In Canada
Subsequent to the long, dark days of winter it was good once again to be able – on our recent visit to Bath – to look for opportunities to capture some playful images with the Fuji X10. I hope that the gentle reader will indulge me if I post a few more of them:
Regular readers of this blog will know that the Kickass Canada Girl is a huge film buff. More than that she is also a great enthusiast for the whole cinema-going experience – VIP seats – buttered popcorn – the whole shebang! Before moving to the UK she was a frequent and regular visitor to her local multiplex and it didn’t much matter (within limits, naturally) what was showing. She just loved the whole adventure.
When the Girl arrived in the UK she hoped to replicate the experience here, but her efforts to that end were hampered by two discongruous factors. The first – that cinema-going in the UK is simply not on a par with its North American counterpart – might just have been overcome had it not been for the second – which is that I am quite the lousiest person with whom to share a visit to the palace of dreams.
It’s not that I don’t like films. I do – though I am, it must be admitted, what might be considered a ‘picky customer’. I would claim rather that I have high standards – but let’s not fall out over such niceties.
No – the problem is that I don’t much like going to the cinema. To be precise – and at the risk of coming over as exactly the sort of irritable old f*rt that I indubitably am – the real issue is that I don’t much like other cinema-goers. There’s more to it than that – of course – but a visit to the movie house rarely leaves me with a warm glow where my fellow man is concerned.
The Girl and I visited the cinema over the Easter weekend – to see ‘Side Effects’ as it happens (not bad at all – picks up appreciably in the third act – but I still don’t care much myself for Soderbergh’s signature ‘distance’). I pretty much missed the first twenty minutes or so, however, because I was struggling to get over the effects of the ‘pre-film’ to the point that I could achieve the requisite suspension of disbelief.
These are just some of the things that set my teeth on edge:
I could go on – but I feel the Girl’s eyes on the back of my head (metaphorically) giving me a disapproving glare – so I will quit whilst I am (notionally) ahead.
When we lived in Buckinghamshire we belonged to a rather splendid film club which rented the screening cinema at Pinewood Studios on weekend evenings. There was a bar – large comfy seats with loads of legroom – an absence of commercials and trailers – an audience with a certain demographic – and an atmosphere most conducive to the celebration of celluloidal confections.
Sadly – since we left we have heard that the studio has terminated the film club’s lease. Really most short-sighted of them…
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, it seems.
Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy
I have posted previously on the subject of songwriting, in the course of which ramblings I have made reference to my ‘home studio’. There was a point at which this facility took the form of a separate room filled with an accumulation of arcane items of musical and recording equipment acquired over several decades. All that remains now is a single keyboard and a computer tucked away in the corner of a bedroom – though you will not be surprised to hear that in power and capability this humble setup outperforms its predecessors many times over.
The keyboard – the only item that remains from the studio’s previous incarnation – is the venerable and iconic Korg M1, one of the very first Music Workstations. Featuring the now almost ubiquitous ‘sampling and synthesis’ sound generation technique to create a high quality audio palette the likes of which had not previously been heard, the Korg M1 was only produced for a 6 year period from 1988 to 1994, but examples of the breed can still be seen – and heard – in use throughout the music business. In one of those ‘eureka’ moments I heard a demo sequence being played on one of these beasts in a music shop one day in the summer of 1988. I had to have one!
By modern standards – of course – the M1 seems somewhat crude and limited. It could, for example, play only 16 concurrent notes – and considerably less if these featured layered or complex sounds. I now use the M1 purely as a keyboard controller to input notes to the computer. The sounds themselves live on, however, since both the M1 and its successor – the Korg Wavestation – along with all of the additional sounds originally found on extension cards, are available as a ‘virtual instrument’ software package for the computer.
The computer itself is the motivation for this post – or to be more accurate, the software that runs on it is such. Back in the 1970s when I was playing in bands the only way to create a permanent record of a song was to hire a studio – by the hour – for as long as it took to get the piece down on tape. As we had very little money and studio time was not cheap we became accustomed to working quickly and dirtily. When the first relatively inexpensive 4 track cassette recorder – the Portastudio – became available in 1979 I was one of the first in the queue. This little device revolutionised home recording and – though the quality was average at best and deteriorated rapidly if tracks were ‘bounced down’ to create more space – I used it extensively for the next two decades.
When, however – following the dictat of Moore’s Law – home computers finally became powerful enough to handle digital recording I quite naturally hurried to investigate the emerging software packages that would turn the machine into a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). Over the years since I have tried most of the leading contenders but was not – until relatively recently – content that I had found a package that had been truly designed with the musician in mind rather than the computer geek! The solution on which I finally settled in 2007 – Tracktion – has one of the simplest and most intuitive interfaces I have encountered, based on a workflow that mirrors the way that I record music.
Almost inevitably things turned out not to be quite as straightforward as I would have hoped.
Tracktion was designed and created by an English developer, but had been taken up and marketed by a large American musical equipment manufacturer. Around the time that I purchased my copy this manufacturer lost interest in the product, suspended further development and stopped fixing bugs and responding to customer support requests. The software still worked – of course – but would clearly become more and more outdated as time passed. Faced with the prospect of having to start all over again – and probably of having to settle for something I considered inferior – I decided to grit my teeth and to stick with the package anyway. Regardless of these limitations the software has since served me well.
I don’t know what induced me, then – just the other day – to browse the InterWebNet for titbits on my favourite music production software, but I was in for a most pleasant surprise. The original developer- Julian Storer – had set up a new company, purchased back the rights to his creation and re-commenced development work after a 6 year lull. Hooray! Naturally I immediately upgraded my setup to the new version.
This news fills me with a warm glow and I wish the company every success. It is good to have them back.
With the parenthetical pertinence of the fact that this is St David’s Day in mind I will – if I may – expand on the Celtic theme of my last post.
Every now and again I feel moved – more so than I normally do – to explore and embrace the culture and heritage of what I feel to be the key part of my ancestry. As is common nowadays I can trace my lineage in a variety of directions. One element of my mother’s family originated on the north east coast of England – another from the midlands (from the area around the delightfully English sounding town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch!).
My father was – however – always extremely proud of his Scottish heritage and in this my siblings and I have enthusiastically followed. Just as soon as we were old enough to make the journey (by train – my father could not drive!) from the home counties to the highlands we embarked on the first of an extended series of family holidays in Scotland. My father was a great hill walker and he and I covered many a mile on peaks across a swathe of the country from Ayrshire to the Great Glen. In later life I have made repeated forays to Edinburgh, both for work and for visits – as performer and spectator – to the Edinburgh Festival.
I find there to be a romantic and gently melancholic quality to much Celtic art, be it poetry, prose, instrumental music or song and regardless of whether it be of the Welsh, the Irish or the Scots. There is something particularly haunting about Scottish music, the resonance of which with the lowering hills and the exquisite straths and glens of the highlands and islands from which it originates will be apparent. I find myself from time to time overtaken by a irresistible urge to immerse myself in it. And yes – I do like the skirl of the pipes – but I also love the clarsach, the fiddle and the whistle.
Now – I have some sympathy with those who like their ethnic music pure and who demand that it be reproduced strictly according to tradition, but music is a living language and – like all languages – must be in a state of constant evolution. My own musical interests lie more in the discovery and exploration of new fusions of tradition and modernity. To this end I found myself recently reconnoitering the InterWebNet for exciting new syntheses of music based on traditional Celtic forms.
I found many interesting things – of course – but this was what I liked the most:
Paul Mounsey is a Scottish composer who married a Brazilian and subsequently moved to Brazil. His music is thus a fascinating fusion of classical Scottish themes, Gaelic voices and Brazilian percussion. His biography on Wikipedia reads thus:
Paul Mounsey (born 15 April 1959) is a composer, arranger and producer from Scotland.
He lived for over 20 years in Brazil. A graduate of Trinity College, London, where he studied with Richard Arnell, he has written for film, television, theatre, advertising and also for the Latin American pop market. He lectured for a short while at Goldsmiths College before moving on as creative director of Play It Again, one of the biggest commercial music houses in Brazil. He has also written articles on various aspects of music. He’s written pop hits for Mexican boy bands, has received commissions for chamber and multimedia works, has lived with and recorded the music of indigenous communities in the Amazon rainforest, and to date has released five solo albums. Paul’s music has featured in the television and cinema adverts for tourism boards such as VisitScotland. He is currently based in Los Angeles working as composer, orchestrator and programmer in the film industry.
Have a listen to these samples and see what you think:
Wherever You Go: Wherever You Go – Sample
Nahoo Reprise: Nahoo Reprise – Sample
Taking Back the Land: Taking Back The Land – Sample
Senses – 2011: Senses 2011 – sample
“It is clear that one is a gentleman’s game played by hooligans; the other a hooligan’s game played by gentlemen.”
Chancellor of Cambridge University, comparing ‘soccer’ and ‘rugger’!
Date unknown (pre 1953)
Regular readers will be aware that, in addition to my deep love for the great game of cricket, I am also a long standing aficionado of the hooligan’s game. As a Scot I naturally and proudly follow and support the national side, which propensity – it has to be said – affords great training in the practice of stoicism.
Maybe it is just me (or maybe it is actually a national characteristic?) but it seems to me that those who follow Scottish rugby are possessed of the ability to maintain a degree of optimism entirely unjustified by the evidence. Regardless of how high-flown are our opponents – or indeed of how badly we were duffed-up the last time out – we absolutely and resolutely believe each time that the impossible is possible and that we will end the day victorious. It is a good thing – as a nation – that we are also blessed with the ‘wee dram’ – with which to console ourselves post-match.
And yet…
…every now and again the impossible does happen and we find ourselves victorious… against all the odds!
Last weekend saw the third round of matches in this year’s 6 Nations tournament (for the uninitiated – England, France, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Italy). Our reasons for optimism this time round were that the match was being played at home – at Murrayfield in Edinburgh – and that our opponents (the Irish) had lost some half a dozen of their best players to injury or suspension.
By half time any such hopes had evaporated and I had pretty much resorted to following the BBC’s match coverage from behind the sofa! The match statistics showed that Ireland had enjoyed some 78% possession of the ball and an 80% territorial advantage. They had made – in addition – a number of searing line breaks that had torn the Scottish defence apart. There was only one thing in Scotland’s favour. In spite of all their territorial and possessive advantages the Irish were leading by a mere 3 points to nil. For those rugby ingenues – again – this represents a single score of the lowest value.
No matter how optimistic one might have felt 40 minutes earlier, however, it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that Ireland were now likely to ramp up the pressure and to blow the home side away, a belief reinforced shortly after the break when the Irish finally crossed the try line to take the score to 8 – nil. We tensed ourselves for the opening of the flood gates.
And yet – again…
…half an hour later the Scots were leading by 12 points to 8 and holding on grimly in pursuit of a famous victory. It was as though the Irish really didn’t want to win. Though they had applied immense pressure they proved themselves incapable of finishing off any of their moves, whilst the Scots mounted an increasingly heroic defence. By the end of the match the statistics had barely improved – the Irish having had 71% of the possession and played 77% of the match in the Scottish half. Scotland had visited their opponents’ half pretty much only on four occasions…
…but each time they had done so – they had scored!
Some would look at such a match and say that the Scots were extraordinarily lucky to have got away with it. We – of course – see things differently. Our conversion rate from attacks was nigh on 100%. The Irish’s – by comparison – was not – and they had thus clearly not deserved to win.
Naturally I celebrated with a considerably less than ‘wee’ dram!
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee
Whether the summer clothe the general earth with greenness or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch smokes in the sun-thaw
Whether the eve-drops fall, heard only in the trances of the blast
Or if the secret ministry of frost shall hang them up in silent icicles
Quietly shining to the quiet moon.
Frost at Midnight
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I find that I have more to say on the subject of the latest Bond opus – Skyfall.
A period of contemplation found me considering the underlying meaning of the film. This in itself represents a considerable departure for a Bond film. How many of the previous offerings – however enjoyable they might have been – could be said to have a deeper (even if not much deeper) meaning?
Skyfall – on the other hand – does so.
It is entirely apposite that, with the franchise celebrating its 50th anniversary, questions should be asked as to the continuing pertinence of the series. Skyfall chooses to do this at several levels, questioning not only the relevance of Bond to the action film genre itself, but also of Fleming’s cold war ‘blunt instrument’ in the era of cyber espionage, both as a fictional character and also – by extension – in the world of real live spooks… whatever the reality of that might actually be.
This exchange between Bond and Ben Whishaw’s Q – sitting in the National Gallery in front of Turner’s “The Fighting Temeraire” – is germane:
Q: It always makes me feel a bit melancholy. Grand old war ship. being ignominiously haunted away to scrap… The inevitability of time, don’t you think? What do you see?
James Bond: A bloody big ship. Excuse me.
Q: 007. I’m your new Quartermaster.
James Bond: You must be joking.
Q: Why, because I’m not wearing a lab coat?
James Bond: Because you still have spots.
Q: My complexion is hardly relevant.
James Bond: Your competence is.
Q: Age is no guarantee of efficiency.
James Bond: And youth is no guarantee of innovation.
Q: Well, I’ll hazard I can do more damage on my laptop sitting in my pajamas before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do in a year in the field.
James Bond: Oh, so why do you need me?
Q: Every now and then a trigger has to be pulled.
James Bond: Or not pulled. It’s hard to know which in your pajamas. Q.
Q: 007.
The Turner is, of course, carefully chosen and there is little doubt that Sam Mendes – directing his first action movie – is to thank for bringing his erudition and intelligence to bear on what might otherwise have remained a somewhat dated format.
Mendes also no doubt had a hand in the choice of Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’, the final stanza of which provides a fitting climax to M’s peroration to the select committee – immediately before all hell breaks loose. I found myself pondering the exact reasoning behind this particular choice and this naturally led me back to the poem itself.
Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ takes the form of a dramatic monologue in three parts. In the first Ulysses – having taken 10 years to return home after the Trojan wars and having eventually recovered his long abandoned wife and throne – finds himself enduring a quotidian existence, much vexed by the trivial responsibilities of power. He pines for the glory days of yore, longing once more to be able to travel and to explore.
The second part comprises a relatively brief discourse on the virtues of Ulysses’ son, Telemachus, who will rule in his stead once he is gone. The tone suggests that he sees in Telemachus an altogether less passionate, perhaps more ‘modern’ – even sedulous – approach to the business of statesmanship. His admiration verges on the grudging.
He works his work, I mine.
The third and, perhaps, most oft quoted passage comprises an invocation to his mariners (though those who accompanied him on his ‘odyssey’ are – by most readings – already dead) to engage in one final quest, one last adventure – whilst they still have the strength. The passage culminates with these stirringly elegiac lines:
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Interpretations of the poem are legion. Tennyson composed it shortly after the death of a close friend, the poet Arthur Henry Hallam, and said of it: “It gave my feeling about the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life.” There is – as a result – much debate as to what extent Tennyson’s reading of Ulysses is autobiographical. This in turn informs a debate as to the ironical (or otherwise) nature of the poem. This view makes play of the apparent inconsistencies in the character of Ulysses across the poem as a whole.
Most interpretations do, however, seem to consider the closing stanzas inspirational – an invocation of the heroic – and as a result they are much used as mottoes by schools and other similar institutions. The last three lines are engraved on a cross at Observation Hill in Antarctica to commemorate Captain Scott and his party.
My reading is somewhat different. The subject to me seems to be loss. Ulysses is in reality – as Thomas has it – ‘raging against the dying of the light’. He recognises that his long moment in the sun is behind him, and though he comes out of his corner bravely – puffing out his chest and taking on all comers – he actually knows that the game is up.
It is, of course, in the nature of a true work of genius that each of us may find in it our own truths – our own meanings. Though Skyfall is itself certainly no work of genius I am indebted to it for leading me back to these other classics – and for making me think a little…
…and that is certainly more than can be said of any number of other like films.
Best line in the latest episode of the long-running ‘Bond’ franchise – as Albert Finney’s highland gamekeeper, Kincade, greets the first two evil henchmen through the door of the Bonds’ ancestral home – Skyfall – with both barrels of his sawn-off shotgun:
‘Welcome tae Scotland’…
A considerable body of commentary has already been added to the InterWebNet on the subject of Skyfall, which Kickass Canada Girl and I saw – and enjoyed hugely – at the London IMAX over the weekend. Much of the critical reaction has been overwhelmingly positive – which pretty much reflects our view – whilst viewer comments on blogs and forums have comprised the usual baffling mixture of the amusing and the frankly bizarre. I don’t mean to cavil, but who really gets upset over minor plot holes in a Bond movie? Isn’t that rather missing the point?
I have no intention of adding to the tsunami of online reference material on the film itself – but the fact that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the franchise does merit a little consideration. It is my contention that there has been no other franchise in movie history that even comes close to matching the record of the Bond films. I am not interested here in box office take nor profits made – only in the length and diversity of what is, after all, a single and relatively simple idea – which has been turned into a hugely successful and apparently perpetual series.
And the real gotcha? It’s British!!
Enthusiasts might point to the manner in which the franchise has been constantly refreshed – indeed ‘re-booted’, as the parlance goes – in order to retain its ‘relevance’ – though what such pertinence might actually comprise is a matter for endless debate. Again, relevance – in the sense of the films having something to say about contemporary life – is not really the point. At least – not directly…
Some would suggest that the enduring appeal of the films is based on the timeless diet of girls, guns and gadgets. There have, however, been a multitude of other action films with similar ingredients, and I would argue that that this alone can not explain such longevity. My view is that it is more than simply a question of each film beguiling its own generation. I believe that the franchise is capable of continual renewal because of its mythic nature – a nature that was integral to Fleming’s novels from the start.
Bond’s genesis was in the immediate post-war period. As the old world shivered in the embrace of the cold war, Britain – reluctantly but with typical sang froid – dismantled and handed back the constituent parts of its empire. The fact that it had little choice in the matter is barely relevant. Intended or not, few other nations have handled the transition to the post-imperial state with as little turbulence.
What was lost however – along with the empire itself – was the nation’s sustained and carefully crafted imperial mythology. Largely the work of the Victorians, and with its stiff upper lips, sun never setting, pungent whiffs of patriotism and a dashed all-round sense of fair play, this self image – though partial (in all senses) at best – had served the nation well. Whatever republicans and modernists might protest to the contrary, we are a smart enough race to recognise the importance of a national mythology, which is why so many of our myths have survived in one form or another. The loss of empire and demotion from top-nation spot had, however, left a yawning void in our psyche – a void which clearly needed to be filled.
Enter the sixties. Enter James Bond.
In Fleming’s novels – and in the subsequent movie franchise – we have found a new mythic self-image. We like the patriotism, the sense of duty, the determination to succeed against the odds and the understated suggestion of heroism. We appreciate the dry sense of humour, regardless of the situation. We like the style – the tailoring, the cars, the yachts, the luxury lifestyle – strangely (and yet not!) at odds with the purpose of the role. We also like that the films showcase much that we are proud of in our culture – the music, the writing, the acting (Daniel Craig, Dame Judy Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Albert Finney, Javier Bardem – for goodness sake!), the camera work, the special effects – the pure, sophisticated, joyous class of it all!
To those critics who carp that such a brutish, womanising, unreconstructed chauvinist – Fleming’s ‘blunt instrument’ – is entirely unsuited as a mythic role model, I would simply point out that this is to misunderstand the nature of myth itself. Are not the Arthurian heroes also deeply flawed characters? Are not the North American creator figures – the Raven and the Coyote – also amoral tricksters, equally likely to steal, to gorge themselves and to fornicate their way through the firmament as they are to create the sun – the moon – mankind?
It was little surprise to me that Danny Boyle chose to foreground Bond amidst the panoply of cultural icons representing modern Britain in his definitive Olympic opening ceremony. It was only a momentary surprise that Her Majesty herself chose to sanction this choice by breaking with all tradition and appearing alongside – and thus endorsing – this fictional character.
Bond is now a key ingredient of the new mythical self-image that we have constructed for ourselves. And we like what we see…
There are days when I feel particularly like the grumpy old man that I fear I am rapidly evolving into. Dour grey November mornings don’t help much with this, even at the weekend when what lies ahead are a pleasant few days of relaxing with the Kickass Canada Girl, eating and drinking well, going for brisk – if damp – walks, and watching the TV coverage of the home nations being beaten to a pulp on the rugger field by the strapping demi-gods of the southern hemisphere.
At my previous school – with just such grim days in mind – they practiced a rather splendid custom. A former member of the teaching staff had left a bequest to the common room with particular instructions for its use. On one grey miserable Monday morning each November – to be chosen on the hoof by the common room secretary – the bequest would pay for Madiera and Bath Oliver biscuits to be served at the daily mid-morning staff meeting held in the school hall. The date was never revealed in advance so each year on one dank Monday morning at least there would be a pleasant surprise.
However, I digress…
My mood this morning was not ameliorated by my running up against one of those irritations that the InterWebNet provides as a counterbalance to the many benefits it extends. Let me be uncharacteristically direct:
I wished to make a risotto. This is something that I do frequently and at which I have acquired a certain skill. However, the last few times that I have done so I have been disappointed with the chicken stock that I have used.
Now – let’s get this straight. I have at the moment neither the time nor the inclination to make stock from scratch. I know that to do so would yield better results, but on this occasion I intended to use a store-bought product. It quickly occured to me that the InterWebNet might be able to assist me in tracking down a superior comestible, so I fired up the Girl’s iThing and Googled (which is clearly now a verb!) “best store-bought chicken stock”.
You can probably imagine the results. Eleventy-gazillion items all advising me that there is no conceivable alternative to doing the job the hard way – that I am somehow lacking as a man if I do not already have to hand a considerable quantity of chicken detritus and that if I think I stand even the remotest chance of making a decent stock with less than two days hard sweat and toil – then I had jolly well better think again!
It is at such times – when the doubtless worthy denizens of the InterWebNet take it upon themselves to decide that I actually needed an answer to a completely different question to the one that I had asked – that I begin to doubt the efficacy of the entire enterprise, and the unconnected world seems like an increasingly good idea after all.
See what I mean? Grumpy old man!
It was a very good risotto – even though I did not make the stock…
Limbo (noun)
1 – the supposed abode of the souls of unbaptized infants, and of the just who died before Christ’s coming.
2 – an uncertain period of awaiting a decision or resolution; an intermediate state or condition.
Origin: late Middle English: from the medieval Latin phrase in limbo, from limbus ‘hem, border, limbo’
‘Limbo’ has of course an alternative meaning, not – naturally – from the same Latin root but probably derived from ‘limber’ and dating only to the 1950s.
The older usage first appears in the 14th century and, as suggested above, takes two common forms – the ‘Limbo of the Patriarchs’ and the ‘Limbo of Infants’. Both commonly associated with the Catholic Church the former refers to the temporary state of those who, regardless of any sins they may have committed, have died in the sight of god but cannot enter Heaven until redeemed by Jesus Christ – whilst the latter concerns the permanent status of the unbaptized who, dying in infancy, are too young to have committed personal sins but are still tainted by original sin.
In common with a number of other religious terms the word limbo does not itself actually appear in the bible. Neither is the concept of limbo directly spelled out in the scriptures, though some argue that it is implicit in a number of references therein. Though widely used from the middle ages onward the Catholic Church has in recent times rather distanced itself from the conceit – the current Pope being amongst those who have raised questions as to the efficacy of the concept.
Let us not, however, get bogged down here on the subject of pensile lost souls lurking on the border between this life and… whatever may (or may not) follow. Let us in this instance hold fast to the here and now and concentrate instead on the second definition above.
The astute reader will by this point have deduced that I have allowed myself to get sidetracked into this somewhat arcane rumination because I cannot yet – for legal reasons (and I have always wanted to find an opportunity to utilise that particular idiom!) – write about what I really want to write about.
Soon, however… Soon!