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In the Guardian, today:

"German chancellor says current high unemployment in Europe is price of competitiveness"…

And I think to myself but what is the point in being competitive if it means millions of people are living in despair and misery?

Wouldn't we all just be better off now if the system collapsed?

Never really thought of myself as an anarchist before but I'm not happy about the way the world is being run anymore.  

In any case, to quote the late George Burns, "Acting is all about sincerity. If you can fake that, you've got it made …'
Michael Simpkins

a page of one of my sister's many sketchbooks.

 S-words are mightier than Le Pen

It’s very pleasant        c’est très agréable

To suddenly see a connection de reconnaitre subitment une connexion

You didn’t see before qu’on ne voyait pas auparavant

A word I had great difficulty translating always have done

And today I noticed that I had been completely blacking out the possibility of using the first sense of the word, and so had not even contemplated it, it didn’t even occur to me, when I saw « s’inscire » my mind went « oh non, how am I going to translate it this time ? ». Then this morning, I saw it, and the first sense, which includes two of the same consonants, came to me, as if for the first time and the experience conjured up an ambiance of TS Eliot… and the word syllabus.

 

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.

 

Atunement - candid

A mechanical metronome has appeared on the piano, a present for my 57^th birthday. I didn’t want an electronic one. I couldn’t bear the idea of having the beat dictated by a device requiring throw-away batteries.

This reminds me of an episode in my life when I was living in Paris and refused to use an electronic guitar tuner. “If I can’t tune my guitar naturally using my own ear then I won’t play” I declared. All I needed to tune the guitar was to be able to fully relax but the pace of life in Paris is stressful, there never seemed to be any time to fully relax, and substances that take the edge off stress don’t exactly improve imperfect pitch. Eventually my desire to play the guitar proved stronger than my dislike of being aided by electronic devices and I bought an electronic tuner.

Pleased with my fully mechanical metronome, I wind it up. And I set it to play. It is exhilarating playing along with it, as long as I’m on the beat. When our beats start to diverge I get annoyed at it for having slowed down or speeded up. I become convinced that it is taking longer to swing to the left than to swing to the right so I turn it round to see if I have the same impression when it’s facing the other way…

cooking term.

French     English

verjus       verjuice

the ver means green and sour and not worm.

Instead of “signing” I typed “singing” and realised how close they are. Tracing, engraving. Later I try to type signed and it comes out as synged.

Lise is practicing Bach’s cantata “Sheep may safely graze”. Graze, gaze, phase, maze, peso.

segueing. to segue. I feel this word has sneaked into the English language behind my back. I know roughly what it means but must look it up and find out where it came from.

for quel que soit I usually prefer irrespective to regardless.

ruthless cunning has a certain ring to it.

Monadhliath mountains – how come I had never heard of these before? Did they just spring up suddenly when I wasn’t looking, or somehow segue into the landscape?

dutes for duties

Heinz Wismann has published a book called entre les langues – between the tongues. He reminds us that it’s the space between language and reality that allows meaning to sneak into discourse, and evokes the idea of us creating our own native language – which is how I prefer to translate langue maternelle rather than mother tongue.

Reading in World Wide Words about “the Dutch angle in film” being German, another mistaken use of Deutsch, which is also known as “canted camera”.

Members of death metal band Abortus Dei working on lyrics about a prisoner in his cell writing in his own blood.