Truth or Lies

I'm absolutely amazed that there are lies in this world!

Yes, it amazes me.

I just would never think of tricking somebody. It never enters my head! Obviously I am too simple.

How do you see it? I think that actually most people are pretty truthful. However it is quite shocking that fakery goes on. I think the reason for that is that the person thinks it is easier than doing something for real. OK, at stage one, they are correct in that belief - yes, they don't have to really do anything, just pretend, then take the money. OK so far. But how about at stage two? A whole lifetime of lying and tricking, when they could have been using their real skills instead? Surely it's harder work to sustain that.

OK maybe I am not very clever because stage one certainly sounds like a good deal...haha

The few (well, more than a few) people who spend their lives defrauding and faking for material gain must be in serious trouble spiritually. They are so lazy that they can't be bothered to lift one of their own fingers to do anything, but instead must give the impression of using fingers they do not really have, in order to administer help that doesn't really help. Now you can certainly say they are using skills in order to do that, but is tricking a skill we should really use?

It's all down to how you feel inside. It's possible to know if you are doing the right thing or not. "Science" and "Logic" may tell us that there is no one right way to behave, they may say it is all down to social codes or the mood of the age, they may finally posit that the need for happiness is important to us, but maybe it is not up to this Science to tell us how to behave. Science means "knowing", but I am asking you to do some "feeling".

All you can do is continue your life but with the application of some discernment. You can check to see how everything feels. Or did you think it does not matter how you feel? You just have to put up with things? Do what people tell you? Well, sometimes it's wise to do so. But when you generally ignore your own feeling, you are not an independent entity. You are a cog. In another wheel.

So listen to see if you feel good or bad. That's all it is. There are many levels of good and bad, including sometimes when one feels like the other. If you are not used to knowing how you feel, it is harder to know which is which. But if you start to think, you may perhaps continue!

The point of it is to discover where you can be applying yourself better. When you have a talent and you can use it, it feels good. If it is frustrated, it feels bad. The good feeling comes from your own genius being allowed to breathe in and out.

This feeling is the best feeling - you have contacted your real self. I think it is worth cultivating this feeling.

It is not possible to feel completely bad, to completely ignore your true self. You can think you are, but even that thought is coming from a true place - it is self-aware, not mindless. But I think it is possible to be more true.

This is what I mean about fakers - do you think they are feeling good or bad? Maybe they felt bad a long time ago and need to amass material wealth to protect themselves. It may all be rationally explicable, however much harm it is doing. Nevertheless it could be better for them, and for us of course.

I think that using your real skills is preferable to non-use of them. It must be. The problems are - not knowing you have them, not trusting that they are real, having been taught not to use them (makes life easier for people who want to dominate you), being scared. The alternatives are - being safe in a very limited way that isn't really safe, having an easy life that isn't really easy because you feel stress all the time, having a stable life with no massive excitements in it. None of these alternatives is particularly enticing.

Talents and skills may be all kinds of things. The definition of a talent is: something that gives a benefit to somebody. Yes, they are to be used, to help other people. Even more stupid! Shouldn't we just help ourselves? Well you can, but it's more lonely. And you may find that the nicer you are to the world, the nicer it is to you. See what happens the next time you kick somebody!

There's really loads of things you can do. And you don't have to do anything major, anything you do is part of learning about your skills. I'm sure you are using them right now, all today, all this week. But I just wanted to say - yes you do have a talent. You are using it all the time no matter how fulfilled you are feeling. And you may continue using it until it flowers.

You know there are key moments in the life of a flower when the scent is at its height and best for harvesting by perfume makers. Could people be like that? Maybe there is something you are working towards. And every minute is adding to the experience that will make that fabulous scent when you are ready. There are no skunks or rubbish tip smells. They only come when you try to stop the flowers blooming. No, it is all roses and violets for you from now on.

Keep working hard! Everyone will benefit, and you too.

When there's a twinge...

Finger and hand muscles are basically very small so you have to be very careful with them. Using them is not the same as using your legs, for example. Or you could think that it is the same, but on a different scale. Running a mile might be enough for one day, but for your fingers running a mile might be a lot less than a mile simce they are rather small compared to leg muscles.

Today I felt a small pain in my right hand so I know I have to stop until it is not there any more. But it is frustrating because I want to play 20 hours! And it feels like if you stop practising then you will not improve. BUT. If you continue injuring yourself then you will get worse, not improve. That's why I'm always angry with people who say they are injured but they still have to practise. Then we know why they are injured. You have to look after yourself better than that.

Well this is an extremely temporary problem, fortunately, because I do stop when I receive the signal to stop. It's called pain and it says Hey, you are doing something wrong here, please rest now. But many of us feel the pain but do not listen to it.

Where are you feeling a pain, and what is it telling you?

Occasionally you have to keep going through pain, and sometimes it is not a true pain, just something new. But mostly we need to listen to this voice.

Simple English

Did you know there is a language called Simple English? It's a simplified version of the English language (as experienced on Simple English Wikipedia).

Actually I have noticed that a lot of the time I am writing in simplified English. The reasons for this are that a lot of the people reading this are not native English speakers, or that they might not be, or that in fact (and this is true) a lot of the people in the world are not actually native English speakers, believe it or not. People who speak English tend to assume that everyone else does, but they might not, you know...

So even though I know that most people reading this can actually read English (of course they can; that's how they are reading this), I try not to write anything too complicated.

Even for first-language English speakers (Anglophones - you see, it's complicated already!) I don't want to alienate anybody. It's easy to sound "clever" with a lot of po-ly-syl-la-bic words but that is not the same as being intelligent. And if I write something that someone can't understand then I feel it has failed. You see, sometimes the ideas are so difficult to understand that we need all the help we can get.

Here is an excerpt from an article in Simple English:

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an Austrian composer and pianist. During his short life he wrote more than 600 pieces of music. Many people think he was one of the best composers of music of all time. He was born in the city of Salzburg on January 27, 1756. He wrote over 600 pieces of music, including the operas (music with a story) Don Giovanni and Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute). His works began with a minuet (a dance) that he wrote when he was four, and end with his final piece, the Requiem, which he left unfinished. Mozart was a prodigy at the piano, and he was known as a great pianist as well as a great composer. He died on December 5, 1791 when he was 35 years old.

Well, you can't really fault it. It is clear what it means. But it is a little bit offensive when it gets over-simple. Or is it? If you are eight years old would you rather read this than

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (IPA: [ˈvɔlfgaŋ amaˈdeus ˈmoːtsart], full name Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart^[1] (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791), was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over six hundred works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers.

Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood in Salzburg. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty; at seventeen he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and traveled in search of a better position, always composing abundantly. Visiting Vienna in 1781 he was dismissed from his Salzburg position and chose to stay in the capital, where over the rest of life he achieved fame but little financial security. The final years in Vienna yielded many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and the Requiem. The circumstances of his early death have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons.

Mozart always learned voraciously from others, and developed a brilliance and maturity of style that encompassed the light and graceful along with the dark and passionate—the whole informed by a vision of humanity "redeemed through art, forgiven, and reconciled with nature and the absolute".^[2] His influence on all subsequent Western art music is profound. Beethoven wrote his own early compositions in the shadow of Mozart, of whom Joseph Haydn wrote that "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years".^[3]

?

Well, otherwise, you end up with

Mozart was a music-man. He did a lot of music. He was alive. He is not alive. The end. Bye Bye!

I'd rather have the whole truth than the easy version of the truth. Even if it's harder work. Still, you have to reach as many people as you can.

I don't know if there is ever a perfect way of communicating.

A piece of music, a drawing, a poem - they don't exist without an audience. Even if the audience is the author. So you change it to suit the audience. You always do.

Or are there exceptions?

What Upsets Me Is...

What upsets me is that I occasionally think of listening to some piece of music (principally for research, but I'd like to be able enjoy it too) but it is impossible to do so.

It is impossible because apparently nearly nobody can be bothered discovering the true character of music. They instead prefer to play "their version".

It's very lazy!

There are always an infinite number of ways of playing music. Even if I somehow magically guide you to see the composer's way, there is still an infinity of choices. There is no such thing as an "authorised version", except in rare - and unhealthy - cases. Yet I'm claiming that there is some way of testing if you've got the right way.

It's a bit much to go into today, but it's along the lines of

Jack: I don't actually know who I am by birth. I was... well, I was found.
Lady Bracknell: Found?
Jack: Yes. The late Mr. Thomas Cardew, an old gentlemen of a kindly disposition found me and gave me the name of Worthing because he happened to have a first class ticket to Worthing at the time. Worthing is a place in Sussex. It's a seaside resort.
Lady Bracknell: And where did this charitable gentlemen with the first class ticket to the seaside resort find you?
Jack: In a handbag.
Lady Bracknell: [closes eyes briefly] A handbag?
Jack: Yes, Lady Bracknell, I was in a hand bag. A somewhat large... black... leather handbag with handles... to it.
[pause]
Lady Bracknell: An ordinary handbag.
Lady Bracknell: And where did this Mr. James... or, Thomas Cardew come across this ordinary handbag?
Jack: The cloak room at Victoria Station. It was given to him in mistake for his own...
Lady Bracknell: [Shocked] The cloak room at Victoria Station?
Jack: Yes. The Brighton line.
Lady Bracknell: The line is immaterial.

[The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde, first performed 1895]

In the case of the famous line "a HAND-BAG?", we know the handbag is important so that's why the word is emphasised. It's not normally a question of "A handbag?" because this is not the important word, so far as i can see.

I know this is an extremely simple example.

It's a simple thing I am telling you, you see.

Anyway, it's a bit like that. you work out the handbag is important in one line, then it gets mentioned again so you know there is something about this handbag.

But to take the musical analogy, some actor (musician) has discovered that he pronounces the diphthong "A" rather well. So she decides to make that the focus. No question of meaning, just effective sound.

Ok fine but unfortunately music is a language too and if you ignore the meaning then it becomes meaningless.

It's not that difficult to work it out. I'm sure lots of people will disagree with me over the future years, and they are welcome to as long as they don't damage anybody in the process, but we will gradually get to the point where we understand the language of music. Yes!

----------------

It has recently come to my attention that there is an excellent recording (1952) of the Liszt Piano Sonata in B minor, by Maria Grinberg, the pupil of F. M. Blumenfeld and K. N. Igumnov at the Moscow Conservatory.

Although - to be unneccesarily honest about it - this recording does not entirely speak in the language of the music itself, by virtue of the personal choices of the artist, this recording makes so many great choices and shows many faces of the work that are normally smoothed over in favour of "playing the piano well", that: I think...that...if this were the only recording in the world...then I'd be quite happy with that. It's that good. That's what I think.

I may wish for other things in this piece, but that is a true fact that I just told you. I.e. for me it is possible to be better than this but it is good enough. And that's extremely good if you are familiar with my exacting standards.

Thanks to Prof. Pascal Némirovski for finding it for us.

part one

part two

part three

Races and isms

Foreign countries and people are a bit of a mystery in the beginning. There was we and us and our village and the people we knew about, but then sometimes there was something else too. Of course, to them, we were the strange ones, but we didn't know that then.

Are foreigners strange and mythical? Are they legendary beasts who live in the places on the map illustrated with dragons?

Are different people different from you? Do they even look different? Perhaps we people who think we all look the same really look quite varied. We just don't really think about it.

Anyway, once upon a time the idea of the foreigner was born and it lived several lives. Some of the lives were used to keep foreigners foreign - like wartime propaganda. No, we can't have you thinking they are human, or you will want to be friends with them.

A few of the lives made us think that the way of living in a far-away place might be better than that here, or at least there might be significant advantages to it.

As humans, we can't help being sympathetic to a character (unless we are psychologically unwell), as long as we have a little time to think about it. Unfortunately we aren't always given time to think about it - because the propaganda machine must keep us on the move! (going round in circles)

Characters like Fu Manchu or Ming the Merciless (although Ming is from the planet Mongo so presumably not literally intended to be Chinese) obviously owe their existence to racist misperceptions and misinformation, yet...they are rather exciting. Let's have a bit of thrill and passion in life please! And often the well-behaved characters are not the most interesting...

And someone like Mr Moto the detective equally relies on the idea that foreigners are different, yet there is enough to empathise with in the character that we can perhaps watch without becoming too disturbed. While the question will always remain (to modern eyes though less so to eyes of its own time) - why is this actor not Japanese? - and so on, Mr Moto's portrayal by Peter Lorre is very sympathetic and allows the part of us that lives stories and doesn't just read them (a childlike part) to follow the character and care for what happens to him. Lorre was born László Löwenstein and played outsiders to perfection, such as the serial killer in Fritz Lang's M("M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder"). I would hazard a guess that his ability to empathise with the outsider comes not from his own status as such a person (Jewish, Hungarian, Austrian or whatever) but from his ability to act.

So there's a lot of racism about and has been for a long time, yet at least it gives us the chance to think about people different from ourselves, and perhaps to find out a little about them - and us.

Now see what you think.

New Life

I'm afraid the butterfly is not alive now. Unfortunately before it was released into the outside world. But then it couldn't fly so we don't know what would have happened to it out there...

But look what has appeared on the tree next to the butterfly's place! A new shoot! So life is always appearing, even when you think it is disappearing.

Real People

It's hard to imagine old black-and-white people as real colour people. All the old people - Busoni, Liszt, Rachmaninov, Alkan, Chopin and company - they were all colour people.

And then it's hard to hear old recordings as real performances ("colour"). I hear Rachmaninov tearing away at 300 mph in his 3rd Concerto and wonder what he really sounded like.

I'm sure we can get closer to imagining what it was all really like.

They were people, like all the people you see today. Not monochrome prints.

Something must be done to invite them to step out of the page...

Still Going

You can see: the left wing is a bit damaged. Two-spot markings. Nice yellowy colour. Proboscis - curly bit at the mouth end with which butterflies drink nectar out of plants.

Our friend is still going well in the safety of its home-made butterfly house. It can't fly well so I try to keep it out of trouble for the moment. It sleeps at night and wakes up in the day. It likes warmth from about 25°C, but becomes immobile if the temperature drops below 20 or so. It can still move if necessary in a cold temperature - I know this because when I first found it inside the fridge it could flutter and display its defensive "eye" markings on its wings. Anything with big eyes like that - you'd better keep away! It worked on me the first time.

I'm feeding it on a solution of honey and sugar in water. It is fed this on a chopstick. Since today I have a bit of tissue on the end which can soak up the solution. It would be nice to give it something to drink out of (like a flower) so it can use its proboscis properly.

Ideally this butterfly will get better and start flying properly, then the weather will get warm so I can release it into a lovely garden somewhere near. I try to give it some quality of life but it is designed to live outside, even if it is more dangerous out there.

I will see how it is looking.

How to Cook Chicken

OK here's a cookery tip for you.

Chicken (if you eat it) is one of the most difficult things to cook because it easily gets into an upsettingly dry, tough, squeaky condition which nobody wants but many people don't know how to avoid.

Here is the secret.

OK assuming you have cut it into small pieces, and you are frying it in a frying pan, all you have to do is: leave it. Yes, you read me correctly. Do nothing!

The side of the chicken pieces that is in contact with the pan is the side that is cooking. Turning it over now will make it cook faster (two hot sides). If you have other ingredients to add, and often there are lots of things to add and not enough time, then you don't want the chicken to be cooked before you start the other bits. No you don't, because the chicken will be over-cooked then. So just leave it in its initial position. THEN, when everything is cooked right, and the plates are ready, etc, then and only then should you turn it over. This way, it will be ready when you want to eat it and not before.

Remember that hot food continues to cook while it's on the plate. So stop cooking the chicken just before it looks ready. This means, if you cut a piece or split one with the cooking implement, it should be, well, not exactly pink in the middle, but certainly not quite white yet ("cooked chicken colour"). Yes, stop BEFORE it is ready. Stop when it is NEARLY ready.

So when it is on the plate in front of your guest or customer (or you) it will be the right colour inside. Because it is hot, and is still cooking itself as you watch!

Does that make sense?

To summarise:
1. in the pan, leave the top side of the chicken raw until you are ready to go.
2. turn it over to complete the cooking but stop just before it is cooked all the way through.

Now please tell me it worked.

Translation

There's a famous line in Baudelaire that goes:

Les soirs illuminés par l'ardeur du charbon

(First line, verse two, "The Balcony")

Actually I thought it was from Proust, and now you can imagine how glad I am that I checked!

Anyway, this line is a sort of famous example of how some things are difficult to translate. Those of you who do not know French, or who think you're probably fairly fluent but actually you're being rather optimistic about that (like me), will already have translated it as:

The evenings illuminated by the ardour of carbon

Which is of course the only sensible translation. These people who pettifogg over unnecessarily precise details may prefer a different rendering but that's not us, eh? We appreciate the broad strokes of our intuitive understanding of the French tongue. Unfortunately that's not how the French would see it, so we have to actually find out what the words mean rather than guessing.

Here are some examples:

The evenings aglow with the heat of the coals (Elaine Marks, 1962)
Evenings illuminated by the glowing coal (Francis Scarfe, 1961)
In those evenings lit by the glowing coal (Francis Scarfe, 1986)
The nights ignited by the fire’s fierce fashions (Arthur Symons, c.1900-1920)
The eves illumined by the burning coal (Frank Pearce Sturm, 1906)
long hours illumined by the glowing fire (Lewis Piaget Shanks, 1931)
The evenings lighted by the hushed flame of the coal (George Dillon, 1936)
On eves illumined by the light of coal (Roy Campbell, 1952)
The evenings lighted by the glow of the coals (William Aggeler, 1954)
Evenings illumined by the glow of coals afire (Jacques LeClercq, 1958)
Evenings lighted by the burning of the coals (Wallace Fowlie, 1963)
On evenings by the ardor of the hearth illumned (Richard L. Tierney, 1981)
Evenings illustrated by living coals (Richard Howard, 1982, no relation)
Those evenings lighted by the lustrous coal-fire’s heat (William H, Crosby, 1991)
Evenings illumined by the ardour of the coal (James McGowan, 1993)
Evenings illuminated by the heat of a coal fire (Cat Nilan, 1999)
On evenings lit by the glowing coal-fire (Peter Low, 2001)
Those evenings lit by the glow of the coals (Rosemary Lloyd, 2002)
On evenings lit by the glow of the ashes (A. S. Kline, 2004)
evenings lit by burning charcoal (Keith Waldrop, 2006)
Evenings bathed in crackling firelight (Ira Lightman, 2007)

(If you want to read more from those translations, look here which is where I found them anyway)

Well there's a few possibilities. One was almost the same as my first attempt, wasn't it! And this is from professionals...

Interesting to see someone struck on an alternative meaning of "illuminated" ("illustrated", like an illuminated manuscript). I don't know if the word has those senses in French and English, though, so I can't make any judgement about its suitability.

So now we know it's hard to translate. But actually everything is hard to translate - unless you're a good translator. Then it is still hard but it looks easy. Remember Samuel Beckett translated Finnegans Wake into French! So anything is possible...

Aha look, you can hear James Joyce reading an excerpt himself with his own good voice hear!

Somehow it seems the best translations give you the feeling of the original, though they may not give the most literal exchange of meanings. The best line is the one that makes you feel the...er...ardour of carbon, as you are reading it.
Perhaps a sense of the social and historical position of the language of the original is possible, too. Cor Blimey, Strike a Light, Guv, that may be adding too many difficulties sometimes.

So something has to come across. Across the page, between the two languages, across the years to today, someone has to make a bridge between the original and the listener or reader. Well, isn't that rather like being an interpreter of music?

To hear a performance by Sviatoslav Richter or Glenn Gould, to take two strong examples, is in some people's eyes to hear a powerful personality imposing itself on the original. Or to hear a partial, or even eccentric, view. But that is not how I see it (or hear it).

Richter is a powerful personality, but what is powerful is the extent to which he's prepared to go to bring you the original. It's instantly recognisable as him, yet it is also instantly recognisable as the "right" music. (That's not to suggest that there's one right way, but if it can sound right or wrong, then I'm calling it right)

Gould is the same. Sadly too many writers describe him as eccentric, perhaps nearly all of them (I am at least one exception), and it makes it very difficult to hear what he's actually doing. I am a Gould sympathiser and I am still surprised when I listen and suddenly realise it's not eccentric. It is always Glenn, Glenn, Glenn, but Glenn likes the music, you see so it's not the same Glenn as if we were hearing some...other...player. (Still trying not to complain about others - they have a right to make a living too! Though they don't always have the right to do it the way that they do, in my view.)

How I imagine playing music is like this. I want to be the composer. I am trying to bring you the music as the composer thought of it - as far as I can understand that. But what is particular about my understanding of how one does this is that I see myself as representing the composer if he were alive today.

That means that things can be different sometimes. Also I do have free will so my "creative commune" can come up with a change in the performance, as, of course, many good players did anyway. Details can change, even the whole idea of the piece. They say Chopin never played the same way twice. It brought tears to the eyes of his pupils - first because of its beauty, second because as they tried to repeat the results it had already changed! How frustrating it must have been. But that was the way it was. And I guess that's the way it is for me, too. Things just can't be the same twice! Even if I tried.

I can't translate
Les soirs illuminés par l'ardeur du charbon
Et les soirs au balcon, voilés de vapeurs roses.
Que ton sein m’était doux! que ton coeur m’était bon!
Nous avons dit souvent d’impérissables choses
Les soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon.
Not today, anyway.

But I have other news from far away and long ago that I have to pass along to you. So that is what I will do, as best I can.