Possibly the Longest Navel in History

I've begun writing on my "lousy stories" again. It's an old tale which I felt was stupid and shallow the first time I wrote and finished it and have been revising out of a sense of shame ever since. The latest draft was begun June 21st-ish, and though I suspect that I must have left this latest draft open whilst wandering off elsewhere, Word says that I have spent over 85 hours on it.

What I've done lately to encourage writing endurance is set up an elaborate tea service at the laptop. I cleaned the secretary-desk a little. The ceremony involves brewing a pot of tea, arranging it on a large plate or today our tray, having a sugar pot and a rye cracker beside it, and then consuming it as the writing advances. I don't know if it qualifies as a slop bowl, but I even have a little fingerbowl in which I put today's teabags when they had sufficiently steeped. It feels very professional; the real business of literary endeavour is, of course, unconnected to the state of our teapot.

***

Though I was in the bookshop for a short while today as Mama's holidays begin to taper off, I have had endless time for the piano: Mozart's early sonatas and the concerto in d minor (20), Chopin's "revolutionary" étude and his "raindrop" prelude, Händel's "Harmonious Blacksmith" suite, the slow movement of Mendelssohn's d minor trio, Schubert's sonata in B flat major (D 960) and the two before, and Bach, for instance. I like having my sloppy pile of notes on both ends of the noterack and on the noterack itself, and pulling forward one of the previous notes to wedge in place the recently turned pages of the current score.

I really like Beethoven's cadenzas for the Mozart concerto, but that may be because of their familiarity from the Rudolf Serkin and Clara Haskil recordings I liked to hear at university. Clara Schumann's introduces (I felt when I attempted it today) too much of her own style and Carl Reinecke's is friendly but perhaps slavishly subordinated to Mozart's composition. In the fantasia-like tradition of cadenzas they are all rather weird; so with the very weirdest I am parochially inclined to prefer my own flavour of eccentricity. On the other hand canon compositions themselves are often hard to follow, as I had reason to observe again today in the thickets of Schubert; and I will likely concede in a couple of years that the problem lies not with the cadenzators but with the uncongeniality of my interpretation.

***

Yesterday it was Mama's birthday, and though she has never felt inclined to fuss about it, she took it upon herself for our sakes to indulge the mood for a bit of a splurge and shop for an elaborate set of repasts.

In the morning I spent an idle hour or so washing cutlery and cleaning the stove, with its extremely irritating freight of mistakenly loyal grease which was sort of like a glue stick when you try to rub the glue off of something and it only becomes more grey and streaked and stubborn. I wasn't the one who spattered the damn stuff after leaving a middling flame unattended on the largest gas burner. There were little creamy splatters on the inverted underside of our Römertopf lid, which I conveniently ignored.

Anyway, after lingering over that I prepared three "puddings surprises," this time with three types of pudding mixes, the ladyfinger biscuits, coffee, sherry, bilberries, raspberries, the berry juices and chocolate sprinkles. Due to different cooking times the puddings were fairly tepid by the time the dishes were achieved, as it were, but I woke up the others so that they could enjoy the pudding in residual warmth. I think the pudding would have been improved with more sherry.

Then Mama and T. laboured over fruit tortes, which were beautiful and delectable and their toppings compounded of mandarin and peach slices from a can, apricot halves, blueberries or bilberries, raspberries, and pineapple rings. There was whipping cream to go with it, and a bowl of yoghurt with the remaining fruit. To follow we had bars and squares of chocolate — nougat, milk, marzipan, and ginger marzipan — which were partitioned in the corner room as one of the Herbie films appeared for the millionth time, still charming, on television. In the evening W. came by with a bottle of prosecco, which I enjoyed likewise in a sampling this morning. Of course we had also sung Happy Birthday.

***

Anyway, I thought that I would write a thorough profile on Amy Winehouse for one of my blogs. But though I spent a good part of yesterday researching and I like her and find her interesting, I think that it would be best to have gathered a knowledge of the music industry and the historical background against which her songwriting and performances developed. Hopping on the bandwagon isn't a problem in this case, I think, because so much nonsense has been written about her that someone should do a nicer job of it — though I do like Russell Brand's commentary from his blog (it should still be available at Guardian.co.uk). Secondly, while the subject is still fresh there is less of a likelihood that stuff will be raked up that should be left forgotten. I was interested in her to begin with because I had never heard any criticism of her musical talent, whereas music of any genre brings out so much partisanship, envy, and nitpicking that this is impossibly rare; and because she did seem to fit so naturally and authentically into her jazz, rocker persona, old-fashioned groove.

As for Norway, I think that it is too easy to write something sensationalist or grandiosely sentimental, and it's doubtful whether one can write anything helpful or unprecedented. As little can be done in retrospect for the victims at the youth camp and in Oslo as for many other civil or military situations in the past year in which many (unarmed, young) people have died. What one can do is not to construct a perverse demigod out of the suspected murderer by discussing him more than those who died.

For News of the World I am completely uninterested, though why the straightforward tabloid rather than the tabloids in the guise of news-papers which compose the rest of his [= R. Murdoch] subjournalistic consortium should be the one under fire for its ethics is the question, and it is a pity that the employees were let go when it was closed down.

Where Somalia and northeastern Kenya are concerned, I still don't have the impression that there is much one can do as an individual abroad. What I do think is that the portrayal of the famine-stricken as brainless and helpless mouths to feed instead of as herders, villagers, etc., who would have been able to get along on their own and in their native soil had they been given the resources (wells, etc.) which a government or agency should have afforded them, and who need not only food but also some measure of protection and a dignified temporary shelter, is patronizing and denigrating. The closest I've come to reading about such a situation is in Laura Ingalls Wilder, and it is very clear that there is nothing one can do — hard work or intelligence or even wealth — against the weather if you rely on agriculture. The main difference in this millennium is that the infrastructure to develop and distribute technology has improved along with the technology itself, that where farming is done on a larger scale the risks tend to be better balanced out, and that governments are better at evening out the odds for vulnerable farmers if they accept the responsibility.

***

Last week I had an interview for a job at a restaurant. The transit and timing worked well, but the interview itself went badly. Either I didn't seem waitressy or the person was looking for an excuse not to hire me, because he said that without food industry experience he couldn't hire me, in fact nobody could hire me, in fact that at best I could do cleaning work; then was wroth that I didn't speak Italian though I could tease out the meaning of the advertisement; all things which were clear in the c.v. and letter I had sent him. He sent an email apologizing for being in a bad mood, since he is stressed; but I didn't think it was entirely sincere and everything felt a little "squicky" anyway and not a situation where I would be happy or make the employer so. So I turned down an offer to help with the website; it is on the face of it a dumb thing to do (beggars choosers etc.) but in this case my instincts were emphatically against it and I don't know much about web design so wasn't eager to have the bluff called. I consider it a bullet dodged, and was mostly irritated at the time because of the expenditure of time (esp. two words: S-Bahn delays), effort, and of hope that I would at last have work. Now I feel pleased because I have managed to be obdurate about not putting up with balderdash.

Negligees and Menacing Moons

Besides practicing again, I have been keeping up with the haute couture in Paris, which ended on the 7th. These shows are, I've learnt, put on by members of the Chambre Syndicale, which demands that a fashion house put on two per year. This year I liked all of the ones I looked at — as usual I looked at the slideshows on Style.com, which have the advantage of occasionally giving the names (and agencies) of the models, while Vogue proper's website has a little magnifying box so that one to look at the photos close up, so that the workmanship is visible and it is easier even to tell what the fabric is. But newspaper websites like the Daily Telegraph's have them too.

One of the dresses I remember is Azzedine Alaïa's last; it is (if I recall) made out of a black latticework-like fabric which reminded me vaguely of old Middle Eastern window architecture, it has a broad belt-waist with metallic rims, and it is tied up at the throat with thin black straps, and hanging from the waist there is a short overskirt which falls in a pattern of petals. The overskirt mimicked the "skating skirts" earlier in the show which — though if they are trimmed with real fur I am inclined to disapprove — had a lovely Victorian appearance, and one or two came in a dark red velvety shade. They reminded me of ostrich feathers because of their fringe and their laden droop.

Then I really liked Anne Valerie Hash's line, which was a masterpiece of modernist French subtlety, and it was a relief to see black models; I don't know how to say this tactfully, but here their inclusion didn't look like political correctness because I don't think the clothes — the satiny fabric and the creamy or black shades — would have looked half so well on anybody else.

I looked at Dior briefly, twice, and felt that the problem with it was that dress-wise John Galliano has a better rein on his imagination once he has indulged it; I don't remember him ever indulging in pastels much, though they're more of my own bête noire, and the choice of patterns would have benefited from a sober second opinion. But the way in which the costumes were thrown together was at fault, too, since pieces that looked busy and unwearable together would have done very well if they had been contrasted with something striking but plain. In one case I noticed that there was a quieter skirt; I think either giving it a broad hem at the bottom or a strip of dark colour would have helped, since it was beige and looked almost literally like the unglamorous gruel of office fashion. I don't think the collection was disastrous by any means, but not thought over enough (and the reasonably popular photo of the girl in the opalescent moon dress would have been less horrifying had the sickle not been wedged with such homicidal tightness around her face).

Elie Saab had a line of thin dream-dresses which had a bathroom colour theme going on, namely that I could imagine each tint in the handle and packaging of a feminine razor; and though like Monique Lhuillier's his dresses do appeal sentimentally I have been meanly inclined to think without evidence that he designs a little cynically for the unimaginative tastes of the rich and famous. With Givenchy I didn't exactly get the point, since it was essentially all white negligées, suitable if one is an opera heroine who wishes to die tragically of consumption (the riverside backdrop to the show lent another suicidal overtone, though perhaps too Canaletto summer and not sufficiently gloomy or house-overhung for the lantern-lit, Thames-dragging variety of old-fashioned demise) but otherwise a trifle beside the point of winter attire, or for that matter attire. The Valentino show was rich and cheerful, and I liked the bright congress of Natalia Vodianova, Anne Hathaway, and the other guests.

Jean-Paul Gaultier's show I've somehow forgotten, and Chanel's I don't think I looked at in the first place — which is absurd, of course, because they're very important and I tend to like Chanel.

Anyway, this was all kind of frivolous and what the point of reviewing it as I have is precisely, I cannot say, but perhaps it is amusing. What is more embarrassing sartorially is that I could stare at what Kate Middleton wears forever, and either photographers choose her photos very respectfully or she is incredibly photogenic; at any rate I tend to delay looking at slideshows for a few days so that I am not undignifiedly hanging onto her every snapshot, as it were. Kate Moss's wedding photos I skipped; and the royal nuptials in Monaco made me (like other meddlesome-minded hoi polloi) a little sad, so I went through one slideshow a little absentmindedly and decided to shroud the rest in a sort of imperfect individual privacy.

A Chromatic Scale

It's the summer holidays and so I haven't been at the bookshop, instead have been drifting and doing kind of the same things and kind of other things, in a looser schedule.

For one thing, the spare time is a nudge to work on the piano again. Today and yesterday I sightread some of the piano part for Beethoven's Emperor concerto No. 4. It went better than last time because it is difficult to get into the mood; the piano bit is more scrappy and subordinated to the orchestra than in some other concerts. It's especially rewarding in a way, though, because the recognizable, relaxed, and lovely pieces of melody come at unexpected moments, especially after the most tedious scale or repetitive broken chords or a difficult trill that persists like an angry and troubling bumblebee. (Which can also happen with Mozart when, in a compositional device my father likes to point out, a chromatic scale leads haphazardly back to the original key. Chromatic scales run up or down in half notes; I think that they have a meandering character because they pause by the sharps and flats and therefore draw out the run, or a scurrying character because the additional sharps and flats render them more frenzied. Inventing dumb or obvious miniature stories about scales is the way I've developed to convince myself that they have meaning and that I can love them.) It is nicest of all when it is an endearing earlier motif which I thought had been extinguished forever.

There are two cadenzas to the concerto in the back of the score. The first made no sense to me yesterday but I should try again, and the second is the one I seem to have heard in recordings. Today I made up ones of my own as I went along, because even if I don't have much of a method or book-instruction yet I must start figuring out improvisation at some point.

By the time I had gone through Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, Chopin's Raindrop Prelude and Revolutionary Etude, etc., I was tired.