, Diane was running the Seaford Half Marathon, Dan is in Australia at Wes and Donna's beach house, Abbi travelled from Venice to Arezzo. The house was quiet and even the seagulls seemed quieter than normal. I had some work to do as an External Examiner which I did in the kitchen, with the back doors flung open to reveal the garden. There was a calm about the world, its as if the previous week's commemoration of the D-Day landing had finally come home to roost and we could be thankful for just being able to relax into our life. We have much to be grateful for for, but that calm is just how it should be and now we have a responsibility to spread it around the world. I wrote yesterday that Baudrillard thinks this new, western modernity is wrapped up in consumption, that we choose consumerism over the liberation and emancipation our fathers fought for and that, 'how men, betaking themselves for free men, have fallen into servitude.' Well he has a point but it only serves to remind us of our obligations to others. As I step into the last six months of my sixtieth year I will continue to remind myself of this - and I love how the music in this clip sways and ripples with life:

Icarus @ 50 # 179

This is a 1961 Fender Stratocaster and its mine. I bought it over forty years ago and it was in a right state. It had a sheepskin glued to the back, the black paint was chipped, scuffed and blistered in places, the fretboard needed skimming and only one pick up worked - but like an old painting, I just knew there was something hidden below the collected detritus.  So I bought it for £90, cleaned it all up, got the pick-ups rewound and generally nursed it back to fitness, and I have never wanted to replace it with anything else. That's not to say it don't have misfitted bits, the tremolo arm is wrong and the pick-up changer button is black - these were meant to be temporary but became things I just never got round to replacing. But back then it was a lifetime purchase, I had been saving for months and even traded my old Epiphone for it as part of the deal. Its the whole deal, it very rarely goes out of tune and still plays like a dream. Jean Baudrillard, in one of his pessimistic rants, said, 'the West's great undertaking is the commercialisation of the whole world, the hitching of the fate of everything to the fate of the commodity...' But you know, I just can't agree with this. I could buy a shiny new Fender today if I really wanted to but I cling to this restored lump of wood with an affection that goes beyond aesthetic pleasure. Its a work of art, beyond beautiful and ugly, made at a time when we cared about wood and form. Just thought I would say - he's my proud and joy

Icarus @ 59 # 178

Ooh, blog 178, half way, half way down the stair, half way from here to there, it isn't really anywhere and doesn't mean much at all, except I am not at the bottom and I am not at the top, just nearer to there than here, so I think I will just stop... just for a moment to listen to this A. A. Milne poem being sung: