Good Night

Post Midnight Jazzy Grooves

Some cool sharp sounds -

Working Week featuring Robert Wyatt/Tracey Thorn/Claudia Figueroa - Venceremos (We Will Win)

Basia - Astrud

Quartet Tres Bien - Boss Tres Bien

Milton Nascimento - Cravo e Canela (Clove and Cinnamon)

Jorge Ben - Mas Que Nada

ENJOY

Good Morning

Friday Frolics

Well, it started a sunny day but now it has clouded over. I feel that we could have rain today. As far as I am aware, we did not have rain yesterday although it was forecasted.

I was waiting for a piece of furniture to arrive but that did not happen due to other circumstances. However, I did have a good chat with Dawn midday in the common room where I had cooked my pizza for lunch. Join the Hat popped in because his daughter gave him some red wine which he does not drink, saw me, and asked if I was interested in a bottle of red, to which I confirmed, and this started drinking from one of my wine glasses after I consumed my pizza.



A couple of CDs dead cheap arrived today. A Sea Symphony by the great Vaughan Williams and Smetana's Ma Vlast.




Music is the best solution to settle a savage heart. Music is universal and every dictator or tin pot crazy should listen to music because maybe they will be better people, hopefully.

Worrying Times

Ros’ x-ray did not show sufficient detail so we are waiting to hear when a CT scan will be done - hopefully on Monday. We had a face-to-face consultation this morning with another GP who was very thorough. She talked about what the problem could be and prescribed a course of steroids to hopefully help with Ros’ breathing and ability to swallow food without vomiting.Ros is scared, as am I; I just hope for now that the steroids prove to be effective.

And In Other Things ...

I hope that sister-in-law Rosalind will get better soom. I do worry about her, as much as my bro. So here is hoping through that inexorable scintillation of time between now and when the medical people know exactly what to do.

Meanwhile, I have been playing some pastoral music to calm the savage breast that curdles inside my tangled brain. Oh and finishing off that free bottle of wine lol!

Meanwhile, the very good news of those who pulled down the Edward Colston statue in Bristol. They were acquitted.

Britain’s shameful slavery history matters – that’s why a jury acquitted the Colston Four.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/06/britains-shameful-slavery-history-matters-thats-why-a-jury-acquitted-the-colston-4

The Friday Five

1) What act of kindness have you witnessed (or done yourself) recently?

2) What is your favourite memory?

3) What activity always seems to energize you?

4) Did you do something recently that made you laugh at yourself? What was it?

5) What is your favourite inspirational quote?

Book 2 - Michel Foucault "Madness and Civilization"

Michel Foucault "Madness and Civilization" (Routledge)





Foucault employs an exacting and yet artistic methodology of historical-sociological interpretation of the history of madness in the age of reason. In this impressive work, he discovers that the origin of insanity, of psychological confinement, corresponds with the diminution of leprosy in Europe, and that the sectors of institutional power sought to find another means of normalization and social control through the imprisonment, and public degradation of the mentally ill, the poor, and the homeless.

This power dynamic later manifests itself in the form of absolute confinement and normalcy, in which the insane were subjected to physiological experimentation, which marks an apparent disregard for Descartes' mind-body distinction. Foucault skillfully outlines the means of psychological repair through the exploration of the balancing of the four senses of humor, to the revealing of insanity's non-being and non-reason through its release to the ultimate freedom of nature.

Foucault then examines the transition of psychology from the real of biological-intellectual non-reason, to the imposition of moral and religious absolutism and the birth of the asylum, and finally to the (perhaps salvation) of Freud and psychoanalysis, in which the patient-doctor relationship is recreated as a mode of observation, not judgment or condescension, "he made it the Mirror in which madness, in an almost motionless movement, clings to and casts off itself" (pg. 278). Foucault's Madness and Civilization represents an important breakthrough in the field of post-modern philosophy; it is truly an excellent work of scholarship and profound insight.

Book 3 - Elizabeth Smart "By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept"

Elizabeth Smart "By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept" (Flamingo)




A prose poem of exquisite beauty, a tale of the overwhelming love of an intelligent, articulate woman for a man unworthy of her, a long-drawn-out howl in the service of the idea that love can change the world for the better while simultaneously causing grief and mayhem wherever it goes. This is a flawless work, eloquent and moving, and in some ways profoundly disturbing. Smart's writing is like fire dancing and flickering - beautiful and terrible in equal measure. Although those readers who like the simpleton A-to-B plotting that dominates so much of modern literature will perhaps find nothing here to like this is a hugely impressive achievement.

English has such a massive vocabulary and flexibility to it yet there are few writers who take advantage of that to produce something that stretches the language to breaking point in the service of communicating depth and truth of experience. Anyone who loves language, who loves writing, who loves the idea that words on the page can be more than simple fireside tales writ large, should be thanking whatever deity they believe in every day that people like Elizabeth Smart chose to enter the ring and fight hard to put words on the page. Highly recommended, and a short read you can re-read with unrivaled pleasure.