Waking Ear

Yesterday while walking into college, people on the streets were looking suspiciously at me. Perhaps it’s because I was wearing bright red on a cold, grim rainy day. But I have a feeling it was more probably the fact that I was humming Tom’s Diner (the lyrics aren’t the thing, though. It’s that melody line that loops through basically the whole song and NEVER LEAVES YOUR HEAD, EVEN HOURS LATER, DAMMIT…), which was in my waking ear that morning and unfortunately had to be inflicted on everyone else.

Testing Testing

Here is the problem: I have settled the problem of web-hosting for at least the next year, and have significantly more space in my postgraduate computer account in which to frolic. Unfortunately, as I type this I have the distinct feeling of standing on a stage in an empty auditorium because I haven’t managed to post anything on my standby blog at Blogspot directing traffic here. Also, I don’t seem to be able to find myself here in Google searches, which I’ll try to remedy by discreetly including some keywords (Michelle Michelle Michelle ineffable ineffable ineffable blog blog blog) in this post.

But hopefully, the problem will get solved at some point, and I suppose those of you who do manage to find me are the ones who really, really want to (yup, all three of you). So this is where I will continue to brew my word stews of boring day descriptions, struggling music writing, occasional links, and inscrutable Michelleness. Keep coming here if it floats your boat and thanks for bearing with me this far.

[Oh yes: it would be nice if you could let me know you’ve found me again. I confess I do sometimes like keeping track of all you. :) ]

Whoops

Oh, goodness. In the midst of trying to make passionate love to my textbooks, I almost forgot: university IT-powers-that-be insist on me getting a new computer account, which will affect the URL of this site. If this site suddenly disappears, please keep in touch with me at theineffable.blogspot.com, where I’ll be posting until I sort out the new webspace.

I suppose this would all be easier if I went and did the domain name thingy like all the grown-up bloggers do.

Flat Chronicles: Kind Of Settled In

The domestic pleasures I’ve been enjoying lately don’t really make for sensational blogging, but I’ll write about them anyway.

  • Central heating finally works (Yay Alec for figuring it out!). Temperature in flat thankfully no longer the same as temperature outside.
  • Basil plant well-recovered from its downward spiral into dessication. (Out of desperation we absolutely drenched the soil with water.)
  • Carpenter’s finally fixed curtain rods (no more fear of death by falling-curtain-rod-concussion) and adjusted height of shower bracket (no more fear of hypothermia while soaping). You’d think the automatic objective of anyone putting a shower bracket into a wall would be to put it at a height at which the shower head could actually be put into it, but apparently not so with whoever did it for this flat. Unimaginable joy last night with the realization that I could actually have warm water cascading down me while I soaped, instead of doing so shiveringly while I clenched the shower head between my knees.
  • Bookcase and shoe-rack finally assembled. Shoe-rack relatively simple with only one kind of nail used, but bookcase very complex with multiple screws involved. Much loud cursing when I discovered, after building the whole bloody thing, that the unvarnished side of one of the wood shelves was facing outward rather than towards the wall, but will think up inventive ways to either cover it or exploit it artistically.
  • Very importantly, we have unlimited Internet access. Downloading has begun, along with associated time-suckage, loss of ambition, eventual ruination of lives etc.

I also forgot to mention before, that not content with perpetrating navel-gazing, geekness and chronic social dysfunction only in my own person, I introduced my flatmate Tamara to the joys of Blogger. Unveiling of our new kinky FlatmateCam soon to come. Well, not really, given that we spend most of our time eating, drinking and girltalking, which I suppose isn’t particularly arousing.

Alt-Country Limits

I’m still trying to decide whether or not to go to any of the Further Beyond Nashville gigs. The best ones are at the Barbican, which recently spectacularly failed to impress me with its sound architecture. Over there, I’m torn between Will Oldham + Sparklehorse and Lambchop Quartet + Alejandro Escovedo. On the other hand, Alejandro Escovedo’s doing a solo gig at the Borderline, which is a venue I’ve always wanted to try.

A third, and actually quite pertinent, consideration, is that perhaps there’s only so much alt-country I can even take. My latest Neil Young purchase (Comes A Time) features the lyrical gem “In the field of opportunity, it’s ploughing time again”. It is followed by a song called Motorcycle Mama.

Hurt Pride, Bruised Back

A lot got done today, though nothing in completion. Shoe rack bought and lugged (but they were out of desk lamps and laundry baskets, so I have to go back). Textbooks obtained (but I have to go back in search of one more tomorrow). The one thing I managed to do quite meticulously was injure the right side of my body while falling down some stairs. Right knuckles grazed, right elbow whacked, and an impressive bruise coming up on the right side of my back in pretty twilight colours.

I went to mass at my old hall for the first time since returning to England. It felt immensely comforting from the minute I walked in and sat down, but I’m still trying to figure out if that was because of the chapel’s nostalgia and familiarity for me, or because it happened to be the first time since returning that I’d gone into mass feeling unhappy enough to be in need of comfort. A poem got written about it, but as usual I have too little confidence in the quality of my poetry to make it public.

Joshua Bell Playing Sibelius (Barbican, 2002)

Much shrieking was done on Wednesday night when, while browsing through a Barbican programme I’d picked up on a whim, I suddenly discovered that Joshua Bell was playing the Sibelius violin concerto tonight (BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sir Andrew Davis).

The first thing I’ll mention, with my usual “I’m not an expert BUT” disclaimer, is that the acoustics of the Barbican concert hall seemed as dreadful as legend has made them out to be (as the Telegraph puts it, “the last great exemplar of how not to build a concert hall“), despite the much-vaunted revamp. I shudder to think what it must have been like before. Sound seemed brittle and strangled, struggling to reach us like a tethered dog on a cruelly short leash. This rendered the Stravinsky programme opener more damp squibs than Fireworks, and Joshua Bell’s highest notes in the Sibelius sometimes got drowned by the orchestra.

I came home and listened to my recordings of the Stravinsky and Sibelius. The Stravinsky recording has all of the caprice and pizzazz that sputtered and died in the concert hall. The Sibelius is the classic Jascha Heifetz recording, and I was quite worried before tonight that because I’ve grown to love this particular one so much, that I’d be unable to appreciate Joshua Bell’s rendition for what it was. My concerns proved unfounded simply because he was brilliant enough to make comparison unnecessary, perhaps a little less note-perfect than Heifetz, but he brought out all the delicacy and poignance that the divine, divine first movement begs for, and delivered enough fiery virtuosic touches to keep the thrill-seeker in me happy as well, so no complaints at all.

And then we come to the second half of the evening. I am far from conservative and close-minded where it comes to taste in music, but Colin Matthews’ vile Renewal really did seem to tick all the stereotypical failure boxes of modern composition. I have no problems with dissonance and repetition, but I felt as if I was descending into a neverending quicksand of disharmony without ever touching ground. Writing in weird-tone scales is all very well for stoking intellectual libido, but it leaves the average listener with little or no awareness of when resolution or evolution takes place, much less any melodic pattern of notes that’s capable of staying in the mind. And I’m not even arguing this from the viewpoint of the aggrieved pleb. Having played for five years in an orchestra which regularly included modern compositions in its repertoire, I’d venture that while I’m far from being an expert, I do have a little more understanding of modern music than the average listener – not that it helped tonight.

After sitting stupefied for the first three minutes, Avril and I unfortunately started on one of our giggling episodes. These usually involve muffled hysteria, sometimes snorts, in all the most inappropriate situations. We managed to calm down after ten minutes of acute stomach pain, and thankfully only experienced sporadic outbursts of mirth over the next forty bloody minutes of the piece before its merciful end.

Postgrad Library Privileges Totally Rock

Finally I can point to a tangible benefit I am obtaining from this Masters: as a postgraduate I can now borrow TWENTY, COUNT ‘EM!, books from the UCL library, instead of my previous limit of ten. I tottered home happily yesterday with nine books and will return for a second lot soon. Only two were actually about law.

  • The Past (Galway Kinnell)
  • Corson’s Inlet (A.R. Ammons)
  • Collected Poems (Philip Larkin)
  • Poems For The Millennium (a huuuuuuge anthology and therefore enticing even if naffly titled)
  • A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man (James Joyce, first foray – fingers crossed)
  • Life A User’s Manual (Georges Perec)
  • The Real Life Of Sebastian Knight (Vladimir Nabokov)
  • Legal Aspects Of The Information Age (Ian Lloyd)
  • Cases And Materials On Intellectual Property (W.R. Cornish)

I’m a happy bookworm. Between this and the fact that after two years of living in a hall with no Internet connections I now have unlimited access in my flat, the pertinent (rhetorical) question I am beginning to ask is: who needs a social life?