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.