Tube to power to flower

A long time since the last update; mainly because my mind has been occupied with my life rather than life in general - hence if I were to write on that, it would be boring to most other people.

Upon arrival at Tottenham Hale station, should you be travelling on victoria (as it were), there is a new announcement,

"This is Tottenham Hale. This station has step-free access".

Now Nicola lives in Brixton, and I live in Walthamstow; I have been to visit Nicola a number of times recently. As far as I'm aware, Tottenham Hale is the only station on the Victoria Line that has 'step-free access'. It made me wonder, if you need such access, whether you like having days travelling up and down the Victoria Line since the only place you can get on and off is Tottenham Hale. Of course it is society power. The only reason for providing 'step-free' access is because 0.01% of your customers require it, and to discriminate against them is punishable by derision, fines, legal action, and the News of the World. If you can provide an example of intention to bore millions of pounds worth of lift shafts into the ground of London, you can happily be excused in your committment to society. That is until the environmentalists get hold of you for all the pollution caused by your lorries, bore machines, and concrete manufacture. Obviously if I needed (or am going to need) the easy access(!) I would be delighted. It is simply power of the angry conviction.

I've realised lately that life is all too unashamedly about power and that the whole concept of power is a pot at the end of a very long rainbow.

What is one man's principle and conviction is another man's view of facism. What is one man's being is the way another man will judge their principles to be. I judge myself as trying to be very patient and tolerant of other peoples' principles; to learn how others exist and think is the most satisfying thing ever - the experience of humanity's differences. Power on the other hand is like a drug - you always want more.

So much of life is about a need to be in control. As children we play games in which one person is always in charge. We grow up (sort of), go to work, play games with others, become pawns in other peoples' games, and aim towards greater power. Why do we go to work? To earn money and stability through promotion and success, so that one day we can have freedom from hierarchy, power and control in retirement. It is all so screwed up.

Of course, our innocent games of Doctors and Nurses as young creative things, teach us much to be useful later in life. Personal life can often be about power games. I despise power games - they make me sick - people who use them on me, people use them to others, but worst of all when I find myself involved in one. You just can't get out of it can you - what is the other person thinking? What do they expect me to do? What should I do to show I'm not getting involved? I've thought about it a lot lately - the strategy of life, the laquered chess board that is the template for my life.

It used to amuse me predicting how people I knew well would react to situations and scenarios, and often I was right. Today, I'm tired of it: my king is in stalemate, and strategy holds no interest. I'm gradually learning, the more I reveal my soul to people, the more power it potentially gives them, and the less I can resist joining in. That is who I am however - I'm open and honest, and emotionally in tune, but I am tired of it. Perhaps this is a power game me writing this now? To me, I am writing what has been exercising me for a while without solution. I hate not having solution.

But I have restbite from this. Life has its total relaxations. After a very exhaustative Easter, I went with Rel to visit Claire and Rupert in Surrey. It has been a long time since I have been so relaxed. We have no power issues, we just drink and talk, and laugh, and eat, and philosophise. The colour and excitement to the chess board like a flower breaking through at random points.

Look at relaxed Jon.

Jon with Toby:



Jon pretending to be a bird:





Jon with Claire and Rupert and Rel on the front cover of our 12th century polyphony album:

Sea Change

Photocopiers are evil creations. They have a knack of creating chaos where order existed and where there was once art. Today I spent a whole afternoon of work photocopying some sets of music ready to be engraved. It should have taken but an hour except that the first photocopier failed to scan random pages correctly, and then the second photocopier on which I repeated the exercise (totalling probably about 500 pages), managed to split 3 copies into 6 randoms, and jammed once every 5 minutes. The rest of the afternoon was spent sifting the copies to find out which pages were missing.

It was a day destined to go wrong from the moment I woke up late and got to the Victoria line to discover it fully broken past Euston and the next train being a 15 minute wait. Needless to say, I didn't arrive at work until half past 10. Lunch was spent in the post office in a unusually long queue, and then the cashier's computer crashed. This evening, I accompanied a rehearsal for Gavin and on the way back, the north circular jammed and the bus was terminated leaving us stranded in Edmonton.

It led me all to wonder whether there are such things as bad days. Does the earth have a magnetic shift or a change of spin speed which knocks everything over? It is certainly true that things always tend to go wrong at once. I've come to the conclusion that far from going wrong, it is the normal things which I have grabbed onto as going wrong in order to persuade myself that life continues as normal.

Alas, my bad day has coincided with an epiphany: hence the grabbing on to normal every day things. Last year I was very unhappy in my job, and the things that supported me were the very important and secure life and relationships I had. Why is this related you ask? My life has seen a sea change: my epiphany is that this is year has the potential to become very lonely. As I sit here, I am very happy in my new job, but my personal life has already begun to unravel around me and today picked up speed: this change is my magnetic shift and my change of speed - not the planet's. It is my earth that has suddenly moved rather suddenly: some key supports and things that have kept me going have disappeared, or will be later on in the year.

I am tired and emotionally worn out at the moment - my brain has been working in overdrive for some time, but today it reached capacity for too many problems at once. It is a good thing to force yourself time to think and wittle away all the supports in your life so you can identify yourself and your needs without all the cladding. As long as you remain objective and try to purge emotions as much as you can, I believe it a positive evolution. But I am frightened for the wilderness to come.

Thankfully I am spending time in Surrey after Easter weekend is over, and I have randomly been offered a two week opportunity to think by myself and sort my head out later on in May.

Summer is *certainly not* i cummin in

Today's theme is lunacy. I will freely admit to being fairly lunatic now and again. For instance I have it in my head to apply for the job that Rel is advertising at the moment - obviously I would pretend to be a barely literate silly person with a lot to say in the covering letter, and for whom principles are something you pick up at Camden market. That can be tomorrow's homework. An example of lunacy, but only part-time and avoidable if I was pretending to be boring. The weather is very lunatic; in less than 20 days time, we should be dancing around maypoles and singing barely veiled filthy songs (madrigals) to welcome in summer. The weather is however stuck in winter and is foul. But I am stronger than the weather - it will not beat me.

Tuesday Lunacy:

1. When I arrived at Oxford Circus tube station this morning a man even shorter than me (and it happens I tell you) had got off the train too. He proceeded to act like a Monty Python character that had been binned. Whilst carrying a plastic briefcase (the sort that swots had at school... remember that?) he walked along the platform hitting himself, cursing under his breath, screwing up his face and making his hands into fists before going back to hitting himself. It is the sort of thing I might do if I realised I had got drunk the night before and had told somebody that they look like a chimpanzee and acted like a four-week old poodle. At least I would only do it once - he must have told someone that they looked like Gail Porter or something because, in the middle of the crowd, he continued to do it until the surface. It was amusing and I did get smiles from one or two very attractive people on the escalator... I'm pretending that that isn't related to my laughing at the man.

2. Outside Oxford Circus station a lunatic man laughing like a hyena so physically that he had to steady himself on the rails around Exit 1. What was that about I wonder? I was going to point out that it was Tuesday morning and far too early when you are hungover, but I didn't think he would understand my distress, so I didn't.

3. Going to the swimming pool at lunchtime in my ploy to lose weight, swimming 120 lengths, and then going to buy lunch in Villandry on Gt Portland Street. I had pasta carbonara. I tell you ... no self-restraint is me! There is the lunacy of going swimming and having such a big lunch... but Villandry is worth going into: not only the food looks fabulous and tastes fabulous, but the serving staff always look wonderful and attractive (I can't vouch for their taste - cannabalism is not my thing). Suffice to say that it wasn't the cheese I wanted from the cheese counter! [now I'm the lunatic]

4. Walking past Piccadilly Circus to see the Metropolitan Police's new Police Box. I know that Doctor Who has been a big success, but is there really a need for a limousine Tardis like this:



Silly. Lunatic

5. Spending all evening practising Bach Chorale preludes on Gavin's large organ (oh yes... bring on the jokes):




So a day of lunacy. Let's hope I have something more useful to say when I next write.

Be Minor

Well it's been a while since I've actually been moved to tears by music that I was playing, but it happened tonight. In all honesty, Bach's B Minor mass is one of the most Godlike works ever written, and anyone serious about music should at least know it. My emotional feelings arrived in the last movement which is the most beautiful fugue; its simplicity after so much intensity, a 4 hour rehearsal and a 2 hour concert, general tiredness, and recent emotional stetchings all contributed I think. Bach was truly a genius, and I shall remember that performance for a long time, if only for the sheer exultation and emotion I felt at the end (and for the need of agile jumpings between harpsichord and organ!)

Gavin and I were both playing, Rel, Claire, Rupert, Harry, and Eon all came along to the performance, and we went for a wonderful thai meal afterwards, got the last train to London, and then a taxi back to Walthamstow... decadence.

Bed time for tired continuo players!

Tuba Smarties

I do maintain that the tube is an amazing place. The control room at Covent Garden Station today gave the following proclamation:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, please beware that pickpockets are in operation this afternoon"

It led me to wonder whether London Underground actually sublets the pickpocketing on the tube, and if there is a certain timescale for it.

A fairly unusual day all around, I met my friends Luke and Ruth, Helen and Andy, Clare, David and my Godson Benjamin. We had lunch in a lovely vegetarian cafe in Neal's Yard. Some years ago when I was an undergraduate, Ruth, Helen, Clare and David used to sing in my choir at college. In those days, I was the one who held court around the tables - usually with bottles of wine and filthy gossip and/or high philosophy. These days it is 1 year old Benjamin who holds the court: he is clearly the most important person in the room. Perhaps it is because I have passed it on to him that I no longer possess this gift. In days gone by, I could play a room like a game and come out of it having charmed most people. These days I just can't be bothered, or at least it feels like it...!

Age... it moves on. I went to the Edge tonight for the first time in ages. I miss convivial times there with people now distant and years now gone!

Bach B minor mass tomorrow. It should brighten my mood.

A stringy thingy

"What's pulling your strings? "

I knew the voice was directed at me from the moment I heard it; it wasn't a menacing voice, but it did belong to the lady who had been irritating passengers on the train that had just arrived into Euston station.

"Just a question", she said.

During the journey, this woman had been firing javelin questions and statements at innocent and awkward passengers:

"You have beautiful eyes. I'm just saying."

So when this voice asked the string question and the mouth and eyes of the Irish woman (who had previously and apparently been looking out of the train door) turned to look at me, I was quite surprised. Not surprised because she meant me, but surprised because I had been expecting it to be me she meant, and I had been right. At the time I said something that wasn't an answer in a plummy accent, and in the style of a privately educated ra-ra chap to which she smiled, evidently in possession of the answer she needed.

This encounter was over a week and a half ago just after I had arrived back from a holiday in Geneva, but I was reminded of it yesterday morning. In a break from sitting at my desk, I left the office and walked to Chappells of Bond Street to find a piece of music that I needed to do some research on for a publication. Oxford Street was full of people; this of course is not unusual, but the insight of my Irish inquisitor came back to mind: What are these people doing? Who is pulling their strings? What is pulling their strings? It is an interesting idea to work out what people are motivated by, or what they think they are motivated by. For me the question often comes back in private thought as I am fiercely analytical of most things I do. I suppose to a certain extent, what you think motivates you, is only what catalyst you use to find what everyone seeks - freedom, happiness and satisfaction. There are plenty of philosophers who have written on this much more eruditely than me, but it is still fascinating. I think the strings which pull me have carrots of fulfilment on the end like a mirage oasis of whatever I think my motivation is at that time in my life. Right now, being Friday evening, the strings pulling me are the need to leave my desk and head to a rehearsal in order that I can then go and meet Rachel and Claire in Islington for a drink. I go for a drink to fulfil the end of my week, and to relax with two like minded intellects. A short-term fulfilment but with potential long-term implication.

But fulfilment changes depending on what happens. My life has been going through a very odd phase over the past few weeks. Like a wind change. I have found stages of fulfilment, and I have found answers to a great many questions. However, bizarrely, as if someone had opened one window and shut another, a vast swathe of friends have, without real contact for ages, suddenly decided to get in touch. Even more bizarrely, a majority of them with about a 3 year gap. Another one telephoned me today. The converse is also true. Of course, this is all the Rhythm of Life again, and evolution must have fallow periods too. It is interesting how a natural balance is achieved, and significantly how what is 'pulling my strings' changes depending on which puppeteer is on duty. After all, a river which stands still, and doesn't evolve will get a return of stagnancy on its stubborness.

A thought for the weekend. I'm off to find a pair of scissors.

Have you glot what it takes?

It occurred to me after work yesterday that I am a polyglot. I was very pleased to discover this as it is a silly word and applying it to me just makes me more silly (and as my friends know, I am quite silly). My language abilities include English, German, French, Russian, and Afrikaans. Well... that is a bit of a lie: my English abilities and German abilities are (mostly) assured, my French abilities (as those in Geneva two weekends ago will testify) is limited to simple stuctures in the present tense, my Russian abilities are limited to saying where I live (and a repeating of the word for hedgehog), and I speak one sentence of Afrikaans. Perhaps they can all link together to make me a polyglot? I think so, and so do you.

My knowledge of etymology is a bit third-hand or pub-quizzy, and it was always where I fell down in essays at university - I was never able to exhibit such things as knowledge of language origin or history of being; it is what comes of being too tied up in experiencing people rather than tracts and theses. However, yesterday evening following the polyglot revelation, I found myself sitting in a bar in Piccadilly with my friends Lou, Nic, Kath and Rob. At one time we all worked in the same building and it cemented our bond of friendship: we would head to a bar regularly to discuss the problems with the company and the issues of the day. It has been a year and a half since we were all in the same building at the same time, but the bond of friendship is stronger than ever, and we still meet regularly (with Chrissy as well). In some ways we are older and wiser and nowadays discuss grown-up issues like relationships, marriage, mortgages*, and bathroom redecoration, but we still drink lots of wine and talk about sex and what's hot and happening.. almost a group Bridget Jones experience.

Why is that relevant to polyglots? Well, drinking wine is a big part of this relationship, and I was wondering why I never manage to have 'just the one' glass I intend (acknowledges Mrs Wembley). It is clearly because, when someone says 'let's have another bottle', I say, 'why not!' I then decided that actually when my friends call me a 'Wino', they must actually just be acting middle class (and Surbiton) and pronouncing Why not in a french accent. In fact, Wino is just slang for 'middle-class alcoholic'. Clearly if a polyglot (or poly-glow if you are Margot Ledbetter) is someone who can read/write/speak several languages, then a wino (derived from the expression why not) is someone who can open/drink/dispose of several bottles of wine!

I felt happier leaving Piccadilly having discovered that I was a Polyglot and a Wino, and having realised (for the latter) that it was because 'I'm just a girl who can't say no.'

So I came home to Walthamstow and went to the pub with a nice South African musician who is staying with us at the moment. We celebrated my self-discovery with a pint of beer.




* Isn't it interesting how the word mortgage contains the french word for 'death'. Answers on a postcard. Watch my etymology go (very wrong...)

The Rhythm of Life is a powerful thing

Everyone complains about the tube; as a Londoner it is as genetic as your hair colour. It means so many things to different people. I use the tube to think about the rubbish that circles around my brain - it is the only time of my day that I am forced to sit with my own thoughts for 20 minutes. Many arguments have been avoided and friendships saved as a result. Today I bumped into a friend from Cambridge who I haven't seen in over 3 years. All the more bizarre because he lives in Azabaijan and was in my carriage.

If you look around, the tube is like its own society - a microcosm under the streets of London; it is full of people who are so totally different. When I am happy and not thinking so intensely, I notice couples and find them fascinating. Some couples argue, some look in love, some look unhappy, some should really find a room, some are gay, and some are probably not in a relationship at all. I think I will attack the relationship concept at another time - for the time being, assume that by couple I mean two people attached to one another by means of a love partnership slash bond.

Some couples are stunningly attractive both individually and together, some couples, to me, look ugly, and some couples look like they are entirely wrong.

Do the attractive ones have anything apart from the lust which must be distractingly present?
Will they have anything in their relationship when the inescapability of age attacks their bodies?

Do the ugly ones find one another attractive or are they just in love?
Are ugly people automatically attracted to other ugly people?

What about the mixed ones? What is going on in the heads? Does the attractive half wish his/her partner was a beauty? Does the uglier one feel as if they owe something. Or have they just found real love, beauty and solace in one another.

Of course 'relationship' could almost mean anything these days, so these are futile and improper questions. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and good on both beholders for fitting their jigsaws together as much as they can.

It is really a question of perception and perception is certainly one of the Rhythms of Life. Cole Porter fans unite. Why do I find people beautiful or ugly? I suppose I've learnt it. It is the same way that the arts I find beautiful are only so because they follow rules which I've been told (or experienced) make something stunning. Or is that true? Perception is evolving all the time in each individual - it's what can make diversity.

I didn't like coffee the first several times I drank it, in much the same way that I'm sure my love of Bach only grows the more I experience music. When I was 11 years old and sang in the Premiere of Michael Garrick's 'Judas Kiss', the sight and sound of Norma Winstone scat singing was the funniest thing I had ever seen. Five years later when my Dad took me and a friend to Ronnie Scott's to see Betty Carter, it was the most informative and amazing experience of my Jazz love. My perception of scat singing had changed: my beholding had changed.

There is no answer to this ramble yet. It is thought in progress. I have a lovely image of Freud in my head. He is sitting on the Victoria Line surrounded by people.

Expect more...

An addendum

Something has been bothering me all day. My blog. I've been thinking about setting one up for weeks; I have several friends who are excellent blog correspondants and who possess excellent brains for the purpose. The inspiration to my aspiration: they hold that key responsibility. All day I have been excited about the subjects I could tackle so I obviously like it really.

I thought about it on the tube whilst on the way home from playing the organ. Is it the exhibitionism of blogging that worries me? No. I've always been secretly keen to show what is happening in my mind, because I feel it unusual. I'm an open-private person. Some things are strictly private, but my emotions and feelings are, were someone to ask, quite open.

Clearly it is the name that worries me. Blog is a toilet word. It is a poo that won't flush away. It even sounds like it.

The problem with these made-up words is that they sound synthetic. Weblog sounds like a spider poison. Antecedent and consequent are both clumsy and don't sound beautiful at all. The curse of compound words.

So if not a blog, what am I writing? A webiary? A webjourn? An Intiary?

Tony Hart had it right in 1986. This will be my Gallery. My mental exhibitionism is contained within a Gallery.

Pretentious. Pompous. But get used to it if you want to read further...

First ramblings

Everyone has one don't they? It is the thing to do.

"Check my blog"

I'm not a huge fan of abbreviations, and I pretend to be indivudual and not follow the crowd. Clearly I use abbreviations as much as anybody else, and society's magnetic drag catches me every time. I sit here in Levi Jeans and a natty (some would say trendy) H&M jumper. A victim of (not-so-clever but nevertheless ubiquitous) marketing.

So I have one - a blog, or weblog, or 'blog (as pedants might say). It's alright because I know I'm only a part-time pedant, in the same way that I only pretend to be individual. What does mark me from others is the way I think, and the things I see as funny or worth noting.

Thankfully my task to be individual will be aided by my adherence to society's pointing finger, and I hope to use this blog to explore my life and thoughts. Hopefully someone else might at some stage read it, and enjoy the random nature of my life and the thoughts that transcend. Until now I have always resisted the 'blog drag' with the knowledge that it would be all too easy to use it to be manipulative, or to make a point, or upset someone who I know was following it. Let's see how I go.

As they say (but not me, obviously),

"Watch this space...."