Friday 27 May 2016

EVENSONG. THERE WAS THIS KID.

I was talking to a young man in the hospital, bright, funny, curious; brighter than a thousand junior doctors, working as the ward orderly.

I declined my by then usual black coffee, saying, I gotta absent that shit from my life, I like it but its so bad. Yeah, but what's life without some Vice, he countered, looking at me.

Well, even the best vices, y'know, they just  become habits.

He looked at me some more.

And then, I said, they become memories.

He looked as though, in forty years' time, he might blow on the embers of that conversation and remember me; that I might, briefly, like a holo-memory, spring into life.

A junior doctor, of course, would just have guffawed and moved-on, back into his equilibrium, going about what mr tdg describes as his dull, mechanistic job.

The time I have wasted, listening to poor or indifferent music has been the next best thing to a recurring,  crippling  vice. Indolent and indiscriminate, I have wasted years, listening repeatedly to stuff which I could already recite backwards, standing on my head, not knowing - until recently - quite how much music there was, even in the Western canon, never mind the Asian or Arabic  - although I would prefer never to hear a note of Oriental music.  I'll  just digress, on that, a moment. I recently watched a 10,000 strong, well-scrubbed and uniformed Chinese choir perform the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth symphony with some state orchestra,  they must have hundreds of them, in China.


I daresay that every last one of the choristers  sang every last note absolutely correctly for fear of a glorious, People's Republic bullet in the back of the neck but fuck me, Jesus, it was awful.
 Too many people, too many voices. Sound travels at 1100 feet per second, not fast enough to usefully cover the distance from the orchestra to the back rows  or even the middle rows of the vast choir. You'd expect the Chinks to know that stuff, physics, acoustics but no, they were all toothily singing their hearts out in perfect, unsynchronised  dissonance, a seething cauldron of noises, all a split-second out of synch. Beethoven, if he could've heard,  would've pissed on them. 

I though it  all dismally emblematic of NewCathay - copying the West, bigger, brasher, more ambitious, cheaper but useless, good for fuck all. 

We must, 

thanks to Junky George Osborne,  
hope that their understanding  of nuclear fission is greater than their  understanding of Western music, lest the South Coast go molten. 

Part of this govament's long-term economic wotsaname, 
to get the country back on its knees, I mean feet.

Chinese nuclear power? 
Right, that's the stuff.  
Ah, so, Confucius, he say: Oh, freunde, nicht dieser tone....
No, he fucking didn't.

You do hear this stuff, all the time, from luvvies, that culture, like gender,  knows no borders but that's rubbish. Oh, I like the Art of War and Zen in the Art of Archery as much as does the next clapped-out old hippy wastrel but, y'know, play the white man, gimme the King James Bible any day. 
By the Waters of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, and we wept, when we remembered Zion. 
Nothing about the Great Wall of China there, in King David's Blues.

Oriental culture is for ex-pats and  diplomats and  for pretend, made-up people,
 people like that frantically gibbering, loathsome cunt, 
Mark BullyBoy Potato, 


off the PBC 

(irritating, nasal, rushed, stacatto voice)
 
Listeners-to-Front-Row-will-have-often-heard-me-say-that-the -wealth-of-early-Chinese-literature-dating-from-the-Hundred- Schools-of-Thought-that-occurred-during-the-Eastern-Zhou- Dynasty (770–256 BC)-is-reminiscent-in-its-combination-of-song-, divination-and-astrology-of-the-tormented-inner-city-zeitgeist-which-so underscores-the-didactic-of-EastEnders-or-indeed-of the Great-Tranny-Bake-Off. Confucianism-Daoism - or-Taoism-as-it -is-sometimes-wrongly-named - Mohism-and-Legalism-can-also-of-course-be-readily-recognised-in-contemporary-works -such-as-Britain's-Got-Talent - well-I-certainly-have, I'm-a-novelist-too-as-well-as-everything-else -and-in-Celebrity-Masterchef-with those-two-ignorant-shitheads-the-fat-bald-stupid-CockneyGeezerBastard-and-the brain-dead-uncouth-Aussie-plonker. 

Where, I beseech you, readers, in the bowels of Christ, our Saviour, did the PBC find this pair of lacklustre, retarded mutants; how much rank ejaculate was swallowed by their agents, how many rectums torn and bloodied  in order to get these two hideous imbeciles smeared all over our screens like fucking roadkill?
I don't even know their names but their faces are enough to tell you that they are  coarse, vulgar and only partly-completed  simulacra, some nightmare blend of greasyspoon cook, moron and zombie. I bet they sleep in baths of warm urine and drink litres of blood-streaked, consumptives' snot.  


The thing with diseased sputum, cobber, is that it has to be served just above room temperature. 

 Thassrtight, me old china, 
jus' like it is inside the diseased Freud'n'Jung.


Too right, sport, diseased, bloody sputum, mate, a dyin' mans phlegm, 'sgotta be at fever temperature, or else it tastes like a crockashit, not many chefs know that.


 But then that's why we're the fucking' judges, innit?


And the Cockney git, this fucking prat,  he does a show where he and some other cunt invade, for a week, the lives of a couple whose children really should be taken into care, a couple so desperate to be on the telly that they pretend to be spending thousands of pounds a month on shit pizza and baked beans, from Tesco, until baldy and his oppo trick them into eating Lidl and Aldi brands, instead.
 Lidl fish paste is only 'alf the price a the Tesco one, watcha fink abaht that, my dahlin? Eh? Is that some savin', or what?



An' these strawberries, from Aldi, cor, stone me, if they ain't a full fifty pence a kilo cheaper than them ones in Sainsburys. An' you et 'em and didden even clock that they wasn't the same ones wot you usually buy.


An' as fer these Brussels, well wot would you say if I told ya that loose, like, from dahn the market, they was only ten pence an 'undredweight.  You can't say fairer'n that. Job's a good un. So what would you two say if I told ya that me and wotsisface, ere, just by shopping a bit clever, 'ave saved you two more'n  'alf a million quid offa your yearly shoppin' bill? 
Nah, there's no need to fank me, luv, me and my mate, we'll go 'ome 'appy, like, cos you're a lovely family and we've saved you a lotta dosh. And that's worritsallabout, fer us.

I'm not inventing this cunt, he really does do this shit, he really gets people to act like fucking idiots, just to be on the stupidest telly show ever. 
Time he was made a peer, surely. 
Arise, Lord Moron.


But back to the more rarified area of showbusiness.

A Bully?  Me?
Well-I-must-admit-that-rather-like-that-other-tortured-cultural-colossus-Jeremy-Clarkson-I-occasionally-act-somewhat- emotionally-but-that-is-only-because-I-care-so-very-much-about- myself-I-mean-my-Art-I mean-my-listeners-at-home-eating-their-evening-M'n'S-lasagne-relying-on-me-for-this crucial-cultural-and-artistic-update. Did-I-mention-that-I-am-also-a-novelist? That-is-when-I-am-not-licking-faecal-matter-from-luvvie-arseholes.

or  Mark Kermode, 

off the PBC.
Yeah, what the potato guy said, above, only with something about Chinese enema. Did I say Chinese enema?  I meant cinema.  Chinese cinema, course I did.  Because that's like, my thing, the movies.  Yeah, course it's a real job.
Everything that happens at the PBC is really,  truly real, 
in a very real sense.
Almost incendiary it is, sometimes, so very real is it.
Talking about the movies. Scorcese and wotsisname, the nutjob, Quentin?  Letts, is it? Tarantula. Yeah, Quentin Tarantula.
Doesn't get more real than that.

And I can't see Junky George 

immersing himself in Chinese literature
 - if they have any literature in that dreadful picture-writing, shit-daubing  thing that they do, with fucking paintbrushes.
I mean, how can you write anything with a fucking paintbrush, apart from No Entry?
The way they write evening, for instance, one of the ways they write evening, is by painting  a picture of a bird, sitting in its fucking nest.
Imagine Geoff Chaucer, writing the Canterbury Tales with a fucking paintbrush;  he'd still be at it.
Look at it, it's fucking rubbish


We ah aw in dis togeddah.

- or learning Mandarin, Christ, he can't even squeak a proper sentence in English, can Junky George, he's got no chance in another language.
Oh, but mr ishmael, high-end, authentic Chinese cuisine is simply to die for. 
Right, sharks bits and birds' nests and fucking noodles. And dogs' noses.
I'd nuke em, me, the Chinks, just for that, just for dog-eating.
Worse than fucking cannibalism, isn't it, eating a nice dogbloke. I would, I'd fucking nuke the bastards

The kid, in the hospital, though, mopping floors and carrying tea and serviette-wrapped digestives to the patients, he reminded me of those chronicles of wasted time,  of passing vice and idolatry, of a life pissed up the wall, watching and listening to trash. 

I felt like the Ancient Mariner, with the Wedding Guest; I wanted to sit him down  and say, Listen, don't fuck about with all this made-up pop music shit, these people only want your money and your distant love, they don't know anything, if they did, they wouldn't be doing what they're doing, and the people who run them, the managers, the impresarios, the agents, the Svengalis, the producers and promoters, they are pure shit-filth, leeches and parasites, pimps, pederasts, drug dealers, shysters, soul-stealers  and crooks. 

Don't bother with all that pop music shit, in the end it means nothing; it's already starting to mean nothing, there 's so much of it, more and more product every month, there's new bands and artists every week, it's just an industry, it ain't art, and then - as well -  there's still all the old product, being recycled, force-fed rectally  up the collective arsehole. Never in our history have we been so sung-at, so badly; never has the mediocre been so ascendant - Paul McCartney and his amazing teenage  hair, still singing songs he wrote sixty years ago,
Willya still need me,willya still feed me?

 Madonna, 
Madge, grinding  her old arse in people's faces; 

Bob Dylan 
who can't even attempt to sing, now mutilating not only his own hugely over-rated catalogue but also mumbling his migraine-inducing  way through all that Frank Sinatra Crooner shit, y'know, Sinatra, Cool Frank,  

the plucky little New York spic, living the Playboy Life in LA,  Hugh Hefner set to music by Nelson Riddle, Little Frank,  pimping for the Mafia. And singing relentlessly about, Oh, God, what a hard time those damn women bitches have given him. Set 'em up Joe, make it one for my baby, and one more for the toad, I mean road, Christ, such maudlin, self-pitying shit. If, as I was saying, America is hard to find, it'll be due in no small measure to its obsession with lowlife crooners like Frank Sinatra and the rest, Dipso Dean and the poor, shat-upon Sammy Davis Junior, the house nigger.  I never heard two bars of Sinatra that I wanted to hear again, it was such a tiny talent, on a tiny palette, albums filled with  songs of fools' romantic love, babytalk songs, playboy songs, Come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away......Farley's Rusks, for grown-ups, tripe.  In LlamaLand, there's a one-man band, and he'll toot his flute for you.  Right, Frank, heavy shit, man.

 Sinatra, though,  could at least read a score and carry a tune, sing in time with the band,
 Little Old Bob can do none of that musician stuff, never could, it didn't matter, when, for a few short years in the 'sixties, he dazzled, and  my Goodness, he did,  but his concerts these days, well, the miracle is that people aren't queuing-up, round the block, to pelt this old guy with dogshit. I'd pay good money to do it, myself, and I have heard, read, and seen more Bob Dylan stuff than most.  I haven't bought a Bob Dylan recording this century, multi-millionaire entertainer luvvies  moaning that they got the workingman's blues - Dylan and Brue Springsteen both, improbably, do it - well, it's taking the piss, I think. In my Haitch-Oh.

And among all these old geezers, fronting tribute bands to themselves, there is no embarrassment, no censure, not even a gentle, critical nudge towards respectable silence; pretty children fifty years ago, many still, now utterly devoid of creativity, 
pout and grimace  into their seventies and eighties, singing ancient, rock'n'roll nursery rhymes, as though they were teenagers.

There's all those oldies and then there's the newies, too, I dunno who Adele is or what she does but she talks like a fucking buffoon,  a village idiot; Ed Sheenan, I dunno who he is or what he does. One Direction, I dunno. I've seen Mumford and Sons and I've seen countless better ensembles in folk clubs and at folk festivals, wossallthatabout, is it that they went to public school?

All this is my fault, mine and that of those like me, who asserted that the Kinks and the Who and the Manfreds were artists, that Pink Floyd were geniuses, Jimi Hednrix sent to us from Heaven, when, in fact, those we hailed as artists were, and remain, light entertainers; real art, real music was beyond our gobby ken, we called this levelling downwards the End of Deference and applauded our cretinous selves. 
All this dreadful shit, today, Cruelty TeeVee's brutal talent shows and it's glossy nonentities, it all  happens under Music's captured banner. And it was my-my-my-g-g-g-generation offered it up to Mammon.
Somehow, thanks to me, the nation has become addicted to, enchanted by the sights and sounds  of banality. 

 I, who can only work in silence am incensed by tradesmen I employ who  cannot lift a tool unless it is to the sound of Radio Two;  you cannot get in to a taxi without having to share the driver's taste in music, even though you are paying him; GP reception areas, clinics, hotels, shopping,  centres and leisure facilities; there are few public spaces not made hostile by bad music - and I guess that in a public space, all music is bad music -  all of it making its way out, into Infinity, a cosmic environmental disaster.

I don't think that this side of Eternity there is any silence, clocks tick, lights hum, pipes cough and splutter, hearts beat - ain't it just like the night, to play tricks when you're trying to be so quiet - but there is the sound of silence, in which you can hear - discern - the myriad sounds of Creation, even in the city; you can hear the weather, the cat on the tiles, the falling leaves that jewel the ground, the cry of the night creature, the sigh of the lover.

 Simon Cowell would have it otherwise, would have us deafened to nature and to each other by cynically manufactured pap, from dawn 'til dusk, by the techno jangle of his human cash registers.

Prince died, a coupla weeks back, 


I never knew what to make of him, I quite liked Purple Rain and I quite liked that song he wrote, sung by poor, mad Hazel O'Connor, No-thing Compares,  No-thing Compares 2You but he seemed like  a completely crazy bastard, always on the go, constantly performing, jamming, writing and recording, I think that like Frank Zappa, Prince recorded every note he ever played and there is said to be a massive amount of unreleased material in his vaults.  Can't all be good, though, can it, unless, of course, his audience is entirely undiscriminating?

Beethoven - about whom I came here to talk, in the first place -  was, 
 

like Prince, a gigging musician, like Prince,he was fiercely independent, eschewing an aristocratic patron;  he wrote and published what he wanted to, not,  like Mozart, what  was commissioned; like Prince, Beethoven taught his craft to others, gave public performances with his peers and was completely crazy.  I saw his pianoforte in Vienna, once, looked really cool.

Beethoven is credited with composing 138, 205 or 340 pieces, depending on which catalogue one reads. Among these, Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, the opera "Fidelio," eight other overtures, eleven piano concerti, two choral masses, maybe five other several-movement choral works, slightly fewer than 100 chamber works and accompanied sonatas, 32 piano sonatas, around 350 individual songs and song arrangements, and perhaps 50 other instrumental works including sets of variations, bagatelles, etc. 

 On the subject of Beethoven  there is a lifetime's reading to be found just a click away  if you want it, although the music speaks well enough for itself. I read a couple of biographies decades ago and that's enough for me. What concerns me about all this, pointlessly,  is  the wasting of my own time, something which has preoccupied me since I met the kid in the hospital, maybe seeing in him my lighter, youthful, more careless  self.  Pissing about.

I have for a long time liked the string quartet form and I have always known that I should listen to Beethoven's Late Quartets, yet  it was only a heart attack, last week, a small one, but, y'know, a heart attack's a fucking heart attack, which promped me to  do so.

I have now managed  to hear and see a few movements, each of them blissfully heavy going, not hard to listen-to, just, as I have always said about Beethoven, like having God bow the strings of your heart, pulling you apart and mending you, by turns. Gotta go easy with that stuff.

 This version, here, however, of the third movement of opus 135, is unusual in that there is no sight of the performers; instead, there is a visual representation of the score, scrolling sidewards with the music, it is more illustrative of composition, harmony and symmetry, all that stuff,  than anything I have ever seen.The top two flowing  lines are the first and second violins, the third, the viola and the fourth, the cello and the length of the individually coloured lines represent the crochets and quavers and so on.  I guess this is  just a piece  of clever software but where  performance is  lit, directed, filmed and edited it must  subtly interfere with and distract from the music, re-interpeting wrongly, subjectively emphasising this line or phrase over that, this presentation only focuses the listener on what it was which the composer assembled, wrung from Within, heard from Without, somewhere.
Had there been something like this when first I heard proper music, well, my precious time would not seem, now, so wasted.

41 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice to see you're back, in reasonable health and on form. Radio 4 said that the Chink atomic reactor was destined to be the second most expensive item ever made by man, apart from the space station. It's just a building with some well-understood kit in, built/designed by a low-wage workforce, so how is that even possible? Money not well spent, given that even their copies of Honda monkey bikes are rubbish. Also it may be unwise to contract with a Communist regime of the type which evaporates when people suddenly realise that they don't have to be fucked over. I wouldn't put it past the Chinese to build in a remotely-controlled Kaboom switch in case of war with the round-eyes.
-richard

call me ishmael said...

Yes, mr richard, for those and another score of reasons, this project indicates the stupidity, incompetence and venality of Junky George and his mates; letting a foul, totalitarian regime build a nuclear bomb on your turf and paying them way, way over the going price, into the bargain. As you know, I am a lifelong opponent of capital punishment but George Osborne makes my noose-tying fingers itch, every single time that he opens his mouth to squeak. Many people, however, elected the filthy, spaced-out gibbering cunt, and probably many more will support his view on L'Europa Consumeriste Totalitairianisme Nouvelle.

mongoose said...

I don't think that that plant is going to actually get built.

The music visualisation thing is fun. I sent the link - to the Youtube channel- to my mate's missus, who is a proper play-anything musician and she'd yawn, yawn seen it, or similar, and that's what she sees anyway when she looks at the score, and what's more she can "hear" it without it being played. Familiar pieces are like old books (apparently - of course they are). She - a chamber music girl - then said to imagine a full orchestral piece and understand that this is what a conductor is doing in his head and then trying to get everyone in the orchestra to "see/hear" the same thing. So that was me put in my ignorant place, and I think too that she was simplifing for the ditch-digger.

Osborne is a pig but this is the end of him not the beginning. I am amazed that Chancellors are always presented as intellectual giants. This one surely ain't. Cameron is using him up and he seems not to see it.

Bob Doney said...

Maybe the Late Quartets are Beethoven's way of saying he'd wasted HIS life, with all that showy-offy music he'd written earlier being sound and fury, signifying nothing.

call me ishmael said...

I,too, would anticipate many a slip twixt cup and isotope but the outrage is that the nation of TeeVee-watching zombies didn't riot in tne streets at the very idea.

Yawns or not, from the professionals, that visualisation is a profoundly innovative educational tool, as well as being, as you say, fun to watch. I wonder how it works. There has been sound-to-light for a long time but this is ultra precise and hugely expressive.

I have often wondered how much influence a conductor has - aside from time-keeping - beyond the rehearsal room. I have looked at big, complex scores and what-the-fucked in amazement, directing a sixty piece band, a handful of soloists and a four or five part choir strikes me as impossible.

I saw a DVD of Lenny Bernstein conducting, for the first time, in the 1990s, his own magical West Side Story. It was a posh, NY orchestra and a gaggle of opera superstars, Kiri and Jose and I forget who else. They were making a record, Slumming it, they thought, doing a musical. Lenny wanted every single note played exactly as he had heard it during composition, nearly fifty years before. A single note on a tambourine, he insisted to a bemused percussionist, must be struck with just one finger, no more.

But Maestro, complained Jose Carreras, on having to attempt his part ir the umpteenth time. Don't But Maestro me, simpered Lenny, I wrote the damn thing, I know how it should sound, before leaving the studio singing to himself: Carreras, I'll never stop saying, Ca-reeeer-as.

Best thing I ever saw on the art of the conductor.

call me ishmael said...

Now, there's a thought, mr doney, thanks, to rock one backwards. Ludwig's Macbeth moment.

Dr Yllek said...

Can we preventivly stuff cloves of garlic into Madonna's tastefull outfit, just to be on the safe side?

In regards to The Music, here is one of my
favorites showcasing the grit that precedes perfection.

SG said...

I wouldn't worry about being vapourised by the Chinks or Ruskies, folks. We are far too useful as an offshore investment facility and potential bolthole should their ruling elites require one - our weaknesses are our strengths - war is peace! Panama, the Cayman Isles et al are mere amateurs compared with the great City of Londonistan - which is why we needn't fear being disconnected from the EUSSR or sinister Goldman Sachs, Zionist inspired Capitalist plot if you prefer (depending on your perspective...). The main problem is working out how to share these ill-gotten gains around a little more equitably. Maybe we should operate a bit more like the Mafia where everyone in the 'family' gets something albeit the rest get screwed. As for the Masterchef stuff, Mr I, I please take care in distributing this sort of material as has been known to cause anaphylactic shock in some people, myself being a case in point. Glad you are on the mend and on as good a form as ever!

Anonymous said...

Here's a Chinky-Woo story which I read about years ago and which has nothing to do with the mindset of those who supply potentially lethal power stations to foreign powers....
A company applied for planning permission to build their bridge over a stretch of the Yangtze river but was repeatedly turned down because a single example of the rare river dolphin lived there, in a well-maintained little aquatic nature reserve.
One day a man asked to see the dolphin which was tame and would approach visitors. When it appeared upon being called, the gent produced a pistol and sank the beast with rapid fire. Planning permission was subsequently granted.
-richard

call me ishmael said...

You feel that it's always more about Maestro than Music, when you see these clips, dr y, but I guess that's the only way it can work. Certainly with the HvK-produced Coronation Mass at the Vatican in the 80s, the Almighty and his Vicar on Earth were very much Herby's supporting actors. I guess it's one of those areas wherein elitism is productive, even vital. I have always loved his Beethoven Symphonies with the Berlin band on Deutsche Gramafon, although I'd probably have punched him in the gob, if he'd come round here, whistling Wagner.

call me ishmael said...

The tide is swift and I take ship, in a moment, singing the Dolphin through, mr richard, for mainland Britain, to Inverness, and Loch Rannoch, tonight, and to outlaw-martiage Gretna in the morn, the wedding takes place on the morn's morn and thence to York and Archbishop John Underpants. Be back here this evening.

call me ishmael said...

outlaw marriage, I hate this fucking i-thing, piece of shit, it is, Satan's belly laugh, the Steve Jobs Plague.

yardarm said...

Funny isn`t it, how the so called free marketeers slope shoulders and say you can`t interfere with the market, mate, when steelworkers get fucked off onto the dole yet they`ve rigged the market so we end up paying well over the odds for the Chinese and French to build these fucking reactors. That`s if they ever get built.

In Imperial China eunuchs were very powerful, effectively civil servants, even military commanders. Gideon Quisling Pansy Face would be an ideal eunuch although I don`t think he had his cock and balls cut off; he probably never had them in the first place. He looks more and more like an animated shop window dummy.

Caratacus said...

Back in the mid 70s I took employment as a taxi-driver in Torbay. I quickly discovered that passengers were quite vocal on their preferences in music and I decided to carry a large number of cassettes of as wide a selection as possible. There really was no telling ... a couple of old dears who regularly did their shopping on Thursday (pension day) wanted Sparks - It Ain't 1918 and This Town etc. - virtually on a loop; school kids wanted O Fortuna at maximum volume; and a pair of young teachers coyly asked if Je t'aime was on offer (unfortunately not but I will rectify matters ASAP); an elderly gentleman was regularly reduced to tears by A Summer Place on his way to a Brixham graveyard. I learnt a great deal about people that year. I also was 'asked for' as a preferred driver which was useful in my impecunious state at the time ...

Woman on a Raft said...

The best sound I have heard this many weeks was stopping in Northumberland, as instructed by yourself.

I opened the car door and I swear there was a wave, a roller of sound, thousands of birds in a hedge. I'm well enough off for birds in the ordinary run of things, stopping to enjoy a thrush in a neighbour's mulberry tree, a pigeon which would be better in a pie, ducks, crows talking, but nothing like this torrent of excitement over nesting sites, insects, seed heads, sun and sex. It was the urgent sound of life.

Have a lovely time in York and best wishes for your recovery. York, I am afraid, is no place for a slimming diet. Pace yourself.


mongoose said...

It's just another set of squiggles - dashes and dots, numbers, words. Some people can just look at stuff and know what it means, although it dumbfounds the rest of us. I do think you are right though that the visualisation is potentially a great educational tool. (I am sure that I posted a link the other day to the bloke but blogger seems to have devoured that too.) Anyway, it seems that the work is considerable and involves a great many hours to process. So at this stage we cannot just upload whatever sounds take our fancy and see them transformed into dancing pixels. Which is a shame. And disappointing.

And then I read the bloke's page a bit deeper and he has been about this since 1970-bloody-4. Anyway, here he is. A man worthy of anyone's fiver. The gap between it being wonderful but not useful yet is the effort needed to get a new set of sounds to a scrolling picture. This poor lad labours alone with his ears. I expect if one googled it, we'd find it over and finished, automated, excellent and therefore lacking nothing but the music and the love of it.

You be careful down there in York among those English.

Dick the Prick said...

Archbishop John Underpants? I dunno - he seems like a decent enough chap. He's done 3 things which have made me warm to him; opened up the back of the minster's grounds which have, as far as i'm aware been shut for the last 35+ years - great picnic area. Cut off his dog collar in protest of that cunt Mugabe and lastly he's just been on walkabout for the last 6 months around Yorkshire and he's defo the kind of dude who'll just chat bollox with anyone. Not being CoE, he was never really in a position to preach to me but he seems to put his money where his mouth is so....

As an aside, one of my chums is a stone mason at the Minster and he said he'd never walk around the place due to falling masonry - eeek! Trust you've made it back in one piece??

And Greg Wallace is just a sex pest with no discernible talent - wonder how he got a job at the PBBC - #Baffled!

Alphons said...

"One day a man asked to see the dolphin which was tame and would approach visitors. When it appeared upon being called, the gent produced a pistol and sank the beast with rapid fire. Planning permission was subsequently granted.
-richard "

Can we get this chap to take a look at our politicians??

call me ishmael said...

York was teeming, chilly, its soundtrack a mess of blues'n'twos and the snorting bray of English tourists, come to the Minster, who wouldn't know the Bible stories even upon pain of being consigned to Hell, cultural eventers. The Mystery Plays experience was over-amateurish, rather as one imagines a Nativity play in one of those pushy-parent Free schools, the mic-ing of the actors highly variable, the music turgid and the acting woefully lacklustre. There were moments of colourful spectacle, the props technicians and costumiers obviously had a whale of a time but it would all have been better outside, hurly-burly and helter-skelter, in your face; turning the Minster into a vast, dark, chilly and unconmfortable cod-theatre served neither Art, God nor building. I shoulda known as much when some wittering, overpaid and over-ranked, inclusive vicar introduced the show with a farewell to Kimmy, from the Northern Territories, Kimmy having been one of the production's most distsntl;y-sourced volunteers. He was sure we would join him in thanking Kimmy for her efforts, he paused for a round of applause but came there none.

I am glad I went but in a dutiful, Haj sort of way. Four hours in a cold, unconmfortable cathedral being luivvied-at quickens, I am sure, no-one's spiritual or artistic blood. As I said, I am glad I wen and I'm sure all concerned worked their socks off but if you woild see it, see it streamed from somewhere or on some player-thing.

Northumberland, however, was everythiung mrs woar said, a country 'pub in Newton on the Moor, the Cook and Barker, being a little twinkling jewel in UK Hospitality's tarnished crown.

The bird-song miracle only came to me twenty years ago, mrs woar, just before leaving the Vale of Evesham, I thought I'll never hear this sound again but I don't half, it's partly why I maintain such hedges and trees, flying-in from the East, mine are the first they see and are now home to them and theirs.

call me ishmael said...

Well, it is a shame and disapppointing, mr mongoose, but it is also meet, isn't it, that such is a labour of love. I am very glad you appreciated it. I will make the link.

I am back unscathed by York's menace, happy to have been, again,to the former second city, happy to be home.

call me ishmael said...

I like him, too, mr dick, John of York, He shook my hand a few Easters back, dunno how it happens, bishops always home-in on me, closing from some distance, forsaking all others in their path, hitting me like Christ's Exocet of Love.

I thought it was his underants but of you say it was his dog-collar I shall amend the parish records. I saw your mate, or one of his mates, hard-hatting his way to the Lord's masonry, what a lovely job.

call me ishmael said...

Sounds from the Seventies, king caratacus, and at the customers' requests, not the drivers'. I wonder what is the Theme From A Summer Place-story, what loss, but we can write our own, can't we?

call me ishmael said...

It happens from time to time, m alphons. but is usually called terrorism.

mongoose said...

It's an interesting idea, Mr I, and I posted a link to the man "playing" it against some live musicians. Blogger ate that too but here it is again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAWSonBN3Pk

The guy seems to be keeping time to the actual players - which somewhat defeats the object. Or perhaps it doesn't. What we want is for some music to be animated and not for an animation to keep time to some music.

Dick the Prick said...

Oh, that's cool as per beeline bishop action - may be it's your enthusiasm and theirs. Every chap needs colleagues to get through work and it must get dull talking to the local fucking Tories. The guy's seems like a learned chap but knowingly aware that his gig comes with the best building in the world and everything else is bullshit. When they opened the whole grounds it kinda freaked me out because it was a day like today and there must be room for about 1,500 people easily - just having their butties or ice creams. I was like a pig in shit just wondering how many man hours it took to build the flying butresses when it occurred to me - how the chuff have I never been here before and this is about my 25th time - oooh, the cheeky bastards! I could be wrong but if Bishop Underpants (I think it's affectionate) was the dude who walked in on day 1 and asked His Reverence Snooty of Snootyface why the back garden wasn't open and got a shite answer, then that was a quick conversation.

Being 'ultimate' gaffer of that place must obviously be a massive ballache but also be incredibly relaxing. York got pummelled in the recent floods but it's defo been built in the right place. York itself is quite the shithole - as soon as you leave the centre, it's kinda bland.

To be fair to my chum, he's a contractor and has a few garages as a shed with grinders and stuff in. He defo loves his job. We call him Chav Dan because he still gets his cock out in public but someone's gotta do it. Got a chum who makes stained glass too - hmmm...should probly talk shop to these guys a bit more. Fuck the referendum. You mentioned some furniture wax a bit back - sorry dude, what was it again? Have bookmarked Lapham's.

I hope the weather has been alright up there. Do you have radioactive Fukushima Zica midges ready to ingest your eyeballs through your very soul or are you too near the coast?

SG said...

"Do you have radioactive Fukushima Zica midges ready to ingest your eyeballs through your very soul or are you too near the coast?" Dang me Mr DtP, we're still chowing down on Chernobyl lamb here, and you're saying there's more to come? Jesus! 

Meanwhile, in other news, I see that our, hopefully, soon to be erstwhile Prime Mentalist has been banging on about how leaving the EU would "put a bomb under our economy...and the worst thing is we’d have lit the fuse ourselves.” Err - wasn't it him what lit it FFS? I'm far more worried by the falling IQs than I am by the falling 'pound in your pocket'... By the way, keep buggering on Mr I, you're needed - precious few handholds on the slippery wall of sanity left to hang on to...

Caratacus said...

He was a very private gentleman, Mr. I, and it was only on the third visit or so to St. Mary's in Brixham that he asked, very diffidently, if I knew of the "Theme to a Summer Place". Because it was a favourite of my mother and stepfather I was able to confirm that I did and promised it for the next trip. He opened up a little more and it transpired that his lady (some time deceased) was a pianist of some ability and used to play it while he laid prone on the sitting room floor trying to ease his eternal back-ache. He reckoned that the vibrations through the floor eased his discomfort considerably. As I have descended into aged distress viz. back pain and so forth, I often remember this old gentleman and his lady. Sadly, it requires something more like an 18 year-old and a set of jump-leads to get my aged carcase ready for action these days ...

Alphons said...

Dick the Prick said..

"York got pummelled in the recent floods but it's defo been built in the right place. York itself is quite the shithole - as soon as you leave the centre, it's kinda bland."

Not only a "shitole" but an "extremely money grasping shithole". It must be the most money grasping city in the world. They do not want visitors or shoppers they just want their money.
I am sure the council are totally out of touch with reality.
It also lets in a little light on the avaricious nature of the Church.

Woman on a Raft said...

Glad you are back. Such is coincidence that I have a day un-booked next week so a friend and I decided to make a dash for York and grabbed a pair of matinee tickets, just so we can say we have done it. (No way Mr Raft would sit for that length of time.)

It will be a pity if the sound is bad but we won't worry about amateurish acting. As a society we have been lucky and seen acting standards rise so that even a local am-dram now presents what would have been on the West End stage thirty years ago. It will be like going back in time.

Dick the Prick said...

Hey WoaR :-)

Woman on a Raft said...

Hello Mr DtP. I've not been to York since my last visit caused rivers to spontaneously burst their banks in excitement at seeing me. Keep your wellies and a canoe handy, just in case history repeats itself. I did it twice last year, you know. One day I was walking through the New Dock area of Leeds, just by the Armouries, and thinking 'I wonder why they've got that gate which stops people going along the tow path?' and the next day they has shut the gate due to the path being full of water and the whole area becoming Venice.

BTW, I had nothing to do with the flash floods in Croydon this afternoon. One commenter advised his friends “I would seriously recommend avoiding Purley Cross for a while.” Wise advice at any time.

Dick the Prick said...

Oh, you must come to Leeds more often. I work just near the train station and would love a few days off. I'm sure in various cultures you'd be exalted as some kind of Shaman - not Scotland though, no probably not in Scotland!

call me ishmael said...

Mrs woar and I and all seekers and tryers, too, should visit York, mr dick; there is murder and torture and betrayal at every crossroads and yet there is such art and effort thrust heavenwards, as if in penance and compensation. Who knows, maybe one day we'll brush shoulders, raise the universal eyebrow of fellowship. mrs woar would be shamaness, seer and registrar emeritus just about anywhere.

call me ishmael said...

It's like that everywhere, m alphons, my harbour today berthed a ship as big as a city, disgorging a multitude, a species of tick-in-the-box sightseers, clogging the streets, gawping unknowingly at ruinous, bluff Norse folly, at drowned, rusting wargraves and at cosmically-calibrated Stone Age sites of worship, remembrance and and human sacrifice. To-morrow they'll be in Dublin. I hope somebody made some money from them but I doubt it was very much.

call me ishmael said...

Matinee should be wholly different, mrs woar, being less chilly. If iou can manage it get the steeply raked seats to the rear, some of the props and efffects will be the better seen from there and maybe the sound will be better. Judas and Pilate do that diction stuff very well and have the best lines. Be interested on your impressions.

call me ishmael said...

.It's good for the common weal that he told you that, king caratacus. We all have these little bits of precious and if we don't tell others -or are not asked - they die with us, and the Coarse Ones win, stomping-on, fat, stupid and tattooed to fuck.
John Prine did a lovely take on the elderly couple, Hello In There, it should be an Evensong for everyone's evening.

I'll put it on, now, thouigh, on the you-thing, Theme From A Summer Place, and your passenger and his lady will be a little less dead, just for a moment.

call me ishmael said...

I am trying to avoid it, on health grounds, mr sg, all of it, it's just so hard. I'm trying to work it out, a bit, further on up the road.

SG said...

You are wise Mr I - very bad for the blood pressure, wider physical and mental health etc. If I had a pistol I'd be reaching for it...

Dick the Prick said...

It would be lovely for this blog to meet up at the Minster when next you're down with sufficient heads up. Just a thunk but if Mrs WoaR could turn left at Whitby then it should be achievable. Church in Whitby's fucked so it's only got the goths and scenery. If Brexit does genuinely affect fishing, it would be lovely to see the harbour used for what it was built for.

call me ishmael said...

I do try, mr sg, honest, I do; it's just all such bollocks, I managed about thirty seconds of Gnasher; last night, painstakingly explaining to us wee people how Britain would be better off staying in the EU, while telling us in every other utterance how Scotland would be better off out of the UK. It's televised insanity, coning right into your sitting room. I though Tess Jowell's Gambling Free4All was bad enough but that can only harm your pocket and your self-respect, these mionekys, gibbering, like they were real paople, this is bad shit.

call me ishmael said...

My harbour, too, mr dick, i've looked over WHitby from some height, some lofty promenade and it is a sight for sore eyes. I| dunno of small fishing could ever make a come-back,now, but it's a nice thought. Who knows about your other suggestion. Time'll tell.