Achilles & Aristotle

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.

Achilles, Aristotle, Art, Life, Music, Philosophy, Photography, Poetry, Science, Sport, Writing

Relevant Complexity

Here’s to a brand new year.

And to celebrate I’ve bashed out a new blog, based on what I’ve learned about life, the world and everything since I started Achilles and Aristotle in 2010.

Time flies – or rather it doesn’t; a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. But ‘Relevant Complexity’ was a fairly early discovery, I first wrote about it in January 2012 here.

Like all good things in the writing life, the more you write about it, the more you think about it, the more it changes you and what you do – Aristotle said as much.

I’ll plan to keep both blogs going: this one as a reminder of what I was up to in years to come; the new one to remind me to live for the day and enjoy a life full of ‘Relevant Complexity’.

Life

Auld langs ache

Starting with a bleeding hand and busted arm, and ending with the cold which took out a quarter of my daughter’s school; December was a hard month.

Still, it’s in the bag. And yesterday for the first time in a month I had energy to burn again. Sure I’m still a bit stiff; and still coughing, but the worst is over.

Long walks, fetching, carrying – even chopping carrots, which for a month has been painfully slow, all systems are nearly go.

What a lesson it has been. A one-way ticket to my later years: unable to cycle; struggling to hold onto handrails as I wheezed and wobbled on and off the steamed-up wintry Number 12 bus.

The Christmas week was a cracker with a temperature, weak knees and a bad chest. But, I got everything I wanted this festive season; and gave of good cheer to my nearest and dearest.

So here’s to better health and a happy New Year.