[30 Jun 2004|07:19pm] It occurred to me that it would be a good idea to leave a thing telling anyone who might be interested that I am going like a good'un over at http://www.purefinder.com I still regularly check my friends' produce.

'sufficiently sunk in' [15 Feb 2004|06:10pm] I've experimented with a few different ways to start this piece. I tried to start by suggesting that I'd had quite a week. I tried to start by suggesting that one can't prepare for that which is unexpected. I tried to start by saying that I was quite proud of mrs padraig and myself. I suppose that I have, by creating the previous paragraph, done all of these and I can now start with the real beginning of the story of my week. It starts on Thursday. The 'it' in question is my piece of writing - not the week. Sometimes I tell people that I believe that our lives are an assemblage of experience and learning. I often actually mean it. This week mrs padraig and I learned what it is like to sit in a conspicuously neutrally decorated room, watch an earnest non-smiling man enter and pass on the information that mrs padraig has breast cancer. It wasn't a completely unexpected announcement, the consultant didn't leap out from behind a bush as we walked down the street and thrust a diagnosis at us like a bailiff with a summons. We'd gone there to find out the results of examinations of biopsy samples taken from a recently discovered lump in mrs padraig's right breast and we had thus been aware that what he was telling us was one of the options. We hadn't prepared ourselves 'for the worst'. We had just been neutrally aware that this was one of the (two) possibilities. We didn't get swallowed into a maelstrom of self-pity or uncertainty. We sat and listened as we were told of the projected treatment strategy - an operation to excise the cancer, a three week period for recuperation (during which a diagnostic meeting will be held to discuss that which has been removed), then, hopefully, five weeks of radiotherapy - five days each week. We were then gently ushered into another room - this time with dried flowers and tissues, and left for a while when the nurse who will support us went to find 'information'. After a while, we joked that the room should have a 'sufficiently sunk in' bell to allow us to summon our nurse back. We laughed again when we found that we were allowed to use a different exit to avoid disheartening those, further down the diagnostic processing line, in the waiting room. We joked, when we got back to the car park five-minutes before the end of the two hours that we had paid for, that at least we'd got out before we got clamped. Then we treated ourselves to a meal out and went to pick the children up. We intend to cope with each individual hurdle. It would be overemphasising the choices available to us to say that we have 'decided' to cope; we don't have any other option.

Usenet is glorious [06 Jun 2003|05:53pm] There are times when Usenet is glorious. These are not the times when the peculiar troll people come to visit, or when a newcomer to a newsgroup, and to Usenet, fails to recognise the universal dynamics of online people who have talked together before and throws a few clique-busting grenades. Usenet is at its best when a number of ingredients come together: people who have talked before, an interesting subject and a smattering of smouldering historical personal antipathies between participants. This is the sort of thing that can result. pádraig

Venturi Tears [02 Jun 2003|12:13pm] I was, in the past, introduced to fluid mechanics. We did not become friends. I took little away from my exposure to the examination of how to describe the movement of fluids beyond a few vague concepts, a lingering antipathy for a lecturer who had, I believe, once had some vortices named after him, and an affection for the word 'tribology'. Amongst the vague concepts I retained from those reluctant and doodling afternoons spent in a lecture theatre in Leeds, were the ability to recognise turbulent flow as I urinated and the memory of a few types of behaviour which had had nice names attached to them. Thus, when there was a time when my trivial misery was of such a magnitude that it was difficult to contain, as I walked in the rain I described the tears that inevitably mingled with raindrops on my face as Venturi Tears - tears sucked from me by the flow of rain. I cried less often when walking in fair weather. My ability to enjoy interacting with the planet and its weather and its places, and my enjoyment of the inner dialogue these interactions produced, kept me living. pádraig

emotional rollercoasting [16 May 2003|10:47pm] I want to write about thoughts that I had last night, but, because of experiencing the... experience that produced the thoughts, I am probably a little too weary and intellectually impaired to manage to perform this task profitably. I'll have a bash anyway. I went to a football (soccer) match, which is something I do frequently. I have a season ticket at Nottingham Forest, the team which I support, and watch the 23 matches they play at their home ground each year/season. Depending on the resources of time and money which are available to me, I sometimes/often travel to another team's stadium and watch Nottingham Forest play there. Nottingham Forest, or Forest, as we succinct aficionados refer to them, have had a successful season. They performed well enough in enough of their 46 matches to allow them to take part in a play-off series involving the teams finishing in third, fourth, fifth and sixth place in their league division. The winner of the play-off series would be promoted, along with the teams finishing first and second, to the top echelon of English football - the Premier League. There was a time, less than 25 years ago, when Nottingham Forest were the best team in the world - or at least they won, and subsequently retained, the most demanding club competition in the world, the European Champions Cup. Since that time they have declined to a much more mundane level - possibly appropriate for a small provincial English city. The 'play-offs' allow teams, who are not good enough to distance themselves from their co-competitors, a chance to get promoted to a higher, or the highest, portion of the league. Progress up the league is... almost the entire point of a football team. The pyramidal structure of English football means that a team formed by a group of friends in a pub one evening can progress, gradually, up through the leagues to eventually play against the very best teams and players - Nottingham Forest were established by a group of friends in a pub one evening in 1865. Promotion to the top division is the ultimate realistic aspiration for many teams. It is hugely important. Hugely, hugely important. This year Forest finished the season in sixth place and in a run of relatively substandard performances. In the play-offs they would face Sheffield United, who finished the season strongly and in third place, in a two-leg match - the winner of which would ultimately play against the winner of the other semi-final involving fourth and fifth placed teams with promotion the prize. The first leg of this play-off semi-final was played on Saturday and finished level at one goal each. The result of last night's game would thus decide Forest's immediate future. It was probably the most important single game Forest have played for ten years. Football crowds tend, collectively, towards ebullience, optimism and belief. Indeed, these qualities largely comprise their essential character. Last night traveling to the game we showed, in place of these doughty traits, fear, tension and dread. We talked to each other about our particular and individual experiences of the tension - our hyperventilation in our cars, our inability to focus, our inability to sleep. It occurred to me that my actual experience of the game, and whether it was actually enjoyable for me to watch it, could not be defined until the result of the game was known, that is, until after the experience was concluded. I felt I was likely to watch the game in a 'biological' state - awash with adrenaline and with a racing pulse. This is part of what I enjoy about watching football, or more specifically, watching football involving a team to whom I have an emotional attachment. I think it is akin to a rollercoaster. I attach my emotions to a thing, over which I personally have no control, and experience condensed emotional diversity - hope, fear, happiness, anger, and sometimes elation and often rage. I suppose that the actual word to describe this thing is 'stimulation'. Last night I experienced all the emotions listed above, but to such a hugely exaggerated extent that it wasn't much fun. We lost after a prolonged and agonisingly close game. Last night the Sheffield United supporters experienced all the emotions above to the same hugely exaggerated extent, they won and their night was thus enjoyable. I know that I've meandered a little here, but I think it is an interesting idea that we can experience the same events but our emotional attachment to one outcome can retrospectively change the way we define or describe our experience of the events. Sports psychologists try to encourage athletes to analyse their performances by considering the 'process' rather than the 'outcome'. I imagine that it might not be possible for those who attach themselves to a team as supporters to achieve that detachment from the outcome. It is a shame - I might have been able to say that I enjoyed myself otherwise. pádraig

to lift children from their beds [13 May 2003|01:53pm] My children are still very young - my son is almost six and my daughter was recently four. Though each are close enough to perfection for mrs pádraig and myself to constantly marvel at our good fortune, there have been times when their sleeping has been a problem. It was enough of a problem for us to become a little obsessive and unbalanced. I knew every creaking floorboard in our house. I experimented with, and eventually _knew_, the best combinations of amplitude and frequency for the swaying cradling that would produce sleep for my son. From the nuances of my daughter's cries I could divine excessive temperature, painful wind, full bowels, full nappies, imminent sleep or imminent barfing. When we won each individual battle against inappropriate wakefulness, and indeed ultimately the war against inappropriate wakefulness, I would, and still do, gaze upon my sleeping children with abundant and ultimate love and know that there was a perfection about a loved child sleeping. In one of those dark nights of weary parental bliss, I looked at one of my sleeping offspring, I think it was my son, and remembered that my parents, who had had a tough time with my youthful aspirations to stretch my days, would have entered the bedroom I shared with my brother and my sister's bedroom and gazed with equivalent love upon us - asleep. I also remembered that my parents, in addition to knowing the creaking floorboards, and the swaying, and all the rest of it, had to know where our shoes were and where our coats were and our clothes. Unfortunately, not merely to promote efficiency in the morning. On many occasions my parents came into our rooms and looked at us as we slept and were compelled to lift their loved sleeping children from their beds. They carried, dragged or steered us, dozing, to our shoes and our coats and pulled us out into the darkened and quiet street outside our house, along which we and our neighbours and friends would scuttle, hoping to place enough distance between ourselves and a bomb to ensure, or at least enhance, our safety. If the bomb existed and exploded, my strong father would carry us back home to prevent us standing on the glass icing the street. We would return to our beds and our sleep. It is unarguably wrong for parents to have to lift children from their beds. pádraig

collected as children [12 May 2003|10:45am] The things that we collected as children are likely to have been a product of the place and time where our childhood was spent. My childhood was spent in a small village in Northern Ireland, close to the border and in the Troubles. Boys of a different generation may have wandered in the fields around their homes and collected delicate eggs from birds' nests. I wandered in the fields and gardens behind our village and collected fragments of twisted metal. Our village was subject to a succession of bombs, mainly 'proxy car bombs' - to precisely describe these using the nomenclature which we formulated in those days. A 'proxy car bomb' required that those who sought to bomb should make their way to an isolated house and compel the man of the house to drive the bomb to a target of their choosing. Ordinarily, the co-operation of the driver was ensured by threats and guns - and also the appropriate and general fear engendered by living in a place where men with guns and masks and bombs appear at your door in the dark. My father, his brothers, his friends and our neighbours joked that when these men with guns, masks and bombs came to the door they would readily accept their authority. When these men did come to the doors of an uncle and our neighbours they did do what they were told. Some of these men did not fully recover from the fear of being forced to leave their family with armed men and drive their cars, and the quarter ton of explosives, down dark and bumpy country lanes. Eventually, the village became adept at dealing with bombs. A bomb would arrive and a warning would be telephoned to a responsible, and sober, local person who would be able to phone the police. We, the people of the village, would shift along each others houses until we were far enough away from the bomb to feel safe, and we would wait together until the lights dimmed and a fraction of a second later the huge noise and the blast roared past. In the immediate and inevitable silence that followed, the car that carried the bomb would return to the village - as thousands of pieces of terrible tortured confetti. As we played our games of soldiers and Provos in the fields enclosing the village we would often come across these fragments. The smaller pieces, the size of a credit card, could travel up to a quarter of a mile, the larger pieces often had punctures and pock marks where the smaller faster pieces had impacted them in the horrific tumult of the explosion. Some of the pieces could be identified as belonging to a particular car by their colour, or because of manufacturer's marks. I was proud of being able to delve into the cardboard box, where my collection resided, and identify the car, and the bomb, that had produced each fragment. Relatives, visiting from their homes in Canada or England, would be horrified. In retrospect, I can see that their reaction was wholly appropriate. The memories that we collect as children are a product of the place and time where our childhood is spent. pádraig

this particular thirty years [11 May 2003|10:44pm] I was born in Northern Ireland, a few days before Easter in 1966. My name, Pádraig, or at least my, moderate and respectable, parents' decision to call their new son, Pádraig, fifty years after Pádraig Pearse led the Easter Rising of 1916, speaks eloquently of the new self-assertiveness and consciousness of the Northern Ireland catholic community at that time. Two months after my birth, loyalist gunmen in Belfast shot, dead, John Patrick Scullion and Peter Ward - the first victims of this particular thirty years of savagery and madness. Tensions and stakes grew as I was weaned, and as I walked for the first time, and as I spoke for the first time. By the time a mundane shopping expedition to Omagh became one of my first actual memories, the place I grew up in, and the people I grew up amongst, were descending into the tumultuous and malevolent maelstrom that would rage furiously until the lives of over thre and a half thousand people had been taken away. That early memory of a day shopping in Omagh involved my father excusing himself, to one of his friends, from taking part in a passing Civil Rights march because he had a child in his arms - me. In the years that followed I can remember the first bomb in our village. I can remember waking to find that 40 IRA men had attacked a local army base from the street of our village and from our gardens and fields. I can remember more bombs - more frequently - ripping our village to pieces. I can remember the television news occasionally showing bodies lying on the roads and fields around our village. I can remember... I can actually remember a lot of things from those chaotic years and I think that I should probably try to write about these things. pádraig

an infinite number of spam monkeys [07 May 2003|10:57pm] Today I got spam that said "arc responsibility ambiguity recruiter vacuum %RANDOM_WORD jack abuser insignia ditto". I don't read all my spam, and in truth I don't actually get that much of it. I _am_ glad I read "arc responsibility ambiguity recruiter vacuum %RANDOM_WORD jack abuser insignia ditto". As soon as I read it I thought of William Burroughs, which is not, when you think about it, surprising. pádraig

the Tories disgust me again [06 May 2003|11:47am] Today, Tuesday 6th May 2003, the Guardian carries on its front page a story about the appointment of Barry Legg as the new chief executive of the Conservative Party and reminding us of his involvement in the disgusting abuses of power of the Conservative controlled Westminster council in the 1980s. The council was most famously found to be guilty of selectively selling of social housing to engineer a demographic shift in marginal wards in which they hoped to increase the number of Conservative voters and displace low income familes, and homeless families, from the borough to other areas. Today's Guardian says: Mr Legg also bears direct responsibility for another Westminster council scandal putting more than 200 tenants in two high rise blocks, Hermes and Chantry Point, which were known to be full of asbestos, for seven years. I was thirteen when the Conservatives came to power in 1979. As I grew up I watched their crass Northern Ireland policies inflame and prolong the conflict I lived in the midst of. Under their authority the [Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<acronym="royal>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.] Today, Tuesday 6th May 2003, the Guardian carries on its front page a story about the appointment of Barry Legg as the new chief executive of the Conservative Party and reminding us of his involvement in the disgusting abuses of power of the Conservative controlled Westminster council in the 1980s. The council was most famously found to be guilty of selectively selling of social housing to engineer a demographic shift in marginal wards in which they hoped to increase the number of Conservative voters and displace low income familes, and homeless families, from the borough to other areas. <a href="http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/story/0,9061,950126,00.html">Today's Guardian</a> says: <blockquote title="http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/story/0,9061,950126,00.html">Mr Legg also bears direct responsibility for another Westminster council scandal putting more than 200 tenants in two high rise blocks, Hermes and Chantry Point, which were known to be full of asbestos, for seven years.</blockquote> I was thirteen when the Conservatives came to power in 1979. As I grew up I watched their crass Northern Ireland policies inflame and prolong the conflict I lived in the midst of. Under their authority the <acronym="Royal Ulster Constabulary">RUC</acronym>, and other security forces, executed terrorists and terrorist suspects on the streets of Northern Ireland and Gibraltar. They tolerated the collusion of the RUC and security forces with loyalist paramilitaries, thus equipping themselves with an array of extra-judicial death squads to prey on the Catholic community, of which I was a part. They tolerated the collapse of industrial communities throughout Britain and provided little effective support for those who tried to find a new way of life amongst the economic desolation. They pursued a war of questionable necessity. They felt the 'promotion of homosexuality' to be such a problem that they introduced hugely controversial legislation hampering the ability of local bodies to provide information about HIV and AIDS - at a time when it was hugely important to educate people about the risks and the myths. They tried to introduce Poll Tax - the magnitude of the arrogance and crass stupidity necessary to imagine that this was a good thing to do matched by the utter vindictiveness of those who dreamt the folly up. I could easily go on... The Westminster asbestos scandal is, for me, the worst thing they did. I think that it is reasonable to say that those of us who were sentient during the mid to late seventies and early eighties knew of the special dangers presented by exposure to asbestos. We watched the special reports from World in Action and Panorama showing those who had worked with asbestos, or lived with asbestos, facing the certainty of a painful and protracted end to their lives. Though I can remember an incident in the last few years when scores of plastic bags containing asbestos were deposited around the streets of Birmingham - in the hope that the normal refuse collection would solve some cretin's problem, I think it is utterly unbelievable that those in decision making positions on Westminster council hadn't come through the seventies and early eighties with the same horror and fear of the malignant effects of <a href="http://www.btinternet.com/~ibas/index.htm" title="International Ban Asbestos Secretariat">asbestos</a> as I did. These people, the Guardian suggests that Barry Legg was amongst their number, sat down at meetings and decided that it was reasonable to house the homeless and the destitute and those who struggle with life in two blocks of flats they knew to <a href="http://www.lkaz.demon.co.uk/ban24.htm">contain asbestos</a> - and further to contain asbestos in a dangerous and disturbed condition. A report into the affair written by John Barratt, an independent consultant and a former chief executive of Cambridgeshire County Council, said: <cite="Report of a documentary review into the use by Westminster City Council of Hermes and Chantry Points, Elgin Estate, Westminster for housing purposes, given the presence of asbestos materials, 1980-1991">"Despite the availability of the clearest advice and instructions to the contrary, those acting on behalf of a public body repeatedly took risks, for a variety of reasons, with the health of people who ought to have been entitled to assume that such risks were not being taken."</cite> In June 2000 the World Health Organisation's Fifth Global Conference for Health Promotion considered a case study of the Elgin Estate, where the two tower blocks were located, and social health. The <a href="http://www.who.int/hpr/conference/products/Casestudies/wech.pdf" title="PDF file, Jonathan Rosenberg's case study.">case study</a>, written by Jonathan Rosenberg, included the paragraph: <blockquote cite="Jonathan Rosenberg's case study">A 1985 study stated that Hermes and Chantry had the greatest potential for asbestos fibre release amongst residential blocks in the United Kingdom. The amosite, or sprayed asbestos, presented the most serious danger: it had been applied to the steel columns and beams and was extremely friable. Disturbed by air currents and vibrations, asbestos fibres became airborne and entered the flats via gaps and the fan assisted heating system. Once asbestos fibres are airborne there is a high risk that they will be inhaled by residents and become lodged in the lining of their lungs. It was estimated that solving all the problems in the tower blocks would cost £25 million.</blockquote> I have always thought that the decision of Westminster council to put families into these unsafe tower blocks indicates just how much contempt the Conservative Party of the 1980s held for a large proportion of those who were subject to its nasty and often vindictive policies. I watched William Hague, the former Conservative leader, on television last week and was struck by the undeniable fact that he was a pretty likeable and engaging chap. Remembering, and thrown into prominence by his apparent decency, his truly vile attempts, as leader, to achieve power by appealing to the basest prejudices of the British electorate reminded me that the Conservative Party are inherently indecent and essentially nasty. The apparent willingness of the Conservative Party to tolerate the morally grubby Barry Legg as its chief executive simply disgusts me. pádraig

pleading guilty [29 Apr 2003|09:53pm] I've been feeling a bit guilty. I should probably be feeling a little guilty about my confession of combat with a cat. I should probably be feeling a little guilty that in my tale of my combat with a cat I failed to opportunely use the words 'wet pussy'. I should probably feel guilty about not having written anything since the cat story. I should feel guilty about being proud enough of my efforts to think that leaving it there was a good way for any new people, who might stumble across my site, to be introduced to me. I should perhaps feel guilty that I have thought about writing similar pieces and that I have made a note to remind myself to do so - one of these future pieces will be called 'pigeon bang' and one will be called 'tank bird'. I am actually feeling guilty about reading some fiction. The fact that it is crime fiction is probably incidental, I imagine that I'd feel just as guilty were I reading Laurence Sterne instead of Lawrence Block. I don't read a lot of fiction. I have read a lot of fiction, but it is a small proportion of what I have read in my adult life. It may be that as a selfish, introspective, self-absorbed manchild I shouldn't really expect to fully connect with fiction - I shouldn't really expect to connect with explicit written descriptions of the experiences and thoughts of others. I should, probably, tell you that I don't think that this represents the truth - I _am_ interested in other people and their lives and I do have proper empathic relationships and interactions with the people who I love and the people who I know and the people who I meet. My obsessively autodidactic approach to life is a more convincing explanation. It is also certainly a more palatable explanation. I think that will do for now, we can return to literature another day. (The excessive use of repetition and rhythm in this piece came about because I was listening to Steve Reich's Different Trains as I was writing it and I thought it was an interesting thing to play with. I was possibly wrong ;-) ) pádraig

a wet, berserker cat [22 Apr 2003|11:59pm] We have two cats. Before our children arrived our cats were much loved and secure about their place in our hearts and in our home. We have lived with these cats on the edge of a couple of villages and their world before the children came was an idyll of slaughtered, tortured and dismembered wildlife and welcoming laps. It all changed. Though I occasionally look at our cats, or at least at one of them, and think to myself that they, or it, are handsome examples of their species, the brutal truth is that we don't really have much love left spare anymore. We have two children to act as sumps for all the love as we can possibly pour into them. The cats, though fed and cared for, are essentially unloved. We occupy the same rooms and we feed them and they scatter the innards of voles and mice around our floors and there is a sort of perfunctory loveless alliance involving us and them. Like a failed student household or a failed yet enduring marriage there are tensions but we generally manage to behave with an acceptable amount of decorum towards each other and there are very few rows where we shout and they miaow our mutual disaffections at each other. We do care for them in a practical fashion even if we don't really care much about them emotionally anymore. We feed them, we pick up the tiny rodent livers they leave uneaten on the floor and we take them to the vet for their immunisations and to get their tails re-attached when they have been fighting or when they have been attacked by the bigger rougher cats. At the house where we lived until last May our cats were subject to the brutal reign of terror of a huge ginger tom-cat from a house on the other side of the hedge. It was a big fellow. It was happy to involve itself in staring pseudo combat with humans and I'm slightly ashamed to admit that its unwavering gaze caused me to christen this frightening staring beast 'Sutcliffe'. Our demure little pussies ( Read more... )

Visions of Jazz [22 Apr 2003|05:09pm] I've resisted the temptation to write about my current inability to listen to anything other than the New York Dolls' first album, which has now been playing since early yesterday evening. I've been reading Visions of Jazz, by Gary Giddins - the author of fine jazz criticism for the Village Voice, for a while now. If you have been waiting for it to reappear in Nottinghamshire libraries, I apologise, it will be back soon and I can tell you now that you'll probably want to buy a copy anyway. Gary Giddins writes beautifully. Gary Giddins writes tremendously effectively and informatively. I have relished every one of the 653 pages of his book. His description of the music of the artists included in his grand survey of twentieth century jazz has made me want to listen to each and every one of them. There are seventy nine chapters in the book, some of the artists, like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, are revisited to explore different periods of their creative life. The book is illuminating, enthralling and inspiring. It communicates Gary Giddins' love of the music he has been able to listen to and it communicates the artists' love for the music they created and played. Last summer, as we walked in the drizzle near Wetwang, I told a friend that it was almost worth listening to jazz just to be able to read the body of genuine literature it had generated. At that time I hadn't read Gary Giddins' book - I would have mentioned it. pádraig Extracts: On November 12, 1925, in Chicago, Armstrong embarked on the most influential recording project in jazz, perhaps in American music. Over the next three years, he produced the sixty-five sides (not including those by singers or similar bands in which Armstrong appeared as a sideman) generally known as the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens. If Armstrong had put music aside after the December 12, 1928, session, he would not have exerted the full measure of his charisma as a singer; would not have recorded the dozens of nonpareil big band performances; would not have enjoyed the pop hits and movies; would not have matured and mellowed over time into an even more expressive instrumentalist and singer; would not have achieved international renown; would not have earned the nickname Satchmo. But he would still be the most eminent figure in jazz history. Toward the close of Art Tatum 20th Century Piano Genius (Verve), one of the most significant vault restorations since the advent of the CD, something unprecedented almost occurs. Tatum has embarked on "After You've Gone", conjoined in medley fashion with "Would You Like To Take A Walk?" At bar seven, he suspends gravity for a characteristic two-bar arpeggio, a whooshing turnback that you expect to end on the down beat of bar nine. But just as it begins to touch ground, another spins away with furious elan, and then another, and then another like fireworks - as one pinwheel fades, another explodes in its place. When he lands, eight bars later, at the outset of the bridge, he offers the least Tatumesque of devices, a rest, a momentary but unmistakeable silence, and you think: He's lost! Maybe contrary to Fats Waller's declaration, he isn't God, merely the son of God. (That at least would explain his death at forty-seven in 1956.) But listen again, and count: he may be flummoxed as to what to play next, but he is in on a dime, the tempo and harmonic gauges exactly met. Definitely God. Coltrane altered the flavor of jazz. He didn't force a comprehensive retooling of the music, as Armstrong and Parker did, but he instigated a reimagining of possibilities and brought back a solemnity of purpose that shook up the old order. Even Armstrong made records ("Chim Chim Cheree" and "We Shall Overcome" that demonstrated Coltrane's prevailing influence in popularizing scales, pedal points, vamps. Saxophonists as varied as Dexter Gordon, Harold Lane, Art Pepper, Stan Getz and Frank Foster adjusted their styles to accommodate the changes he brought about in the instrument. His urgent attack struck a chord with rock musicians, who improvised extended scalar solos built on pedal points. Conservatory saxophonists began exploring the harmonics and overtones he perfected. Coltrane was slavishly imitated then diluted then parodies. But he opened up doors that remain open for anyone with the nerve to trespass. When Coltrane died in the summer of 1967, jazz dies a bit too. Where was he headed? What was the next frontier? For thousands of people around the world, Coltrane was the '60s, an ethical and cultural leader, an exemplary guide. In his absence, the music faltered for several years until another generation forged ahead by pulling back. Coltrane was planning a trip to Africa at the time of his death, and it is likely he would have continued his investigation of world musics, perhaps treading with Ellington through the Afro-Eurasian eclipse and coming home to a rapprochement with the traditions he mastered and abandoned. "The main thing a musician would like to do," Coltrane said, "is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe." When Miles asked him why he played so long, he answered, "It took that long to get it all in." In truth, he didn't play long enough, and we can't help but ponder what he would have played next.

boots, books and bass clarinets [20 Apr 2003|07:25pm] I know it's considered to be bad form to write a piece about why you haven't written a piece... It's been school holidays and mrs pádraig and the mini-people have been at home more than usual. I've been doing things with them and excursing into Nottingham buying boots and books. Today, with my boots off, I was listening to a copy of Iron Path, an out of print (I think) album from 1988 by Last Exit, am experimental free jazz/rock supergroup comprising Sonny Sharrock, Bill Laswell, Peter Brotzman and Shannon Jackson. I hugely enjoyed the album, which my friend, Steve Cobham, very generously copied from his vinyl copy onto CD. I'll need to listen it another few times before I could adequately describe it, but... it's quite restrained really. Whilst listening to the album I had one of those infuriating, moments where another recording was suggested by the music I was hearing, in this case Peter Brotzman's bass clarinet. Thankfully, and unusually, on this occasion it only took a minute or so to retrieve the memory that the album I was reminded of was 1991's Welcome to My Dream by MC 900 Ft Jesus, or more specifically, Chris McGuire's use of the bass clarinet on that record. I think it would be possible to make a case for more significant similarities than merely the use by two musicians of a relatively unusual instrument in a jazzy idiom, but that might be stretching things. I'm glad that hearing the Last Exit album made a fleeting connection with one of the parts of my brain storing the times when I listened to Welcome To My Dream. I've been listening to the latter for quite a lot of this afternoon and it has made me smile. There is also a suggestion that a new CD might appear in July, that would also make me smile. pádraig

Lawrence of Newark [13 Apr 2003|08:56pm] I have subscribed to many mailing lists. Not quite as many as the big penis salesmen would have me believe - but many, nevertheless. I bounce around amongst them, reading some of them daily, whilst allowing others to build up hundreds of unread messages before I scan through - reading the threads that interest or that I suspect can inform. In the 400 messages which had accumulated in the folder where my email from the John McLaughlin One-Word list settles, I found an email with a link to a biographical article about Larry Young. It was informative. And sympathetic to the damaged and gifted big man. My only criticism would be that insufficient attention is paid to Lawrence Of Newark - Young's brilliant album from 1973. Lawrence of Newark, an album I bought at least partially for its cover and the presence of 'Newark' in the title (I live near Newark in Nottinghamshire), is one of my favourite discoveries from the last couple of years. The music itself is funky, strident and driving. It is rhythmically and melodically rich. It is brilliant and it is absorbing. It is apparently "a highly collectable album of freeform, avant garde, experimental jazz with Young handling organ, bongos and vocals, assisted by guitarist james (Blood) Ulmer". It is very "highly recommended". pádraig

into an avalanche [12 Apr 2003|12:15am] Because I read this, I've been listening to this bloke - in particular this song. The first time I heard Avalanche (the Nick Cave cover from From Her to Eternity) it scared me. I still find it an enormously powerful song and I found that Cohen's original, if not quite as beathlessly terrifying as the Nick Cave cover, is still a disturbing and compelling work - and superior. I am utterly intrigued by the words and I don't feel that I have ever managed to truly understand what it is that Cohen is describing. The pictures that it consistently conjures for me are this. And this. This too. It's perhaps quite appropriate that Blake's images should be the ones that appear when I need to visualise the tortured creature at that heart of Avalanche. Though for me Cohen's words are hugely evocative - if murky, he has been accused of indulging himself in his own inpenetrable allegorical world. Blake explicitly and overtly created his own mythological world. I like them both. pádraig ( Read more... )

stoned soul picnic [09 Apr 2003|10:04pm] I bought a CD - because of its cover and title. It is pretty good to listen to as well. pádraig

the legitimacy of staring [08 Apr 2003|09:02pm] As I took some rubbish to our bin in the brilliant spring sunshine of this afternoon I was struck by our alluring and in bloom forsythia. It's a spectacular thing - a nine-foot high abundance of beautiful brilliant yellow flowers and should thus be hard to miss. It is however in a corner of the garden that we don't really see easily unless we happen to actually be right there and its current splendour did take me a little by surprise. I had children to bathe and dishes to wash and things to do, but I was tempted to spend a moment or two just looking at this beautiful thing. The pressure on my time and the need for me to be doing things other than contemplating the beauty of creation were one reason why I didn't stand staring. Another reason, was that I was a little concerned about the impression I would make on my relatively new neighbours if they happened to see me standing staring. In the past I was more readily disposed to spend time staring at stuff. I smoked dope. I was more or less continuously stoned from the age of eighteen to just before my thirtieth birthday. It probably isn't just that it is much more fulfilling to stare at flowers, or trees, or rocks, or dust, when you've been smoking doobies since the start of the day; I think that I felt that the process of smoking dope actually provided a reason of some validity for just being still and peaceful and attentive to beauty. I felt that my fumblings with cigarette papers and cannabis were an entirely wholesome reason for me to be sitting behind a rock on the side of a mountain, or in the middle of a hedge, or in a corner of a field. After I stopped smoking dope I quickly felt the loss of this reason to be still. My walks in the countryside, which were at that time still frequent, quickly became noticeably less fulfilling - because they contained less sitting and less staring. I'm not sure whether I do actually miss the intoxication I previously had such extreme relish for - I'm sure I do miss the legitimacy of staring. pádraig

beliefs 'a', 'b' and 'c' [07 Apr 2003|04:57pm] Today I made a compromise. I took my daughter to the church in the village where her pre-school group attended an Easter service with the headmaster of the local primary school, which is Church of England Controlled. At this type of school <cite="http://cofe.epinet.co.uk/about/educator.html">"the church can appoint governors but there is no church majority on the governing body. The teachers are employed by the Local Education Authority, the LEA funds repairs and capital projects, religious education follows the local agreed syllabus, the worship is Anglican."</cite> I was born into a strictly adherent Roman Catholic family in rural Northern Ireland. My education and my life in my family included frequent reference to our religion and its guidance. From the age of about seven I started having doubts about what I was being told: I decided that being 'good' and behaving appropriately were really the only possible options irrespective of whether there actually was a god or whether there actually was a prospect of eternal life. That is still pretty much what I believe today. I marvel at the beauty of the world around me and I love and help to the best of my ability. I even acknowledge the limits of my personal control of my life. But belief in god remains an irrelevancy for me. If pinned against a rhetorical and metaphorical wall I would probably admit that a simple substitution of the word 'destiny' for 'god' would allow me to happily accept many of the black and white proclamations of the faith I was born into. The arrival of the next generation of mini-pádraigs did present some difficulties. Do you introduce the idea of contented spiritual uncertainty to children whose excretory functions still require your intervention? The questions start as early as that in their development. Depending on the time of year your offspring arrived, you will probably have to deal with Christmas and the birth of Jesus and, for balance, introduce winter solstice celebrations and perhaps the slightly earlier, Divali and explain to your child that some people believe belief 'a' and some belief 'b' and some belief 'c' and that some don't really have certainty about any of these things - before they can shit and piss independently. We've gone for a role-playing approach to help our children get used to diversity. Thus, for our children, mrs pádraig believes belief 'a' but doesn't go to church and I play the role of the free-spirited beatnik with no certainty about spirituality but who believes that morality and citizenship are hugely important. Sitting in church this morning, listening to a nice man sing songs about Jesus and about being nice, I was reminded that my religious education was largely a positive experience - despite my fundamental inability to accept the cosmology I was presented with. My personal view is that morality, and/or our ethical principles, are fundamental to our nature as communal beings. I'm aware that this question is one of the subjects that philosophers raise a sweat over, but for my purposes I am happy to avoid the question of whether these principles are biologically bequeathed to us or whether we absorb them from the human environment we are born into. Whatever their precise genesis, they are for me fundamental. If we want to live together agreeably then it is best if we do not inflict suffering on each other, or steal from each other and it is probably best if we keep the coveting of our neighbour's wife's ass to a minimum. Where and when I grew up, these limits of acceptable behaviour were taught to me and my peers within the context of religious education. Having a Christian education made me a better person and a better citizen even if it failed to make me a Christian. The behaviour I see in our local town, as I visit its fast food establishments of an evening, suggests that at this time in this place the education system often fails to produce good citizens and good people. I hope that we are in a time of lag, where education hasn't fully compensated for the almost totally secular nature of the modern world, by reinforcing its provision of moral education in order to produce better secular citizens. Modern religious eduction, correctly, teaches about religions and their diversity. I'm not sure that that produces a model for citizenship in the way that my religious education did. My actual position on what _my_ children should be taught is not well formed. My primary concern is that they should grow to become caring and loving people who make the world a better place just because of their existence. I'm probably happy if this comes about through either absorbing enough of a Christian residue from their religious education to make them good citizens or whether their education in citizenship makes them good citizens. Either way - I'm happy. pádraig

everyone needs a 'no' sign [06 Apr 2003|09:10pm] Tonight, as I was putting my daughter to bed, she attempted to delay my departure from her bedroom by explaining her new sign on her door. She and her brother have each produced a piece of paper with 'yes' on one side and 'no' on the other'. They have attached these to their bedroom doors to regulate access. She proudly told me that "everyone needs a 'no' sign." It is quite true. We might, as we age, develop diplomatic strategies for avoiding any negative impact on the emotions of those who we share our lives with - but, we do need 'no' signs. We need to be able to have solitude and space and enough self-absorption. I enjoy playing my guitar in my, ahem, office. I also enjoy pissing about, ahem, working on my computer. Those act as my 'no' signs. pádraig

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