under another sun

Off in the rain to meet Dawn and Paul in Brighton. We met in The Dorset where we had a bite to eat and a small glass of wine, then we wandered down to the dome to see the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra (who style themselves 'The Beating Heart of Brighton'). My visit compromised by an appalling experience in the gents. I marched in and peed in the thigh-high metal trough. I looked about me and could see people outside through the doorway so I hunched in. Only after a while did I realise that I was actually peeing in the sink. Nobody had said anything. But I was mortified, and the cringe was hard when I told Lorraine, Dawn and Paul afterwards.  So the music. Today they played Arvo Pärt's piece Spiegel im Spiegel , then a longer piece that I'd not heard called Lamentate .  I didn't find the first piece played to my taste. The piano sounded mechanical and soulless and the violin tentative and trying too hard to be interesting. Lamentate was episodic and certainly some ...

Lorraine coughing nastily, so another low profile day.  I horrified myself by reading a good chunk of Blindness by Saramago. It is a horribly compelling story about a mystery, highly-contagious outbreak of blindness. The infected are confined to an old asylum building and shot if they attempt to escape, or the guards panic. Also listening to lots of music, including Arvo Pärt's Te Deum. A major discovery is Stravinsky's ballet music called Les Noces, which depicts a wild voiced Russian wedding and which in its highly percussive, and almost chanting open-throated style, I find completely unexpected and exhilarating. Really enjoying my journeys into classical music these days.