Making of

When last I posted

I felt ridiculous for doubting the new mechanical metronome. I thought it was proof of my neurosis/megalomania that I felt it was not keeping time properly, was less efficient than me at keeping time.

So I dismissed the idea.

Then Lise arrived and switched it on and after two ticks handed it to me and told me to put it in the bin. It turns out that it is very difficult and therefore expensive to make an accurate mechanical metronome.

I can feel this blog dwindling away to an annual greetings posting, but hope springs eternal and it might well swell up again into something more substantial. Perhaps I should take the time to think about what I actually want to map here. 

Writing about writing.

You were always my priority, my obsession. The reason I could never relax. My brain just kept whizzing round, like a computer or a fan, incessantly working moving machining functioning, keeping me in your orbit.

Maybe I’m still in your orbit, but the gravitational pull is definitely weaker. You let me breathe, now. But you still act like an electronic collar on a dog. If I neglect you too much for too long, I start to feel rootless and uneasy.

 

I am posting the first picture I took of the candles which eventually developed into the greetings picture. These things take time. Everything takes time. Timing is everything.

The benefits of bilingualism…

We propose that these effects arise because a foreign language provides greater cognitive and emotional distance than a native tongue does.

Hosiery - pronounced hozery - what a weird word. But not as weird as pantyhose.

When I read the headline of an article about Judi Dench:

"I don't just do bossy"

I read it as: "I, in fact, really am bossy"

But I had grabbed the wrong end of the stick.

"She still likes the fact that she gets to be imperiously bossy in it, though is quick to also say that: "I would hate people to think bossy is all I can do.""

Incontrovertible. Polymath. Alumnus.

"Via, Veritas, Vita" is the motto on Glasgow University’s Coat of Arms and means "the Way, the Truth, the Life".

boule de quille, baldaquin, balderdash, haberdashery, earplugs.

Euphonie

Infinite spirally circle of the blues.

So I sit down and play and play round and round the three simple chords and I am in raptures. At times when I come round to the start again my voice bursts forth as if it didn’t belong to me and the emotion is so intense, the feeling of homecoming as you reach the familiar starting point, that I actually cried and as I cried I thought that the fact that I’m crying does not mean it would be moving for anybody else. Au contraire. Not that that matters. I suppose I have to start thinking about what I want, and forget about everybody else.

Nor is music a battle for the last word. Sans accord il n’y a pas d’harmonie.