Music Wars

Occasionally, I stumble at a word or phrase when I am reading. This is not always because of the twist in my brain responsible for dyslexia or some such. My mental hurpling can be caused by images or fancies. They are ignited in my mind’s eye and I can be taken by them for days, months or even years. The great Kurdish cook Pakora is celebrated in our house with gusto.

Rex the receiver has made an appearance previously on these pages and there are many more.

John Naughton, in Memex1.1, refers to an article by Tim Wu in Slate. This outlines the possibility that AT&T will shoot itself in the foot with a new strategy to pursue copyright infringement.

Detail aside, the following fired up the old synapses nicely:

And that's why the recording industry sued Napster and Grokster, not AT&T or Verizon, when the great music wars began in the early 2000s.

That phrase - the great music wars -burst into my mind.

A pitched battle begins between the Berlin Phil. and the LSO, Damn Busters’ March pounding in the background. The Phil start up with the Fifth, staccato and the plucky little Englanders pick up the strains and hurl them back over the World Service.

The Bolshoi Orchestra and the Bournemouth Symphony giving it large to a bunch of fancy pants from Paris with cardboard epaulets as the 1812 builds. The roaring of the massed cannons (or canons from the choir of Westminster Abbey) brings the cheese eating surrender monkeys to their knees!

The Chicago and Boston play Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare” as a camera pans across smoking battlefields of the Civil War, Nagasaki blasted by atomic devastation, Vietnamese and Cambodian villages ghost empty, no sign of animals, children or people.

The sounds are taken up by a small group in brown and white cotton moving across a mountain backdrop. A high voice straining and ululating in devotion as the camera takes in villages, the colour of mud, Pastures of Plenty in Afghanistan. The tabla is light but incessant as shells pound into the likeness of some carved image of the compassionate Buddha in a remote valley.

If you ventured north you would hear the crude clash of cymbals and blast of off key horns wielded by saffron robed, coxcombed, monks as they resisted the massed brass bands of the Peoples’ Liberation Army playing selections for the Beijing Opera, the Mikado and Andrew Lloyd Webber, marching faultlessly in goose step.

And so on…

BBC journalist reports live from Zimbabwe

Radio Pictures
A Series of Virtual Images for the Wireless.

John Simpson is seen in long shot on the streets of Harare wearing a burka.

The caption is a quote:

“I began to suspect that a number of people had recognised me. I put a baseball cap on with the letters Zanu -PF. It was as if I had become invisible.”

Epiphany

In a Christmas Oratorio Auden points out:

As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed

To do more than entertain it as an agreeable

Possibility, ... 

On the Epiphany, traditionally, the rich and powerful of the world come to bring gifts to a child.
Hands up all those who have noticed a rush of the rich and powerful coming to the aid of children in need? I thought not. I know some of them mean well. The great sun in our hearts, our great helmsperson, Mr Broon, has pledged to cut child poverty in half. Well good luck to him, I'm sure he means well, and I hope my cynicism proves ill founded.

I believe we will, for many years to come, be looking at the faces of snotty nosed kids
surrounded by flies. They will continue looking out at us, eyes flat with hunger and faces which will not even be enlivened by despair.

In the meantime here is a calf with a mournful eye!

Trees

A picture of one of our local beeches in summer. The subject previously of a poor pun in English and Spanish.

As you can see, it offers a space where sheep can safely snooze and passers by can wonder, if they have a mind to.

Revisiting it this winter revealed the same tree without leaves, still an impressive organism.

Richard Preston has written:

"The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring" Random House, 2007

This is a “narrative non-fiction” about the giant redwoods and those that climb them. An interesting read if you accept the form it is in. The trees are enormous, some being 100 metres or more. We might have an idea of this length on the ground, but vertically? Maybe 5 to 6 times the height of my pet beech above.

These are trees that can live to over a thousand years, have survived fire and the storms ripping off the Pacific into of northern California.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book was the glimpse of the habitat of the canopy, its biodiversity and complexity. A lost world?

Sky Burial

I have been meaning to read this book, a love story (?) by Xinran, for ages.
SCC turned up trumps over the holiday period and I read it.
I would recommend it.

We have just watched a programme about the snow leopard. It was very disturbing.

Partly our perceptions of Pakistan and partly the interference of Septic biologists!

I would also recommend the Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen and, of course, I could go on!

Recommending books is a very dangerous game.

A good new year to all our readers!
More books, more ideas, paz, luz, and may we all strive to be positive deviants.