Quizzes Back

Two of my favourite TV quizzes came back on Monday night in a new series, University Challenge and Only Connect. Both of these are meaty quizzes that really tests the intellectual mettle of your brain. High brow, perhaps, but worth the challenge.

Now, who remembers Ask The Family?

Poetry and Music Ascending

The Lark Ascending
George Meredith




He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake,
All intervolv’d and spreading wide,
Like water-dimples down a tide
Where ripple ripple overcurls
And eddy into eddy whirls;
A press of hurried notes that run
So fleet they scarce are more than one,
Yet changingly the trills repeat
And linger ringing while they fleet,
Sweet to the quick o’ the ear, and dear
To her beyond the handmaid ear,
Who sits beside our inner springs,
Too often dry for this he brings,
Which seems the very jet of earth
At sight of sun, her music’s mirth,
As up he wings the spiral stair,
A song of light, and pierces air
With fountain ardor, fountain play,
To reach the shining tops of day,
And drink in everything discern’d
An ecstasy to music turn’d,
Impell’d by what his happy bill
Disperses; drinking, showering still,
Unthinking save that he may give
His voice the outlet, there to live
Renew’d in endless notes of glee,
So thirsty of his voice is he,
For all to hear and all to know
That he is joy, awake, aglow,
The tumult of the heart to hear
Through pureness filter’d crystal-clear,
And know the pleasure sprinkled bright
By simple singing of delight,
Shrill, irreflective, unrestrain’d,
Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustain’d
Without a break, without a fall,
Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical,
Perennial, quavering up the chord
Like myriad dews of sunny sward
That trembling into fulness shine,
And sparkle dropping argentine;
Such wooing as the ear receives
From zephyr caught in choric leaves
Of aspens when their chattering net
Is flush’d to white with shivers wet;
And such the water-spirit’s chime
On mountain heights in morning’s prime,
Too freshly sweet to seem excess,
Too animate to need a stress;
But wider over many heads
The starry voice ascending spreads,
Awakening, as it waxes thin,
The best in us to him akin;
And every face to watch him rais’d,
Puts on the light of children prais’d,
So rich our human pleasure ripes
When sweetness on sincereness pipes,
Though nought be promis’d from the seas,
But only a soft-ruffling breeze
Sweep glittering on a still content,
Serenity in ravishment.

For singing till his heaven fills,
’T is love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup,
And he the wine which overflows
To lift us with him as he goes:
The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine
He is, the hills, the human line,
The meadows green, the fallows brown,
The dreams of labor in the town;
He sings the sap, the quicken’d veins;
The wedding song of sun and rains
He is, the dance of children, thanks
Of sowers, shout of primrose-banks,
And eye of violets while they breathe;
All these the circling song will wreathe,
And you shall hear the herb and tree,
The better heart of men shall see,
Shall feel celestially, as long
As you crave nothing save the song.
Was never voice of ours could say
Our inmost in the sweetest way,
Like yonder voice aloft, and link
All hearers in the song they drink:
Our wisdom speaks from failing blood,
Our passion is too full in flood,
We want the key of his wild note
Of truthful in a tuneful throat,
The song seraphically free
Of taint of personality,
So pure that it salutes the suns
The voice of one for millions,
In whom the millions rejoice
For giving their one spirit voice.

Yet men have we, whom we revere,
Now names, and men still housing here,
Whose lives, by many a battle-dint
Defaced, and grinding wheels on flint,
Yield substance, though they sing not, sweet
For song our highest heaven to greet:
Whom heavenly singing gives us new,
Enspheres them brilliant in our blue,
From firmest base to farthest leap,
Because their love of Earth is deep,
And they are warriors in accord
With life to serve and pass reward,
So touching purest and so heard
In the brain’s reflex of yon bird;
Wherefore their soul in me, or mine,
Through self-forgetfulness divine,
In them, that song aloft maintains,
To fill the sky and thrill the plains
With showerings drawn from human stores,
As he to silence nearer soars,
Extends the world at wings and dome,
More spacious making more our home,
Till lost on his aërial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.


Here is the tone poem by Ralph Vaughan Williams,

A RVW classic performed here by the London Philharmonic Orchestra with David Nolan on violin and Vernon Handley conducting.

Household Music

Another dose of Ralph Vaughan Williams music. Well, in my estimation, it is the perfect medicine to an overcast dull morning, a prophylactic for the woes of the world.

Here is his less known Household Music.

These are three Preludes on Welsh Hymn tunes (1920).

No. 1. Crug-Y-Bar: Fantasia. Andante sostenuto
No. 2. St. Denio: Scherzo. Allegro vivace (Start at 4'.50'')
No. 3. Aberystwyth: Variations. Theme: Lento (Start at 8'.09'').

Played by The Northern Sinfonia conducted by Richard Hickox.

Enjoy.

Inception

Another film i watched on DVD recently is the mind boggling Inception. This is a tour de force of a film. Although billed as a science fiction heist thriller ,with a slight tinge of film noir, it is much more than that, as it touches very much on the idea of reality,the nature of reality, the certainty of epistemology or lack of, the ontology of the human condition, as well as the Baudrillian sense of simulations and simulacra. It is also about the nature of dreams, and the kind of vivid dreamscapes based on lucid dreaming. It can also act as a metaphor for film making itself. In fact there is neurological evidence that brain activity is strikingly similar during film-watching and sleeping. In both, the visual cortex is highly active and the prefrontal cortex, which deals with logic, deliberate analysis, and self-awareness, is quiet.

Perhaps seeing the movie in a cinema is a kind of exercise in shared dreaming. In a cinema one enters into the space of another's dream, in this case Christopher Nolan's, as with any work of art, one's reading of it is ultimately influenced by one's own subjective desires and subconscious. This is how i felt after re-watching it on DVD.

You can view this film on so many levels, including psychological, philosophical , and in cultural terms. That is why it one of the best films to watch, not just for the pure entertainment value, but the deeper analytical conundrums it poses.

Awesome Maiden Speech

This is an awesome maiden speech by SNP newbie - she is so damn right

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/14/mhairi-black-first-commons-speech-snp

The Scottish National Party (SNP)'s Mhairi Black delivers a blow to George Osborne's budget in her maiden speech and said: "I am now the only 20 year old in the whole of the UK whom the chancellor is prepared to help with housing."

Buffy and Spike

This montage just does for me, encapsulates the Buffy and Spike romance to a tee.

I well up every time.

Sedated

Classic Ramones song and the best bits of Spike , cannot be better than this -

Ramones - I Wanna Be Sedated.

Although the version here is by The Adicts.

So here is the original -

Enjoy