"EVER TRIED. EVER FAILED. NO MATTER. TRY AGAIN. FAIL AGAIN. FAIL BETTER."

I listened to an interesting interview with Barry McGovern on National Radio this morning.

HERE

He's bringing an adaptation of Samuel Beckett's novel WATT to New Zealand to the Auckland Arts Festival in March next year. I must make booking to see this.

Beckett has, to me and others I know, been very difficult to understand. McGovern, in the interview by Kim Hill said that Beckett, on the contrary is extremely easy to understand and that most people over-complicate things in their own minds. He said that WAITING FOR GODOT for example was a play about waiting and that ENDGAME is about leaving. He said that children find Beckett very simple and that adults find him very complicated. The answer is somewhere in between.

McGovern should know since he's spent a lifetime interpreting and acting Beckett's works. He also said that James Joyce is very easy to read as well and again he should know as he's very familiar with Joyce's works as well. Mind you, I've read ULYSSES and struggled through FINNEGANS WAKE and wouldn't describe either as easy.


If you go to the National Radio link then also have a look at the link to GAME OF THRONES where McGovern played a minor but very interesting part as a dying farmer. He said that a couple of the writers who have doctorates in literature were Beckett and Joyce scholars  and knew of his work so wrote a piece for him in the series. Interesting and shows that it's easy to discount something because it's popular even though the people behind it are very clever.

Along with GAME OF THRONES I put THE SOPRANOS  and BREAKING BAD forward as well (but leave out Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger stuff).

THE PERMIT

In 1969 my dad took over, from a family friend, the care-taking job for a 3 storey building in Taranaki Street that was owned by the Wellington Catholic Church diocese. They had offices in there. The job came with a huge 3 bedroom penthouse apartment that in today's terms would have been worth a fortune. We didn't appreciate this value at the time as inner city living in the 1960s and 1970s wasn't fashionable. My brother and I 'flatted' at the family house in Vogeltown during my 6th and 7th form years at college and early years of university. We kind of lived between the two places - sleeping at the house and having meals at the apartment.

Dad kept his contracting business going for a couple of years before winding that up and doing the care-taking full-time. I was given the cleaning contract for the building which was a doddle being only a few hours a week but bringing in as much money as if I worked full-time. Nepotism was alive and well. I kept this contract all through university.

In the building was a book publishing company.  They used to throw out a lot of interesting things some of which I'd keep when emptying out the rubbish bins. One day I found a couple of boxes of books. I opened them up to discover dozens of copies of 'The Permit' as per the image above. Opening one I discovered that all the pages were blank which is why they were thrown out. I kept the books though as I knew that they would be good note pads being just less than A5 size at 110 cm x 180 cm. These proved to be very useful. I used them at uni and gave away to family members and still have several which I use from time to time..

I was making some notes in one the other day in fact.

*************

I never read 'The Permit' (well there were no words in the books I had for a start) so don't know anything about the novel.

Today I did an internet search and read about Donald Horne on Wikipedia:

Donald Richmond Horne  ... was an Australian journalist, writer, social critic, and academic who became one of Australia's best known public intellectuals, from the 1960s until his death.
Horne was a prolific author who published four novels and more than twenty volumes of history, memoir and political and cultural analysis. He also edited The Bulletin, The Observer and Quadrant. His best known work was The Lucky Country (1964), an evaluation of Australian society that questioned many traditional attitudes: "Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck."                             WIKIPEDIA

OK, I like that quote from The Lucky Country.


As for The Permit, The Sydney Morning Herald had this to say:

In Donald Horne's 1965 novel The Permit, an ordinary, inoffensive citizen applies to the government for an authorisation: Permit 37A. His case is picked up on a media whim and he is drawn irresistibly into the vortex of politics.
The citizen, Adam Richmond, becomes the subject of spirited exchanges in the parliament as one party uses his case to attack the other. For a moment, he is at the centre of the nation's affairs. And when the case becomes too uncomfortable for the government, the minister for permits, Pat Shennanagen, rises, with the greatest reluctance, to denounce Richmond. The minister discloses that the apparently innocuous applicant for Permit 37A had been a member of the Communist Party, expelled for drunkenness and degeneracy, with a history of bad credit, homosexuality and venereal disease.
"God in heaven!" shrieks the news editor of the Daily Trumpet. "He's a Commo - and a pansy!"
            SYDNEY MORNING HERALD 

Sounds good so I think I'll track it down and read it at long last.

THE HIGH Cs

NOT THESE

BUT THESE

Pavarotti - King of the high Cs

Well I had a bit of a cultural weekend in Auckland managing to cram in NZ Opera's The Barber of Seville, Ron Howard's documentary film on Luciano Pavarotti and Indri Hughes organ recital at the town hall. Marvellous and would have been perfect if I'd managed to see Delicious Oblivion at the Cabaret Festival but just missed out.

Saturday night

The Barber of Seville was a lot of fun. This is comedy-opera but it wasn't fluffy as the performances were really good and the set outstanding making lots of use of opening balconies and upstairs/downstairs antics. It was good to see the NZ cast matching it well with the Aussis. Great stuff. NZ Opera always put on a good show.

Sunday morning

Ron Howard's documentary on the life of Luciano Pavarotti is a 'must see'.

Sure, some reviewers will write scathing reviews saying that the 'homage' is a bit too gentle and twee but Howard manages to keep himself and opinions out of this and just shows Pavarotti doing what he did best - singing. The poor life choices were mentioned and shown but not dwelt on as these things should be. This will bring tears to your eyes in parts and those 'high Cs' - outstanding.

Sunday afternoon

The Auckland council put on free concerts at the town hall from time to time and on Sunday afternoon we were lucky to catch this beauty. 'Free' means by donation which we gave $10 each  knowing that proceeds go to the preservation society for the wonderful and world famous Auckland Town Hall organ. Hughes played this 'machine' brilliantly mixing up Bach, Vivaldi and Handel classics with some lighter British pastoral tunes. He played a very moving dedication to a recently bereaved friend with two Elgar pieces. 

They set up the hall well with a big screen either side of the organ, one showing the foot pedals and the other the keyboards and the stops.

We really enjoyed this and will look forward to future concerts.

I'm sorry that I missed out on Delicious Oblivion though.

This was Jennifer Ward-Lealand take on the songs from the nightclubs of Berlin during the days of Weimar Republic including Kurt Weill classics.

Maybe it'll get a repeat sometime and I'll keep a better eye on what's on on Auckland.

THE OLD GIRL

'THE OLD GIRL ' could apply to Bleak House the Charles Dickens novel I've been reading for 48 years.

I bought this little leather bound book in 1971 when I went to Victoria University in Wellington and studied (amongst many other things) English. I never finished the book. Actually, I hardly started it, reading only about the first 30 or so pages. I bluffed and bullshitted my way through tutorials, tests and exams with the various characters (there are so many in this novel) bewildering me.
I've had the book all this time and have only just finished reading it.

As I sometimes do, I coincided my reading with listening to the audio book version and watching the 2005 TV series on TV On Demand. The novel, with all of its plots and sub-plots, characters, themes and settings fell into place and the experience was sumptuous. It took me 48 years but I've done it and it makes me hungry to read some more Dickens although I doubt that any others will come close except for Great Expectations. I might in fact repeat the exercise with Great Expectations as I remember a stunning British TV series of years ago. If I can find this to watch and line up with both the audio and written novel then I'll do it.

As I said, I finally caught up with the characters in Bleak House, most of whom I never knew existed.
One couple, Mr and Mrs Bagnet are case in point here for this post. Mr Bagnet, a minor character  was a military friend of Mr George who was a central character to the main plot. He was a dealer in musical instruments and a right bore. He loved his wife though and deferred to her in all things.

He always referred to her as THE OLD GIRL.

I find this to be funny as I, in this blog always refer to my partner Lynn as THE OLD GIRL.

She's also worth her weight in gold.

• 
  

HOWDY

Yesterday when we were walking a passerby said hello.
I didn't take much notice but The Old Girl said that it wasn't a very friendly hello.
I asked her what she meant and she said that the 'hello' was perfunctory and lacking in any real warmth.

We live in a semi-rural area where people do acknowledge others on the roadside as opposed to Auckland and I guess other cities in NZ.

Maybe the woman was recently from Auckland and hasn't yet adjusted.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RICHARD (OF RBB)

HERE'S THE FUCKING NEWS

We get so much shit thrown at us nowadays via multiple channels. Some is serious and real but a lot of it is fabricated and bogus for all sorts of reasons of bias.

Have a look at this clip. It's a spoof but I'm sure that it voices the feelings of many news reporters.


ANGRY REPORTER

HIP, HIP, HOORAY (ONCE)

Good old Erik wrote a piece for my chair.

FURNITURE MUSIC

OPEN CULTURE

A good friend from Wellington sent me a link to an outstanding catalogue of interesting information, poetry, film, art and literature.

I've been relishing dipping and diving into it watching, reading and listening and have signed up for the (free) subscription.

Here is the link:  OPEN CULTURE

I've been listening to audio of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
If you have time access and listen to these. The poetry and literary authority of these is a marvel.

In a world and certainly a world wide web full of unmitigated crap it's so refreshing to find the real stuff, the quality stuff formatted in an easy to find way and without all the dust and inaccessibility of 'antiquity'

I hope you enjoy it. I certainly am.

AKISH WOULD APPROVE

It's good to see some people in positions of power and influence have a good sense of humour.

Guggenheim's Deputy Director Nancy Spector, in declining a request from The White House to borrow a Vincent van Gogh painting to decorate the wall of their private residence, declined the request but offered instead a sculpture by Maurizio Catalan called America which is an 18 carat gold toilet.  See:

ART NEWS

The White House declined the offer.

Priceless!

THE TRUMPS WANTED THIS







THEY WERE OFFERED THIS
.

Well done Nancy Spector and The Guggenheim.

"YOU'LL MISS ME WHEN I'M GONE ....."

...... my mother used to say to me when I was cheeky to her. You know? She's right. I miss her now she's gone.

Some people aren't missed although their awfulness in certain areas of arts, music (Florence Foster Jenkins), literature, science (creationists) and poetry (Coleridge) live on.

One such is William McGonnagal whose reputation and fame far exceed his poetic ability.

MCGONNAGAL DIES AGAIN

William Topaz McGonagall (March 1825– 29 September 1902) was a Scottish weaver, poet and actor. He won notoriety as an extremely bad poet who exhibited no recognition of, or concern for, his peers' opinions of his work.

He wrote about 200 poems, including "The Tay Bridge Disaster" and "The Famous Tay Whale", which are widely regarded as some of the worst in English literature. 

*****************************

Robert has gone again. He has once again deleted his blog. This has happened before but usually he just deletes all his posts. Either way his posts which variously include his bizarre views on creationism, science, religion, history, the role of commercial cleaners in society and his home-grown poetry are lost forever.

I think I miss him.

SINGING WITH HIMSELF

THE MUSIC CURMUDGEON posted a silly Christmas song in his latest post. My apologies on behalf of CURMUDGEONS INC.ⓒ.

In 1985 when I heard Aled Jones singing "Walking In The Air" it gave me goosebumps. I'd heard it sung before by Peter Auty as it was a song in the film The Snowman but it was the release of the Jones version that got all the Christmas playtime.

The song cut through all of the usual yuletide crap both old and new and I have very fond memories of it.

Below is Jones singing it as in 1985 but also as his older self singing it last Christmas.
It still has the magic with the extra bit of interest in the older Jones singing as well.


ALED JONES AND ALED JONES - WALKING IN THE AIR

EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY

There's been quite a bit of discussion amongst CURMUDGEON INC.ⓒ members this morning following the outrageous behaviour of members of The Bass Bagging Confederation.

Some members have advocated turning the other cheek and making peace with this vile and dangerous outfit.

Others have pushed for direct and appropriate retaliation and to employ Baxter's own methods by removing his head.

maybe though we should just laugh it off.