Life – Page 35 – Achilles & Aristotle

Rainy Day

Yesterday was a rainy day. And unexpectedly so. Bad start, worse end. Trying to put it in context today (with Bach loud in my ears to block out someone else’s toddler), I googled ‘into every life a little rain must fall’ to find the source…

And the wise words of the final verse Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s ‘Rainy Day’ seemed very wise indeed:

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;

Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;

Thy fate is the common fate of all,

Into each life some rain must fall,

Some days must be dark and dreary.

Chin up, buck up and step up is the answer. The ‘middle years’, viewed from one perspective are one long list of unreasonable and irreconcilable demands. But that’s the price of being at the centre, and fulcrum, of so many people’s lives.

Watching an older man limping awkwardly in front of me this morning (as I rushed from one kid’s activity to the next) was a reminder there’ll be plenty of years when I’d kill for this life. And those years will one day run out.

I feel better for a hot chocolate, some Bach and some writing. There is no point ‘repining’; behind the clouds the sun is still shining.

Art, Children, Life, Music

West Side Story

What a belting soundtrack! The number one selling US album of the 1960s; one listen and you know why. I’ve just written about ‘America’ on ‘Relevant Complexity’ but there’s any number of toe-tappers here.

Lovely to see my little Miss today tripping the boards among the ‘Jets’, backed by Bernstein’s punchy soundtrack and some great choreography, dance and fight scenes. A performance to remember and a soundtrack well worth rediscovering.

Leonard Bernstein’s ‘America’

From the first hand clap to the final crescendo, it sets the hairs on the back of your neck tingling…

The hopes, the fears, the inequality and the immigrant’s fight for the right to the American Dream; Leonard Bernstein’s sprawling, madcap ‘America‘ is his home country’s very embodiment.

Having watched my daughter dance her socks off in her own ‘West Side Story’ today, and unable to shake the melody – I had to find the soundtrack.

Having tried half a dozen versions, for me the remastered Original Motion Picture Soundtrack has it best. Wonderful caterwauling and catcalling; and the most rumbustious, towering orchestral accompaniment.

Ballsy, brash and wonderful – just like the country, ‘America’ has it all.

West Side Story Original Soundtrack Recording

Language, Life

Languages

Although I’ve kept up my French (listening to Radio France Internationale), I’ve let slip the Italian – nothing to aim for, as the family holiday to Italia is off for another year (skint). Imagine my surprise today when I sheepishly logged into my Italian course on Memrise and found I can recall the lot – and arguably better than last time I tried it nearly three months ago.

What an amazing thing the brain is. It just quietly soaks stuff up, sticks it on an empty shelf; and then serves it up just when you least expect it.

Like most tongue-tied Britons, I find it easy to be scared off by languages; but we all speak at least one. With learning apps like Memrise, and foreign language radio (after this I’m tuning into Euronews Radio in Italian again) there’s a whole world of expression to explore. Meraviglioso.

Life, Music

Joy

Having just posted it on my other blog ‘Relevant Complexity‘, something about it felt to me like it deserved its place here too. Perhaps because the “Ode” brought joy to my day and lit up my week.

Beethoven’s 9th: Ode to Europe

As I find my bearings in the ‘classical repertoire‘, there can be few finer guides than Canada’s National Art Centre’s Marjolaine Fournier and Jean-Jacques van Vlasselaer’s “Explore the symphony” podcasts.

I stumbled upon this fabulous couple searching for the background to Prokofiev’s ‘Alexander Nevsky’; and in the process fell a little in love with Canada.

A country that has the imagination and culture to support, bring together and promote the French Canadian double bassist Fournier and the richly accented scholarship of van Vlasselaer, is a very fine country indeed.

And their podcast on Beethoven’s 9th Symphony reminds me what a fine continent Europe is too…

The 9th is Beethoven’s masterwork, and its “Ode to joy” is instantly familiar. But I was fascinated by van Vlasselaer’s story of who Beethoven was; and where he fits at the crossroads of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, bridging the Classical and Romantic periods. Beethoven with the “Ode” celebrates liberté, egalité and fraternité, at the dawn of artists as Artists – no longer paid retainers of aristocracy.

But what matters most is the music. As van Vlasselaer points out, a ‘masterwork’ is a masterwork, because for any age and any generation it is a source of wonder. We may all recognise, Beethoven’s 9th, but everyone should stop, marvel and listen to it again from time to time.

‘Ode to joy’ is also the anthem of the European Union – and was itself a direct product of the complex, interconnected peoples, borders, histories, ideals and culture which are ‘Europe’.

For all the challenges it faces in the 21st Century – and the bloody, brooding history it endured in the 20th – ‘Ode to joy’ reminds us of what Europe is; and can be, at its very best.

Beethoven – Symphony No 9, ‘Choral’ (LSO, Haitink)

Children, Life, Music

: ) or : (

Last week, someone I’ve known for some years described me thus: ‘A generally glass half empty person, whose glass seems a bit fuller than usual’. Anther person countered: ‘No he’s not, I’ve never thought of him as gloomy, it’s just the way he describes things. Look at his socks’. Hmmm.

Truth is they’re probably both right, but I do feel quite cheerful these days. Happiness is a product of the mind, body and soul, but also what you do with your time and who you hang about with. Still happiness is sometimes in the eye the beholder.

I’m reading about the life of the great composer Handel (or Hendel as apparently you should pronounce him). And despite sometimes being described as gloomy in his latter years, when he lost his eyesight – an anecdote suggests he still had some good cheer.

On the suggestion that (as a great organist in his own right) he should share a performance with another great British blind organist, he roared: “But my dear man, this would be the blind leading the blind!”

Pondering it, I idly asked my son what he thought last night, as he brushed his teeth.

“Do you usually find me a happy person or a sad person?”

He thought about it for a minute and said.

“Hmmm. Somewhat in between.”

That’s about right, I reckon – but my glass is generally a bit fuller these days.