It's Saturday evening. A chicken is roasting in the oven. Mozart opera gladdens the heart. England lost at rugby again. And I did almost no study at all today. Not quite as I envisioned it this morning. Saturday good, Mozart good, chicken good, no study no good. Considering the lack of lectures-there have been none-lack of resources and the sense that I'm floundering around in the dark is not as bad as I feared it might be. I am getting things read and done but I have no idea if they are the right things. So the anxiety will prolong for some time.
But I live in the here and now. Good things are in front of me. I have found a job I think I might apply for. Christmas is getting ever nearer and another epic lunch at Beka's is on the horizon. So not all is bad.
It was a tough week but I'm feeling more with it, less stressed and a little less tired. If I can afford the time tomorrow I may venture to the Eight Bells in Old Hatfield for lunch before watching the Hurricanes play at the University. Promised Allan the chaplain I would try to come and support. Next week looks a little different. Will not be in my office beyond Wednesday lunch time. A hospital visit will occur then, governor's meetings all day Thursday then off to Birmingham for the Mind Conference on Friday. More time away from the books but variety does help calm the mind. More soon.
I Heard a Voice.
Saturday, 15 November 2014
Friday, 14 November 2014
Played Often, Rarely Performed.
Given my great passion for Mozart it may surprise you dear reader that in my years of music I have only performed Mozart on 3 occasions. We sang the Vespers on tour in Belgium in 1981. Sadly we never did record it. In the years of my retirement-which are in the main ongoing-I sang the Requiem very badly. The performance was not that bad but I was bad.
Yet the performance I recall most is of playing 2nd violin in the Clarinet Quintet in what I think must have been 1986. I'm pretty certain it was my O Level year-yes I am that old. Perhaps not coincidentally I studied the piece for O Level music. My violin playing days were marred by laziness, a lack of practice, no confidence and teachers who spent so much time dwelling on my many technical faults that I forgot that music is about playing music not bashing out notes with no emotion.
We all recall great teachers from school or university. I had a lot of bad music teachers and a great one. Neil Cox who ran the choir at Lancing occasionally delved into other realms of music too. It was him who asked me to play in the Quintet along with an upper 6th cellist and 3 professionals. And it was Neil that bollocked me when I didn't do enough work and ended up wasting the time of others. So I went away and worked hard. In the end the performance was a triumph and I recall it as very much the only public performance of me playing the violin that I enjoyed. 2 years later on the eve of my long delayed grade 8 exam he told me "forget about the notes, for fuck's sake play music". I headed the advice and breezed the exam with a mark I could never have dreamed of.
This week Mozart has featured on Composer of the Week on Radio 3. The final part of the final programme played the sublime Quintet in its entirety. It was a joy.
I have not had the easiest of weeks but had a good chat with my ever supportive friend and colleague Kym, finally got to eat my Spanish beef stew, I have a beer open and Mozart plays. That is the way to end a tough week.
I Heard a Voice.
Yet the performance I recall most is of playing 2nd violin in the Clarinet Quintet in what I think must have been 1986. I'm pretty certain it was my O Level year-yes I am that old. Perhaps not coincidentally I studied the piece for O Level music. My violin playing days were marred by laziness, a lack of practice, no confidence and teachers who spent so much time dwelling on my many technical faults that I forgot that music is about playing music not bashing out notes with no emotion.
We all recall great teachers from school or university. I had a lot of bad music teachers and a great one. Neil Cox who ran the choir at Lancing occasionally delved into other realms of music too. It was him who asked me to play in the Quintet along with an upper 6th cellist and 3 professionals. And it was Neil that bollocked me when I didn't do enough work and ended up wasting the time of others. So I went away and worked hard. In the end the performance was a triumph and I recall it as very much the only public performance of me playing the violin that I enjoyed. 2 years later on the eve of my long delayed grade 8 exam he told me "forget about the notes, for fuck's sake play music". I headed the advice and breezed the exam with a mark I could never have dreamed of.
This week Mozart has featured on Composer of the Week on Radio 3. The final part of the final programme played the sublime Quintet in its entirety. It was a joy.
I have not had the easiest of weeks but had a good chat with my ever supportive friend and colleague Kym, finally got to eat my Spanish beef stew, I have a beer open and Mozart plays. That is the way to end a tough week.
I Heard a Voice.
Wednesday, 12 November 2014
What If?
My 24 year history of mental illness has been regularly marred by tragedy. I still remember the call to tell me of the first suicide of a friend. She had manic depression-we still called it that in the mid 1990s. We had been in hospital together. A nurse we had always got on well. All the time I knew her she seemed neither manic nor depressed. Just unhappy. I'm told the day she hanged herself she turned up to the ward, said she was bit down, went home and killed herself. By that stage I had been cast into the outer darkness of the untreatable. But Bernie's little band whose world the great genius would save were not allowed to talk about it. They were angry. We were always angry in those days.
As the years passed by I would lose 9 friends to suicide, a cousin, an acquaintance and a student. Many others died too young. In fact the dedication in A Pillar of Impotence is to my friends who died too young. Each death cuts deep and hard. But we must move on.
If it is someone I knew as a practitioner I am forever left with the what if question. I have lost 4 people I worked with. And with each I have asked the same question. If I dwell on it it is certain my madness will return. Most of the time I don't.
Today a memory was stirred that once again has made me think what if? It hurts like hell. I'm at home trying to stay warm, listening to music and trying to switch off. I know I could have done little more but still my loneliness eats me. A great debate has been raging recently in my world about who is responsible for what. I'm not important enough to answer that but an answer will come. The question is can I and we handle that answer. And that is what drives the anxiety. What if? It probably won't happen but it is not easy. Tomorrow I must go back to the fight and put it aside. If not I am lost.
I Heard a Voice.
As the years passed by I would lose 9 friends to suicide, a cousin, an acquaintance and a student. Many others died too young. In fact the dedication in A Pillar of Impotence is to my friends who died too young. Each death cuts deep and hard. But we must move on.
If it is someone I knew as a practitioner I am forever left with the what if question. I have lost 4 people I worked with. And with each I have asked the same question. If I dwell on it it is certain my madness will return. Most of the time I don't.
Today a memory was stirred that once again has made me think what if? It hurts like hell. I'm at home trying to stay warm, listening to music and trying to switch off. I know I could have done little more but still my loneliness eats me. A great debate has been raging recently in my world about who is responsible for what. I'm not important enough to answer that but an answer will come. The question is can I and we handle that answer. And that is what drives the anxiety. What if? It probably won't happen but it is not easy. Tomorrow I must go back to the fight and put it aside. If not I am lost.
I Heard a Voice.
Tuesday, 11 November 2014
The Spirituality of Childhood.
Each Monday for the last 6 weeks I have stayed in to watch ITV's drama series Grantchester. I have 2 very personal reasons why I have this devotion to a programme that is not quite the Cambridge equivalent of Inspector Morse that I expected. Firstly it was commissioned by a great friend of mine Tory Fea. Tory currently holds the number 3 position in ITV drama held back only by her desire for a young family in recent years. Tory is one of those very few people who is brilliant at everything but is actually really nice. Few people get to the top by being nice. She did.
The other reason is Grantchester played a huge part in my childhood. Many Wednesday afternoons and Sunday mornings were spent in that beautiful village with its ancient church and war memorial that includes the war poet Rupert Brooke as a man of the village. Noel Brewster who was vicar at the church during the 1970s and 1980s was a great friend. Often he took us for days out, I went to the church and generally treated us kindly when others perhaps did not. There spirituality meant something to me. Not elsewhere.
During my illness I rather neglected my friendship after Noel had retired. He wrote to me but I was too ashamed of my madness to write back. He died in the late 1990s-I don't recall the year-and I attended his funeral. His memorial reads simply Noel Brewster Priest.
What Noel would have made of the crime busting vicar in the drama I'm not sure. People of his generation might not be comfortably with the searing sexuality, angst, and flaws of the character. It's intense stuff. The 1950s seem a strange world to us today. But human emotion has been human emotion throughout history.
I look forward to series 2. For now I recall the marvellous images of that place that is sacred to me conjured up for me in Tory's drama. Mixed days but great in many respects.
I Heard a Voice.
The other reason is Grantchester played a huge part in my childhood. Many Wednesday afternoons and Sunday mornings were spent in that beautiful village with its ancient church and war memorial that includes the war poet Rupert Brooke as a man of the village. Noel Brewster who was vicar at the church during the 1970s and 1980s was a great friend. Often he took us for days out, I went to the church and generally treated us kindly when others perhaps did not. There spirituality meant something to me. Not elsewhere.
During my illness I rather neglected my friendship after Noel had retired. He wrote to me but I was too ashamed of my madness to write back. He died in the late 1990s-I don't recall the year-and I attended his funeral. His memorial reads simply Noel Brewster Priest.
What Noel would have made of the crime busting vicar in the drama I'm not sure. People of his generation might not be comfortably with the searing sexuality, angst, and flaws of the character. It's intense stuff. The 1950s seem a strange world to us today. But human emotion has been human emotion throughout history.
I look forward to series 2. For now I recall the marvellous images of that place that is sacred to me conjured up for me in Tory's drama. Mixed days but great in many respects.
I Heard a Voice.
Saturday, 8 November 2014
Procrastinating Saturday.
My intention this afternoon was to do some study. I downloaded and printed off 3 more academic papers to support my project yesterday. An afternoon of opera and academia never occurred though-the All Black are back in town. Shameless procrastination but they only come once a year so that is my afternoon well and truly changed.
In another change my tentative ventures into the realm of fish will continue tonight. I will sear a tuna steak-line caught of course-marinaded in garlic, cinnamon, pomegranate molasses and coriander. Nice and rare if I get it right-mum would not approve. I do need to eat more fish and cut out the fat in my post smoking world, am getting fatter by the day.
These diversions are needed after a long and at times arduous week. I'm still standing and doing well but managing 3 crises at once is really stretching resources. Sooner or later we are in danger of losing someone. Yet crises do dissipate in time. I just have to work hard to bring that about.
Tomorrow is Remembrance Sunday. I have my poppy although it looks a bit battered. And in my quiet way I will remember those who gave their lives for my freedom and that of others. It is a privilege to experience the freedom on my country, sadly others may not have that in other countries. Will post again soon.
I Heard a Voice.
In another change my tentative ventures into the realm of fish will continue tonight. I will sear a tuna steak-line caught of course-marinaded in garlic, cinnamon, pomegranate molasses and coriander. Nice and rare if I get it right-mum would not approve. I do need to eat more fish and cut out the fat in my post smoking world, am getting fatter by the day.
These diversions are needed after a long and at times arduous week. I'm still standing and doing well but managing 3 crises at once is really stretching resources. Sooner or later we are in danger of losing someone. Yet crises do dissipate in time. I just have to work hard to bring that about.
Tomorrow is Remembrance Sunday. I have my poppy although it looks a bit battered. And in my quiet way I will remember those who gave their lives for my freedom and that of others. It is a privilege to experience the freedom on my country, sadly others may not have that in other countries. Will post again soon.
I Heard a Voice.
Tuesday, 4 November 2014
Silver Frost and Pale Sunshine.
A sharp silvery frost lit by a pale autumn sun greeted me early this morning by the lake. It's surface is covered in the detritus of the fall and nothing moved at all. A classic autumn morning. The cold has come, the leaves are falling, and the season marches on. By late morning that sun had melted it into a glistening dew. So started a day of much and change. It is coming whether we like it or not.
I'm still doing well with All Souls and All Saints days disappearing into the past. Life feels good if busy so on we go. I am buoyed by a rather splendid book I bought in a charity shop when I visited dad. Matthew Fort the food writer, broadcaster and journalist toured round Sicily on a Vespa some years ago. A scene featured in Rick Stein's Mediterranean Odyssey in which Fort enthused about simple fresh ingredients. The book of that adventure Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons. It is a delightful book that will remind me of warmer times in the weeks to come. I guess that means putting off other books but so be it.
The rest of the week looks okayish so far. Just waiting for calls now to send me off on another made dash. Long may it stay silent. Until soon I will leave you.
I Heard a Voice.
I'm still doing well with All Souls and All Saints days disappearing into the past. Life feels good if busy so on we go. I am buoyed by a rather splendid book I bought in a charity shop when I visited dad. Matthew Fort the food writer, broadcaster and journalist toured round Sicily on a Vespa some years ago. A scene featured in Rick Stein's Mediterranean Odyssey in which Fort enthused about simple fresh ingredients. The book of that adventure Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons. It is a delightful book that will remind me of warmer times in the weeks to come. I guess that means putting off other books but so be it.
The rest of the week looks okayish so far. Just waiting for calls now to send me off on another made dash. Long may it stay silent. Until soon I will leave you.
I Heard a Voice.
Monday, 3 November 2014
Portly Recovery.
On Saturday I bumped into someone I knew from back in the hospital days. I would say friend, compatriot, survivor but he was exceptionally obnoxious, aggressive and unpleasant at the height of his illness. He had few friends just people who tolerated him in limited doses. My background was different to his and my many others companions on the road of madness yet we were held together by that madness. Souls thrown together by circumstance, illness and stigma. That was a bond few could break.
Seeing him there entering my friend Mandy the butcher's shop almost exactly 23 years since I first met him showed 2 divergent path. He has lost so much weight. He has stopped drinking and using drugs. He no longer shouts at people but is polite. He takes medication. And he said he now has friends who care for him.
I have put on weight-he called me portly. I no longer live there and as the years pass have less and less contact with those from back then. I take medication. I have a career, a place to live, some influence and an independence I never dreamed I would gain. And I have friends.
So who did the best of us? In truth neither. Each recovery is as valid as the other. Recovery is not a model it is a philosophy. In the wrong hands it is very dangerous. The man I saw on Saturday is no lesser or more person than me. He may never work but he has come so far from whence he once was. Those with power should acknowledge that not just blanketly tar us all as worthy or unworthy. We have each moved on and for the better.
I feel heartened by this encounter. Back in my life now I'm reflecting on a weekend away, seeing dad, my friend's birthday, and a day's study. Yes I got round to that today as we had a tutorial. I appear on the right lines with my enquiries. Long may that continue. So with baroque music accompanying my reflections I pose you the reader the question, do we take enough out of those chance encounters and marvel at how far we have come?
I Heard a Voice.
Seeing him there entering my friend Mandy the butcher's shop almost exactly 23 years since I first met him showed 2 divergent path. He has lost so much weight. He has stopped drinking and using drugs. He no longer shouts at people but is polite. He takes medication. And he said he now has friends who care for him.
I have put on weight-he called me portly. I no longer live there and as the years pass have less and less contact with those from back then. I take medication. I have a career, a place to live, some influence and an independence I never dreamed I would gain. And I have friends.
So who did the best of us? In truth neither. Each recovery is as valid as the other. Recovery is not a model it is a philosophy. In the wrong hands it is very dangerous. The man I saw on Saturday is no lesser or more person than me. He may never work but he has come so far from whence he once was. Those with power should acknowledge that not just blanketly tar us all as worthy or unworthy. We have each moved on and for the better.
I feel heartened by this encounter. Back in my life now I'm reflecting on a weekend away, seeing dad, my friend's birthday, and a day's study. Yes I got round to that today as we had a tutorial. I appear on the right lines with my enquiries. Long may that continue. So with baroque music accompanying my reflections I pose you the reader the question, do we take enough out of those chance encounters and marvel at how far we have come?
I Heard a Voice.
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