Introduction

I published Glanglish, a collection of essays, back in 1990.  And I mean published in the traditional sense: it was a physical book – second-hand copies can still be found on the usual sites.  Those 52 essays were just a selection of the many that I had written at that time, chosen because I presumably thought they were the most suitable.  I wrote even more of them afterwards, and vaguely contemplated a second collection, but was dissuaded from doing so by the complete failure of the first set.

Recently I came across hard copies of all the unpublished essays, each of which is exactly one page long. I do have digital versions, but they are on three-inch floppy discs, as used on the Amstrad PCW 8256, my main computer system for many years.  These non-standard discs are impossible to read nowadays unless you pay exorbitant sums to one of the few data services that can still convert them.  So I have decide to re-type all the essays – great exercise for my piano-playing fingers – and to put them online here as they appear in those hard copies, without any further editing, other correcting obvious mistakes.  I have around 150 to type up, so it will take a while as I work my way through them, in no particular order.

I have chosen to list them chronologically, since I was curious to see what I was writing about when, and how productive I was at various times.  I have included the Glanglish essays in their relevant chronological position to show how the fit into my overall essay production, and what other essays I could have chosen, but didn’t. They are marked with an asterisk, and link to the main Glanglish site, which includes audio versions of all the essays appearing there, for those who might find that an interesting alternative way of approaching them.

Index

Introduction

Madonna 06/09/85
Like a glove 03/02/86
A smooth operation 03/02/86
The first novel 04/02/86
The longest day 06/02/86
The world is full of marred men 14/03/86
Of Africa 15/03/86
Pravda* 18/03/86
The Quiet Earth 19/03/86
Compact discs and Jimmy Young 22/03/86
PLG British string quartet 22/03/86
The Saxon shore     22/03/86
White nights 23/03/86
Glengarry Glen Ross 25/03/86
Difficult loves 29/03/86
Less than zero 29/03/86
Absolute Beginners - the book 31/03/86
Absolute Beginners - the film      08/04/86
Music of eight decades        08/04/86
Random experiences 21/04/86

Ran    21/04/86
Awakenings – Oliver Sacks 23/04/86
Voices – Roger Eno 23/04/86
Vox Boxes 27/04/86
Back to the future 27/04/86
Polish notation 04/05/86
A week in Gourmandy 06/05/86
Chorus of disapproval 07/05/86
The engineer of human souls 08/05/86
French comix 21/05/86
Good timing 21/05/86
Le Nozze di Figaro 27/05/86
Taxi 27/05/86
Arvo Pärt – Almeida Festival 10/06/86
Albert Herring - Aldeburgh Festival 19/06/86
Being there again 21/06/86
Madrigalia 21/06/86
A217 22/06/86
Monteverdi 22/06/86
Talking to myself 22/06/86
True amateurs 23/06/86
The discreet charm of Perrier 30/06/86
Proust and journalism 30/06/86
Economising 26/07/86
The school of graffiti 26/07/86
Bucks and berks 26/07/86
Unfinished symphonies 29/07/86
Venetian dawn 29/07/86
The great Wurlitzer 29/07/86
Early music, late musician 09/08/86
Systems music 09/08/86
Boldly going 10/08/86
The arrogance of florists 12/08/86
The Golden Gate 27/08/86
Symphony in white 27/08/86
Dalliance* 27/08/86
The aristos 10/09/86
Friends like these 25/09/86
Vinyl virtues 25/09/86
Hip hop 07/10/86
Jericho 07/10/86
A walk on the Wildenrath side 07/10/86
The carwash 10/10/86
Contingency 10/10/86
The mystery of the 48 10/10/86
The lie 16/10/86
The collector 22/11/86
Invitation to the voyage 22/11/86
Windowlene 22/11/86
Giants’ work 19/12/86
Rossini 19/12/86
Meditation on a Christmas card 20/12/86
Zen and the art of motoring 21/12/86
Deep structures 28/12/86
Mona Lisa 28/12/86
Outer London 28/12/86
Wolfing it 28/12/86
Accounting for professionals 31/12/86
The baby boomers 05/02/87
Back to Bach I 07/02/87
Haydn in the morning 07/02/87
The havs and the hav nots 08/02/87
The significance of theories 08/02/87
The weekly essay* 09/02/87
Counting the cost* 10/02/87
Where there’s a will there’s a won’t 15/02/87
A matter of luck 07/04/87
Random experiences 11/04/87
Invisible royalty* 12/04/87
The treasure house 13/07/87
Love letters 26/07/87
The impossibility of letters 27/07/87
The new heroic age 28/07/87
It’s a small world 30/07/87
Exhibitionists 01/08/87
Lake District knowledge 02/08/87
Gouldberg variations 04/08/87
The universal village 05/08/87
Alpha and omega 06/08/87
Quick, quick, Oslo 13/08/87
The lie 16/10/87
The post-it modern age 17/10/87
The knife's deity* 17/10/87
Windy city* 17/10/87
Old Budapest 18/10/87
Mozart’s problem 18/10/87
Happy eaters 08/11/87
Casting about 28/11/87
Hydeing in the park 29/11/87
Letter bombs 01/12/87
Modern magic 03/12/87
A dream of a murder 26/12/87
Form v content 28/12/87
Character head 16/01/88
First steps with Lorenzetti 05/03/88
The ultimate tie 06/03/88
Miles better 07/03/88
Revelations 19/06/88
Palladio’s puzzle 20/06/88
The bellyache of an architect 02/07/88
Village voices 02/07/88
Making an art of itself 02/07/88
Madonna 02/07/88
Mercury’s messengers 08/07/88
In Guangzhou zoo 17/07/88
Nuts 17/07/88
What masterpiece?* 18/07/88
8.8.88* 08/08/88
Working it out 09/08/88
Where are the New Chiliasts? 10/08/88
Repeatability* 15/08/88
Silly farts* 21/08/88

Moody in Edinburgh (3.9.88)   4/09/88
Forever Eden* 07/07/89
Stargazing* 16/10/89
Archaic symphonies 17/10/89
Getting the idea* 19/10/89
Dateline: Bali 20/10/89
Scenes from childhood 21/10/89
Start the day: write 21/10/89
Wallpaper* 21/10/89
Intraviewing* 21/10/89
LP RIP 22/10/89
Rubbish* 23/10/89
The insolence of the inanimate* 24/10/89
Nostalgia for Brezhnev* 25/10/89
Colonising names* 26/10/89
Bookness 27/10/89
Power art 28/10/89
The smell of the new 29/10/89
Weird messages* 29/10/89
Thoughts for your pennies* 29/10/89
The naked truth 30/10/89
Poem of urban choreography 31/10/89
Take and give 17/11/89
In Moody’s boatyard 18/11/89
Nan’s ninth 18/11/89
Chiral asymmetries* 18/11/89
The contingent apple* 18/11/89
The profit of the beard* 18/11/89
Spot the similarity* 18/11/89
Dire diary* 18/11/89
Ecstasy 19/11/89
The plane truth* 19/11/89
Glanglish* 19/11/89
The finite brain* 19/11/89
Antics* 19/11/89
Accidents and substance* 20/11/89
The oscillating universe* 21/11/89
Looking at glass* 22/11/89
Cacography* 24/11/89
Sex and Billy Graham 25/11/89
I think therefore - 25/11/89
Systemic dis-ease* 25/11/89
The check-out* 04/12/89
Three sciences* 05/12/89
Socratic wisdom* 06/12/89
Looking down the catenaries 09/12/89
Managerial joys 09/12/89
Our type 09/12/89
Micro politics 09/12/89
Booting up* 09/12/89
The policeman’s bifurcation 10/12/89
Food’s grammar and graces 10/12/89
Ludwig van who?* 10/12/89
Corporeal integrity* 11/12/89
To the power station 12/12/89
Skirmish 13/12/89
Hoardings* 13/12/89
Chopin’s fingering 16/12/89
In security 17/12/89
The new Jesuits* 18/12/89
If were were a has been 20/12/89
Digital reality* 21/12/89
Deep listening 02/01/90
Young hubris 04/01/90
Meta-physicality* 05/01/90
The crown in the jewel* 06/01/90
Scarlatti’s cat* 06/01/90
God in the body* 07/01/90
Truckling on* 07/01/90
Parallel worlds 08/01/90
The slide 23/12/91
Sign of the times 23/12/91
Spot the similarity 24/12/91
Translations 24/12/91
Dust to dust 24/12/91
If I were a gnat 24/12/91
The Wipees 24/12/91
When Greek meets Greek 25/12/91
Unshod for water 25/12/91
Normality 25/12/91
Digital disease 25/12/91
The souls of the feet 26/12/91
Techno-babel 26/12/91
The Beethoven syndrome 26/12/91
Thank you, fug 26/12/91
Entitlements 26/12/91
The career of language 26/12/91
Harlem whispers 26/12/91
In security 27/12/91
All what jazz? 27/12/91
The hills of Venice 27/12/91
Exponents 27/12/91
Ferry lands 27/12/91
The great joke 27/12/91
Fricative frisson 28/12/91
Dateline: Bali 28/12/91
Consumption 28/12/91
Unlonely planet 28/12/91
Pushing the envelope 28/12/91
Curried away 18/01/92
Like a virgin queen 18/01/92
One world 25/01/92
Popular fiction 01/02/92
Real virtual reality 08/02/92
Intellectual love 08/02/92
Negotiating life 22/02/92
The domestic time machine 22/02/92
If were were a has been 22/02/92
Going back 22/02/92
The Hour of the Sheep 23/02/92
Radio activity 23/02/92
The class of 39 23/02/92
Così fan tutti     29/02/92
The eyes have it 29/02/92
Walk on by 29/02/92
Just say nay 29/02/92
Banal retention 01/03/92
Chopin’s hands 01/03/92
Capital ideas 01/03/92
The Connection Machine 01/03/92
The itch 01/03/92
Credit cards 13/03/92
Conti 14/03/92
Help 14/03/92
The art of the baroque airline 14/03/92
The analytic L-matrix 15/03/92
Police aware aware 15/03/92
Word stars 15/03/92
The flip of a copper 15/03/92
The game’s the thing 15/03/92
Models of conduction 21/03/92
Switched on Bach II 21/03/92
Deep listening 22/03/92
Cicatrice 22/03/92
Hamlet’s omelette 31/03/92
At your service 26/04/92
Killing Murgatroyd 02/05/92

Giants' work

In two Anglo-Saxon poems there is the phrase enta geweorc - work of giants - referring to ancient buildings of immense but decaying splendour.  The newly-arrived Germanic tribes stood in awe of these silent and mysterious achievements in stone; they could not comprehend them, but they were sure that they could be the product of no human agency.

Something of that shiver of non-recognition lingers still at the splendid exhibition of modern British architecture at the Royal Academy.  As befits a show dealing with endeavours on the largest scale, only three architects are featured; Rogers, Foster and Stirling.  Each has two rooms with drawings, photos and models.  Over each of them hovers the sense of futility, of giants surrounded by pygmies.

The accompanying book spells this out clearly.  Each of the architects is a prophet with little honour in his own land.  Each has spent years of his life on projects which never came to fruition. Each has had the loftiest visions.  And yet there is surprisingly little bitterness, as if they recognised that they were out of joint with the world, and that such outcomes were inevitable.

But then the whole business of architecture is strange.  It is the grandest of arts, dealing at the very least with the habitations of man, with the largest structures we have about us.  At its heights, it is inspirational, and attains something akin to physical spirituality in its pyramids and temples and cathedrals.  And yet it is also the most compromised of arts.  It is hedged in by the pettiest of human constraints, like planning regulations.  And buildings are always so visible, such palpable monuments that everyone wants to have their say.  Even members of the public, who would not dream of commenting on a new symphony or poem, take it upon themselves to judge all aspects and every detail of a new building project.

Against this background, the architect can only look on, and dream.  The exhibition is clear enough proof that these men have dreamt, and have often been rudely awoken.  So many of their grandest plans have been re- jigged, objected to, re-drawn again, accepted then finally dropped for the most banal or arbitrary of reasons.

When one slips through the petty net of this world, it stands forth like a wonder.  Here in London we have the Lloyds' building, a majestic castle in steel and concrete; Stuttgart has its new art gallery wing, its creamy stones blending elements from countless architectures; and Hong Kong has the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, the skyscraper redeemed.
 
Each of them is at once totally and breathtakingly modern, and yet because of their assurance, their sense of place and of physical rightness, they seem to be timeless, of immemorial antiquity. It is as if in the midst of our small and petty hovels, with the ramshackle buildings falling this way and that, there are huge towering remnants of an older, deeper civilisation. These are truly enta geweorc, and the RA exhibition shows us just what giants produced them.

(19.12.86)

Index

Deep structures

One of the joys of reading a modern poet in extenso is that the idiosyncrasies become the norm, and you can concentrate on the meaning they convey or, sometimes, hide.  After a while, you find you can go further than that; you can begin to see the underlying bones of the poetry, the 'deep structures', over which the surface detail is draped.

A case in point is Auden.  His poetry manages to combine a sense of complete translucency of surface with a centre which can be irritatingly obscure.  The best antidote to this is, as it should be, reading plenty of his verses. Certain structures begin to emerge.

For example, many verses, or even groups of verses, consists of one long sentence.  Holding on to the sense and subsidiary details makes Proust read like a Sun editorial.  Yet among the lapidary clauses, the loping rhythms, the unexpected conjunction, the sudden homely image, there lie a few basic rhetorical tricks, of which variation is the most important.

Take the opening of the poem In Transit.  The first sentence runs across the first stanza and halfway into the second.  Most of it is redundant grammatically, though not, of course, poetically.  So the first line could be reduced in essence to: “(Let out where two fears intersect)x5  I stand, (pale)x4, but not for long: a professional friend is at hand who smiling leads us indoors; we follow in file, obeying that fond peremptory tone reserved for (those nervously sick)x3”. Many of the phrases condensed to brackets are themselves extended by repetition.  Within this expanded space, Auden uses some characteristic dabs of colour which need precisely this room to work.  Thus we have engineers, Caesar, Cartesian doubt; toil and gender; ponds and ragamuffins.

The poem Plains from the same collection uses identical techniques, but takes them further. The second verse runs: “It's horrible to think what peaks come down to, that (pecking rain)x2 defeat(s) tall pomps of stone where goddesses lay (sleeping)x2, that what those blind brutes leave when they are through is (nothing but a mere substance)x3”. Again, there are the knowingly disconcerting juxtapositions, the potter's cuff and the concrete which unsexes.

The fact that Auden uses these techniques is interesting; but whether it is anything more can be tested by trying to construct an Auden poem using them. The effect is likely to be more ordinary than Audenary.  Which goes to show that his achievement is to use these fairly crude devices as a springboard for his personal poetry.

Another example helps to elucidate the difference between having and being such structures.  Recently Glen Baxter has attained a little notoriety for his drole cartoons with wacky captions.  The drawing looks like something out of a Boy Scout's manual of 1938; attached to it is a line which is totally 1983. The humour lies in the disjunction between image and text, and particularly between the two sensibilities implicit in them.  However, I suggest that unlike Auden's poetry, Baxter's humour is repeatable, even if not strictly predictable. Not such deep structures in his case, then.

(28.12.86)

Index

Zen and the art of motoring

Against the background of rampant intemperate fundamentalism, the appeals of Buddhism have always seemed to me to be especially attractive.  Unlike the hectoring of the holier-than-thou Christians or the jihad-crazed Muslims, Buddhists have been content to keep a low spiritual profile.  In fact, what might appear a fault - its almost total lack of proselytising zeal - is Buddhism's greatest strength.

And nowhere more so than behind the wheel of a motor.  So far as I can ascertain, the potential of Buddhism in this sphere has never been sufficiently explored.  Roman Catholics have their St Christopher, and possibly some more modern update, a latter-day holy mechanic; Jews, of course, maintain their direct dialogue with Yahweh, who doubtless gives the wheel a nudge from time to time; but for the rest of us, particularly those of a sceptical disposition, it has been hard to find a suitable deity or force at whose feet we can lay the awful responsibility of driving.

Buddhism may be the answer.  Consider the first four steps of the Eightfold Path.  Right Understanding: are you sure you know the aerodynamics of your car, and the full range of its handling capabilities?  Right Motive: it is not enough to care about getting from A to B; you must care deeply about the manner of your getting there.  This enables you to make the right decisions at every point along the journey, not just at the beginning.  Right Speech: this is about control.  It really is no good sounding off when a Jag-u-ar carves you up: allusions to the unusual layout of his face is unlikely to influence him much.  Remember there are two panes of glass and a Bruce Springsteen record between you and him. Finally, and most importantly, Right Action: whatever you do, do it right.

If these metaphysical distinctions are a little too fine to grasp, bear in mind the guiding principle of Buddhism: that desire is the root of all suffering, and that what we must seek is a snuffing out.  A practical example may help.

You are proceeding along at a healthy, Buddhist 40 mph in a built-up area.  Chanting your favourite mantra, you are happily oblivious of the fact that you are well over the speed limit.  You approach some traffic lights; you are conscious that they are about to change.  Do you (a) accelerate? (b) slow down? (c) sing the second verse of your mantra?  The answer is of course (a); however, it is vital that at this point you do not care whether you cross that light legally - the fact that you have accelerated is probably something deep to do with your karma.  Under no circumstances must you desire to cross the light; if your heart beat rises even a smidgen you condemn yourself to another couple of centuries of re-birth with the added risk of coming back as a tape-worm.

The risks may be great, but so are the rewards.  You will be able to ignore flash bastards in XR4i 4x4s, be totally unaware of parking restrictions, and care not a jot for one-way streets.  Of course, you will probably get done along the way; but remember, all this world, including that policeman, is mere illusion.

(21.12.86)

Index

The collector

When I was young I had a collection of miniature dictionaries - Russian to English, Spanish to English and all the rest.  They were only a couple of inches in height, and bound in brightly-coloured plastic.  I could speak practically none of the languages, and I had no conceivable use for the dictionaries.  I simply collected them, and aspired to a complete set.  Later on, my collecting became more purposeful.  At the time when I listened to a great deal of classical music on records, I would always go for big boxed sets which offered me the complete X of Y.  Thus one week I would get to know the complete piano music of Ravel, or the complete motets of Gibbons, or the complete string quartets of Shostakovitch.  It was the same with books; the complete corpus of Anglo-Saxon, the complete poems of Robert Browning.  I was a compulsive collector.

I have more or less kicked the habit now, I can pass record and book shops without succumbing to any violent urge to go and fill some lacuna in my many collections.  I recognise what my collecting meant, and what it means for the millions of cigar label, pigeon egg and football scarf collectors up and down the country.  Collecting is about control; it is about order; it is about fear.

Collectors recognise that the world out there is very big - too big for comfort, and much too big ever to be comprehended.  They sense that its chaos threatens them; they crave an order which that world will never supply.  So they create their own, smaller world, and within it they impose their own order.

This is why collectors are at once so disparate and so similar.  What is collected is almost irrelevant.  Ironically, the one thing they seem fanatical about is in fact quite unimportant.  It is the medium, not an end in itself.  Hence, too, the extraordinary range of collecting fads.  From lamp posts to false teeth; from tins of shoe polish to train numbers.

While it is probably true that what we are drawn to collect reflects some deep psychological need within us - stamps for the would-be traveller, coins for the would-be millionaire - and that they provide a socially acceptable outlet for our deepest longings, other factors play a part.  For instance specialisation in collecting - not just cheese labels, but South American cheese labels - helps set the collector apart.  It asserts individuality.  The fractured world of collecting mirrors and sometimes replaces the desire for identity in the real world.

Just as collecting allows a small corner of reality to be controlled, so the choice of specialism allows the collector not only mastery but a sense of prestige.  You, too, can be the acknowledged world expert on bus tickets issued in the Manchester area between 1947 and 1983.  The fact that you are the only person in the world who cares a hoot about this field is irrelevant; the unalterable fact remains that you have validated your own sense of value.  In the last analysis, there is no difference between obsessive collecting and all intellectual endeavour.  The ultimate aim of both is control of a circumscribed domain, and the final reward power through knowledge.  It is simply a question of scale.

(22.11.86)

Index

Mozart's problem

It has been calculated that it should have taken every hour of every day of Mozart's brief life just to write out the sheer quantity of music he composed.  That it plainly did not is a measure of how far genius transcends crude calculations based on the abilities of lesser mortals.  But leaving aside the question of how Mozart found time both to compose and to write out so much, there remains a more fundamental problem: how did he find time to compose at all?

This may seem ridiculous.  Clearly, you might say, he just sat down and wrote.  But Mozart was not producing knitting patterns; it has been the universal experience that his music is among the most human ever written - it seems to speak to us in a uniquely direct fashion.  His overmastering desire to write operas - the musical art-form closest to the everyday, for all its ludicrous conventions and excesses - is eloquent and undeniable testimony to this.  His music seems to tap into some deep vein of knowledge about his fellow men and women - and particularly about their complicated and messy interactions.

Nor is this knowledge purely theoretical or simply inscrutable intuitions of genius. We have his own story, minutely chronicled through his witty and articulate letters, as evidence that he drank life to the lees.  When his music sings of ecstasy and anguish we can be sure that it comes the scarred heart of the man.

The question of when Mozart found time to compose can therefore be refined; when, we might ask, did Mozart find time to live life so deeply and then transmute his experiences into music?  It is not, of course, only Mozart's problem.  But because of his extraordinary fecundity, together with the two-handed way he took on all that life had to offer, he presents the problem in its clearest form.

And that problem is the problem of art which every artist must confront.  As well as the artist, art is predicated upon an audience, be it one or a million, manifest or potential.  Art is about communication between the artist and the audience.  If art is to have any value for the audience, it must treat, however distantly, of human things; which means that the artist must know and understand the same.

In some ways, then, the artist must live in the outside world, or at least outside art.  For Mozart this meant a punishing social round of parties and balls and meals and private concerts of dirty songs; for Proust it meant countless visits to salons and dinner parties among the elite of the Faubourg St Germain; for Rembrandt, it meant worrying about his creditors and looking in the mirror at a man growing old.

The paradox is, of course, that while artists are gathering this raw experience, they are not creating the art they ultimately live for.  There is thus this constant tension between art and experience.  Art needs the input, but the gathering of it precludes the production of the art which it fuels.  Perhaps the best definition of genius is someone who manages to balance this impossible equation as Mozart did, supremely.

(18.10.87)

See also Moody Sonnets - Wrong Time, Wrong Place 

Index

A matter of luck

Everybody knows them.  Those people who always seem to fall on their feet, no matter what disaster overwhelms them.  They are made redundant, pick up a fat cheque by way of compensation - and walk straight into a better-paid job.  They are injured fairly seriously, and must take several months off work.  During that time they write a best-selling novel or invent a new D-I-Y tool which makes them a fortune.  A long-standing relationship breaks up messily and painfully; in process of picking up the pieces they meet the love of their life.  In a word, they are lucky.

Some would say that I am lucky.  Events happen to me which seem to defy all natural reasonableness.  Several years ago, I went skiing for the first time, I stepped on to the piste, stumbled ungracefully and fell over.  I staggered up and on, and then noticed that one of the lenses of my glasses was missing.  I stopped, walked back ten feet; there, half- buried in the snow was the lens.  More recently, having moved on from spectacles to contact lenses, I lost one of them.  Four days later, as was sitting down in a completely different room, I saw a faint twinkle amidst the pile of the carpet.  It was the errant lens.

Surprising perhaps; amazing, even; but not lucky.  Throughout my life opportunities have arisen at just the right moment; one door slamming shut knocks open several; lost things turn up impossibly.  And the reason for all this is simple and prosaic: I create the conditions where the unlikely is at least more likely.

By myself, I am unable to influence the course of events.  But I make sure that I can seize the merest hint of an opportunity should it present itself as, sooner or later it must do.  Subconsciously, I work with possible developments in mind, placing myself in the right position like a chess-player; I act as a midwife to the future.

I found the lens in the snow because I walked back, hoping to find it; I noticed the contact lens because my eye habitually rakes the ground for interest.  Everything I could do, I did; it needed only the seed of an opening and my "luck" flowered inevitably.

It is the same with those who succeed and succeed against all the odds and obstacles. The job or the novel happens because they strive for it; they never submit to a situation.  You may not control the details of your destiny, but you can shape it.  In this respect, far from being bound up with abject fatalism, such "luck" is its opposite.  Instead of passively accepting your life, you actively shape its landscape.

People invoke luck because it absolves them.  It spares them the time and the effort of husbandry; it avoids the burden of personal responsibility.  That they fail is bad luck, not their own inability to take control.  If others succeed, it is mere good luck.  And to succeed against all the odds is dismissed even more simplistically by invoking a yet greater luck.  In the end luck becomes like a childish explanation of everything, and about as useful.  Which is why those whom others regard as lucky are indeed lucky - but only because they refuse to recognise the concept at all.

(7.4.87)

Index

Happy Eaters

As you drive against the rain, churning through the spray thrown up by the implacable bulk of the lorries, they emerge as a shivering, glistening form on your windscreen.  Late at night, as you push the small patch of light from your headlights into the the tunnel of blackness, they loom out in front of you like leering nightmares.  Even their names are provocations, suggestive of late night films, of crazed, cleaver-wielding midgets and horrible, grinning things from the pit.  Little Chefs and Happy Eaters.

From the outside they look like one of those isolated diners in a Hopper painting of Nowheresville.  There is a hard light which falls through the windows into the puddles lying outside.  It always seems to be raining when you enter them, or cold and windy - as if they cannot offer true shelter unless the elements validate their function.  As you enter, you notice that there are few people, and that those few serve only to emphasise the absence of others.  Waitresses lean listlessly against the counter, eyeing you superciliously, suspiciously, as if customers were the last thing they expected.

And yet, for all that, these roadside restaurants exude a feeling of calm.  Along with the bright lighting, there is warmth here; the colour schemes are upbeat, with swathes of strong primaries.  Everything is neat and tidy - oppressively so.  They are bastions of order; they are the present-day equivalents of the square-shouldered castra which the Romans placed along their roads, affirmations of a kind of civilisation.

But the effect of these eateries is stronger than that.  They are not just warm, safe havens, outposts of comfort in a wet and dark world; they are immediately reassuring as only the truly familiar can reassure us.  And they are familiar - even though we may have never set foot there before - because they are all identical.

Wherever you go, you find the Little Chefs and Happy Eaters of this world.  Step inside, and you step into all of them.  The colours, the designs, the food; the patterns are repeated perfectly.  Even the waitresses look like mass-produced clones, the same clash of Have-a-nice-day Miss America uniforms with the defiantly morose Tesco Traceys within.

Because these places are everywhere, and everywhere the same, they are, in effect, nowhere.  Stepping into them is like leaving the map.  This is their function.  They offer the weary traveller, whom time seems to have abandoned, the chance to opt out of the journey for a while.  They stand as the negation of the whole business of travelling.  Which is why they mock us as we drive past them.  Look, they seem to say, you are not here, you are travelling still; endlessly, pointlessly.  They are like silent seductive sirens calling Odysseus bound to his mast.

As they mock us for passing them, so they bless us in using them.  Hence the strange, de-personalised look of beatification on eaters' faces.  Their minds have left their bodies, which remain hurtling along the road; here they have found a transcendent peace.  O happy, Happy Eaters.

(8.11.87)

Index

Letter bombs

We are all terrorists.  Probably every week we indulge in a tiny act which has all the hallmarks of urban sabotage: its immediate consequences are distant from us, the innocent are often harmed, and it takes no courage to carry it out.  We are talking about one of the most insidious, because most subtle, forms of terrorism: sending a letter. 

A letter is a time bomb.  We write it, we post it; hours or even days later, it arrives at its destination.  We do not have to witness or suffer the immediate effects; this in itself may encourage us to heights of folly or depths of despicability which the safety of time and distance alone can bring out in us.  A letter is nearly always the coward's way out.  It is controlled and one directional.  You, the letter-writer, call all the shots: the reader is never allowed even the smallest of walk-on parts.  If they are acknowledged at all, it is likely to be through patronising rhetorical questions.  Words are put in their mouth which invariably damn them even deeper.  As the writer of the letter, we treat our audience as little better than children, servants or slaves; they are seen in our mind's eye, but never heard.

Conversations are far more dangerous.  There, the audience has parity with the speaker, who in his or her turn will find themselves on the receiving end.  Dialogues can go horribly out of control; soon you may find yourself in uncharted territory, where your honed speeches are wasted and useless.  In contrast, a letter is like a rigidly formalised ritual, or a highly stylised game, where you have set the rules, and you are the umpire.

And yet sending a letter has its own dangers, willingly embraced by the sender.  Because of the time-lag between writing and receipt, a letter must always be an act of recklessness, a gamble, a death-wish almost.   We feel, we write, we send; we may well then repent in the leisure which the wait for its effects affords us.

But we know that a letter is unstoppable.  Once it is popped into the postbox, it is as good as gone.  We are like condemned prisoners, waiting for the last dawn; we are doomed, but we must wait.  During those long nights of the postal service, we may suffer ecstasies of remorse, sudden accesses of shame, fear, even circumspection.  And we revel in our impotence, for all the world like exquisite masochists.

Each time we post a letter we ignore this fatal flaw because the process has been neatly partitioned.  The act of posting a letter is, in itself, trivial and harmless.  The dreadful hour when the transmitted letter arrives and does its awful work is tomorrow, hence, never.  The personal casuistry of the twentieth century works its magic once more.

Because letters can be so apocalyptic in their effects, and yet so painless in their execution, they therefore form the perfect pick-me-up.  They offer the powerful and thrilling prospect of almost limitless potential consequences without the trouble of having to face any of them immediately.  Power without responsibility; it could almost be the textbook definition of a modern-day terrorist.

(1.12.87)

Index

Hydeing in the park

Every landscape has its emotional analogue.  The sunlit Tuscan valleys suggest a life-affirming indomitability of spirit; the velvety fells of Cumbria are almost religious in their eternal, ascetic beauty; and the impossible world of Kashmir can only be called ecstasy.  As such, the devastation of the great winds has at least allowed those who have been similarly rent and uprooted to find their external equivalent.

Perhaps this is partly why Hyde Park, for all its tragic scenes, proved so popular on a cold Sunday afternoon.  To be sure, there were the usual dog walkers and amorous couples; but as the twilight descended and the mists began to rise, their presence became more and more ghostly for the other, solitary, more serious walkers.  As people stood on their own by the Serpentine, and the babble of foreign voices rose and fell, confused in the distance, it seemed like a vision of hell: lost souls wandering aimlessly, hoping they had found Lethe, the river of oblivion.

The size of Hyde Park allows you to feel away from the world, and alone with yourself.  Traffic - quiet on a Sunday anyway - is reduced to a vague rumble. The high-rise buildings are mostly dark, or twinkle like lights on spectral Christmas trees.  The great globe lamps strung out along the lake glow dully in the obscured air; everything has a very Victorian feel about it, enhanced by the brooding presence of the Royal Albert Hall and the crazy gothic spaceship of the spotlit Albert Memorial.

The fallen trees lie neatly trimmed and ready for cutting up; their branches are piled impotently alongside them like limbs lopped from a cadaver.  It is more than just the sense of desecration which attends this sight: what could be more disturbing than to see woods meant for pleasure felled and trussed up?  It is as if the sanctity of the ancient trees has been violated, and the outraged wood spirits are abroad, chilling the air as they move about sniffing for vengeance.  Certainly, as evening tightens it grip, the whole mood of the park gradually changes.

All the wildfowl have grown strangely still, even the raucous honking geese.  They sit on the water at the edge of the promenade, watching the last few lonely walkers.  They maintain a respectful silence in the face of this other, deeply-felt silence.  Details of the landscape are lost in an inky blackness which pours over everything.  Only a few of the tallest trees that survived point their spiky fingers heavenward, in a last supplication.  Sunday is supposed to begin the week, but its evenings are always the saddest; and it is this final moment before the gates are locked which the solitary visitors have come for, the ultimate correlate of themselves.

But elsewhere in the park, something has been fighting against the darkness.  In one of the closed-off areas used by the park authorities, great sections of the trees, with their attendant branches, have been formed into a huge pyre.  It burns, as it must have burnt for days, and will do for many more.  The heat it gives off is of a curiously wet and living kind; for a few metres it seems to fight back the cold and the dark.  Even fallen trees have their uses. 

(29.11.87)

Index

Haydn in the morning

Papa Haydn, Father of the Symphony: they are meant as terms of respect, but they do him a disservice. Haydn was never old.  His works abound with boyish jokes and youthful high spirits.  It was Haydn - not Beethoven - who first replaced the stiff and formal minuet with the anarchic scherzo.  Throughout his life his style was refined and pared down, but never lost its sparkle; nor did it ever lapse into senile mannerisms.

In part this can be attributed to being born in a young age.  When Haydn started writing, the Classical style was in its infancy.  What became cliché was then fresh - even the tonic chord was imbued was a sense of wonder and discovery.  The preceding Baroque period had regarded music as the harmonious coincidence of contrapuntal lines; chords were almost just accidents.  It was not until the first Classicists that the basic dynamics of music - chord progressions and their implicit tonalities - were explored for themselves. Anyone who doubts the centrality of this approach might reflect that the vast majority of present-day pop music - the most vital art around - derives its power from just three chords.

As the language of music was at its most fertile during Haydn's lifetime, so that same period saw most of the main compositional forms established.  What is loosely called sonata form evolved from earlier dance movements written with simple binary structures. That form was then implemented in three main Classical vehicles; the piano sonata, the string quartet and the symphony.  Haydn was a master of them all; his long and fecund life is largely the story of his delighted roaming through these virgin tracts.

The piano sonata is remarkable for using not only the Classical period's defining style and form, but its characteristic instrument too.  The pianoforte was developed in the early 1700s from the harpsichord, which it far surpassed in terms of expressive and hence formal possibilities.  Haydn's 50 or so piano sonatas represent the gradual evolution of a basic pianistic style we now take for granted.  From the very earliest exercises in two-part writing through to the later works with their exploration of almost orchestral sonorities, Haydn's piano sonatas are remarkable above all for their clear lines and plain delight in the physical medium.

Although Haydn is frequently called the Father of the Symphony, he has far better title to being the creator of the string quartet.  Much of his most innovative music was written for what is perhaps the quintessential Classical medium.  Again it is the honesty of his music which shines through this most perspicuous of instrumental combinations.

But for many people the richest expression of Haydn remains his hundred or so symphonies.  It is certainly true that the greater resources allowed his fertile imagination full play; more than anyone - Mozart included - he writes with the pure sound of each instrument in mind, rather than creating novel orchestral sonorities for their own sake.  His watchword is economy.  Perhaps this is why his symphonies remain the perfect music to start the day with, the aural equivalent of early sunlight streaming through the window.  They seem to offer a simple and joyous vision of such clarity and order we almost believe the rest of the day might follow suit.

(7.2.87)

See also Moody Sonnets – Sixty-eight Quartets

Index

Exhibitionists

It is a well-known fact that animal behaviour deteriorates dramatically if there is a critical level of overcrowding, if the natural space animals inhabit is persistently violated.  And yet one of the characteristic activities of the late twentieth century is built around an organised version of this very loss of personal space. But at a cost.

These events are called trade exhibitions.  They involve, on scales ranging from tens of exhibitors and hundreds of visitors to thousands of the former and many tens of thousands of the latter, bringing together within a very constricted space and for a limited time, all the constituent elements of an industry sector to form a complete microcosm.  The better the exhibition, the more closely it mirrors the larger world.

But it is a distorting mirror, and a selective one.  It is as if all the inessentials of the outside environment had been pared away to reveal the bones; as if the rest of the world were just scenery: exhibitions remove that scenery to reveal the actors on a bare stage, staring at each other.

Because the scenery is minimal, and because the natural territorial spaces are eroded, the behaviour of exhibitors and visitors alike is extraordinary.  The exhibitors must keep their posts as inflexibly as they must keep their smiles.  Everyone is dressed to the nines - particularly ironic in view of the fact that exhibition halls are invariably hot and clammy.  It is like something out of a Grosz caricature, the bovine men in their business uniforms, ties awry, the blowsy women hired for the day, heavily made up and scantily and tastelessly dressed, leering fixedly and passionlessly at the jaded punters.  - Who themselves adopt awkward stances, their gazes studiedly avoiding the aggressively eager stand attendants.  And like those attendants and their sad female baits, visitors seem to be condemned to remain upright without respite, as if it were an unspoken contest - a standing marathon - or a slow, insidious torture.

It is partly this which contributes to the surreal quality of exhibitions.  Every visitor is on the move, restless and unsatisfied.  They are searching perhaps for that new product, that important contract - perhaps just for the exit.  But in a sense that searching assumes an almost abstract nature, as if it were part of the condition of such events.

And this searching never seems to stop, just as the show itself never changes.  There is no possibility of development.  And so there is no sense of time, which can only be grasped by observing processes which evolve.  Such shows seem to last an eternity.

The images begin to fall into place.  The venue is hot and airless, vast and echoing with the constant confused hubbub.  Everyone is moving, endlessly moving, like the poor souls which Dante saw.  Everyone is searching for something, a resolution which never comes.  And everyone is suffering; it shows on their faces which shine with a strained, unnatural light as they shuffle amid the sweaty throng, trying to avoid their sight, smell and touch.  Exhibitions are hell, and hell is other people. 

(1.8.87)

Index

Old Budapest

Old Budapest is no more.  The smell of bubbling goulash, the cool and subtle Tokays, the plangent strains of the gypsy violinists, the dark Hungarians with their sparkling eyes and wry smiles - all are gone.  It is as if a small part of Europe has disappeared off the face of the earth.

True, there is the Gay Hussar just down the road, but it is not the same.  To lose a favourite restaurant is like losing an old friend.  Both are unique and irreplaceable.  You turn up one day, and they have simply vanished, without warning or forwarding address.  You are left only with the memories.

Good restaurants tend to be charged with them.  A favourite haunt will be saved for special occasions, which by their nature will be relatively few.  As a result, the locale becomes an integral part of those evenings; to think of your fellow diners is to think of the restaurant.  Losing the restaurant seals up those memories as if in some time capsule.  Eventually the restaurant becomes an era; do you remember when we used to dine at the Café X? we ask our cronies in years to come.  It is the same with biographies of the famous.  They are as much the stories of the restaurants and cafés they frequented; think of Les Deux Magots, Harry's Bar and the rest.

Buildings may rise and fall, but we soon assimilate them into our mental image of the townscape.  Shops too open and close; but except for those in which we have some particular emotional investment - a barber's perhaps, or a tailor's - we migrate easily and unthinkingly to other establishments when the need arises.  But we notice when restaurants disappear.  It means we must change our habits, explore new possibilities, investigate new worlds.  For a restaurant does not exist in isolation; it draws in the whole vicinity, and becomes a defining landmark for it.

Thus the restaurants I have lost have been painful uprootings.  In one case a closing down has cost me an area of London, since I now have no points of reference.  Il Palio was a simple but atmospheric Italian restaurant in Earl's Court Road, complete with check tablecloths and faded pictures of Siena on the walls.  One day I went past and it was a boarded-up shop-front.  In that instant I lost an entire district of West London.

The Diamond was a cheap and basic Chinese restaurant in Lisle Street.  It had a feel of the Triads about it, with small and angry-looking Chinese running everywhere.  Eventually the Triads seem to have got to it; I went to eat there once, and there was nothing but a wrecked shell.  Thereafter, my Chinatown was the poorer.

And finally there was the Old Budapest.  Never will I forget the luscious coolness of the pressed pike, the sheer amplitude of the smoked goose with its red cabbage and steaming onions, the dry delight of the wines.  Nor will I forget the stumpy little violinist playing Brahms Hungarian Dances - what else? And I will not forget the civilised, old world staff, exiles perhaps, and with all the dignity which that confers.  The Old Budapest restaurant may no longer serve its exquisite food, but for me it lives on.
 
(18.10.87)

Index