Ploumanac'h, Purcell, and Porridge

Since the appointment at the Agentur I've thought of writing a book set in Brittany and southern England during the French Revolution, with a plot loosely along the lines of the fable of the lion and the mouse. Embarking on a story is really quite like trying to ride up a hill on a bicycle; it's hard to tell beforehand if there will be enough momentum or staying-power to complete the ascent. So the story may fizzle out, but on the other hand it might not. At any rate, first I wrote a plot synopsis of the beginning of the story, determined the name of the main character, and decided to simply entitle it "The Lion and the Mouse." Then I looked up de la Fontaine's version of the tale, but as I told Papa and Mama later "The Lion and the Rat" isn't particularly poetic, besides which the poem is a little spare; so I found Aesop's original tale in Greek on the internet and will presumably quote that at the beginning of the book instead. Since then I've been burrowing into information on the Bretagne, specifically the Breton and Gallo dialects, Breton cuisine, the crops and livestock that were around in the 1790s, the history (I've gathered a broad outline and will fill in the details later), and the landscape. For the last I looked at photos at TrekEarth.com; needless to say that was too enjoyable to feel like hard investigative labour.

Today I've been acquainting myself with sails and navigation, e.g. fore-and-aft rigging, the gaff sail, the genoa, and the luff. But after I finish that I still need to decide which type of ship my emigré will use to escape to England, and to find out about everything from the currents and landmarks and topography of the Breton coast, through the winds, setting a course for a ship, and determining latitude and longitude, to how and when to manipulate the sails and rudder. Apart from the nautical details I want to learn about the local traditions (there are Breton saints and ghost tales, like the one about the Bride of Trécesson), the Parlement and lower-level administration, personalities like Madame de Sévigné, and the individual towns and villages. That's only the first step in the research; after that I want to learn about what went on in Paris during the Revolution, and then about what went on in England. And then I'll think about my characters and the niceties of the plot.

I've been at this for four days or so, and though of course I read online books on the side and occasionally become bored and lazy, I like the cycle of resting, pushing myself to do work and then enjoying the new information and ideas. It's only a daydream, but if the book and internet research hasn't petered out in three months' time I would love to go on a lengthy bike tour of Brittany, and see the ocean and the castles and the towns in person. Either way it would be nice to finally write a story with intellectual substance, though that's more my ego speaking than my nice ideal of twinning art and knowledge in the pursuit of a nobler vision of the human condition (to put it in an obscure and wordy way).

Apart from that I've been learning new pieces on the piano, like a Scarlatti sonata and Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 (obviously I've only played the very short second movement all the way through; the first and third movements will require much more time), and revisiting old ones like the partitas in the Notenbüchlein für Anna Magdalena Bach. What I'm watching for now is the phrasing given in the score; I've tended to ignore it but after practicing chamber music I've realized that it can indicate the composer's intentions very helpfully. Besides I am trying to figure out how to play Bach so that it sounds quintessentially Bach, Scarlatti so that it sounds quintessentially Scarlatti, etc. One aspect of that, which I'm not close to mastering, is being able to inhabit a piece, as if it were a course of true events, so that the performer shares the mood and the notes come alive.

Besides I've found more treasures on YouTube:

1. Andrés Segovia: 5 Pieces by Purcell
2. Agustín Barrios: La Catedral
3. José Iturbi: "Rigaudon," "Musette" and "Tambourin" by Jean-Philippe Rameau
(On the harpsichord. Pleasantly peculiar twanging and nasal tone, and a dancing rhythm, reminiscent of medieval folk music with hurdy-gurdies and the rest of it.)
4. Jussi Bjoerling: "An Silvia" by Schubert
(This recording made me reconsider the opinion that the song is boring.)
5. Wanda Landowska: Excerpt from Concerto No. 3 for Harpsichord by Bach
(An impressive lady. The tone of the harpsichord is really immensely protean; it sounds at times as if there were indeed a string orchestra playing in the background.)
6. Wanda Landowska, London Philharmonic: Piano Concerto No. 26 in D major, by Mozart
(The orchestra's style is dated — either the recording is at fault or the strings really slide all over the place — but I think their understanding of Mozart is uncommonly good, with the right combination of tranquillity, intelligent refinement, and genuine sensitivity.)
7. Benedetto Michelangeli: Sonata in C major by Baldassare Galuppi, Mvt. 1
(Papa used to practice this piece. The theme repeats often, but it's lovely.)
8. Clara Haskil: Piano Concerto No. 20 in d minor by Mozart
(This was the second piano concerto which I listened to almost every evening before falling asleep during my second year at UBC. After a few times I decided that it "describes" a vicious storm at sea with shrieking winds and titanic waves and pelting rain, intermittently lulled. It's dark and unsettling, not only in comparison with the rest of Mozart's oeuvre, and not an obvious choice for bedtime, but also lyrical and quite beautiful especially during the second movement.)

Anyway, the question of an income remains unsettled, but if I continue to spend next to no money apart from insurance payments, my bank account will only run out in perhaps a year. What I've been daydreaming of doing, besides being immersed in music and writing an epic historical novel, is learning to cook well, picking up new languages, reading history, and finding out as much about physical pursuits like sailing and carpentering as I can in books and on the internet. As far as the cooking is concerned, I haven't been doing much lately except boiling spaghetti and concocting a tomato sauce out of the miscellany in the fridge and the pantry. This time there was a jar of basil tomato sauce from the store, a box of tomato mush, three onions, a clove of garlic, green peppercorns, a bay leaf, red wine that has been sitting behind the coffee-maker since before the trip to Austria, ground paprika, and a heaping tablespoon of spicy pepper paste. One thing I've learned from the countless improvisations of this repast is that the garlic is too strong if it's minced and fried golden-brown; instead I crush the whole clove and pop it in before the olive oil is properly warm so that it stews more than it fries.

Another frequently attempted (though not recently) recipe is porridge. We buy the tiny rolled oat flakes, which tend to congeal into a grey mush when they are worked into the venerable Scottish dish, but the matter is improved if the oats are only shaken into the milk after the milk is already warm, and if they are not cooked long. Uncle Pu, a past master at porridge, says that he just boils the flakes with water and then pours milk over everything once it's in the bowl, but he uses large oat flakes and I am convinced that applying that technique to the tiny flakes would result in a Dickensian slop. So the Platonic ideal of porridge that I had in my mind's eye — tender goldeny and brown-speckled flakes suspended in a gentle, pale cream matrix, surrounded by a sea of whiter milk and crowned with a sprinkling of brown sugar — has hitherto been unattained.


[N.B.: The Ploumanac'h of the blog title is a little seaside spot in Brittany where the shore is covered in pink granite boulders which the waves have worn into fascinatingly peculiar blobs. It seems as if it's as easy to find unintended sculptures in them as in cumulus clouds.]