Speed

While my wife was out with friends I went to the movie Rush. It's the tale of the rivalry between James Hunt and Nicki Lauda in 1970's Formula One. It's a well written character piece dominated by the performance of Daniel Bruhl as Lauda.

I am not a fan of Formula One but I know it is now safer . Fatalities were frequent in the 70s and safety provision inadequate. Lauda almost lost his life in a terrible crash and still bears the scars. The driving sequences in the film are technically brilliant and seemingly free of CGI sleight of hand . They do not however capture the adrenaline rush and fear of driving fast.

My wife bought me a track day a few years ago as a birthday present . I am not a petrol head and find Top Gear unwatchable ( save for the nervy latent homosexuality of the banter ). The track day was not the bespoke experience described on the bumph but they did give you an expensive sports car to drive for four laps. I embraced bling and choose an Italian stead in highlighter green . The instructor chap in the passenger seat guided you round the circuit with tips on when to turn, apply power and brake. He was also the custodian of the machine in the event of your ineptitude.

After the first lap or two familiarising yourself you have a Top Gun moment and a boyish need for speed. As you hurtle round corners with a car that defies physics you have a strange experience. You sense the car is driving you as computers correct errors and control traction and gear shift. You are travelling at speeds of twice the legal limit and the experience is remote and anaesthetised. You don't feel any danger.I have been a passenger in a Renault 4 with a rust habit at 40mph and felt more peril.

Though I have limited interest in motor sport I was fascinated by the character of Ayrton Senna da Silva. The son of a wealthy Brazilian businessman he was an exceptional racing driver. He was also the last fatality in Formula One. I watched the race that claimed his life. He had pushed his car and himself beyond the possible as a young Michael Schumacher threatened his preeminence.

If you want to understand the terrible fascination with driving a fast car you should watch the great documentary on Senna. There is footage from Senna driving in a rain lashed Monaco Grand Prix that has to be seen to be (dis)believed. He is driving a car that seems barely connected to this earth at take off speed. Sienna's voiceover describes the union between himself, his car and what is beyond. It is a description of rapture.

On the way back from work on Friday we saw a man in a white Ford weaving in and out if traffic at speed . It was reprehensible and dangerous for other road users. But I found myself admiring the execution.

 

Water on Mars

NASA and their remote controlled car have discovered water on Mars. The aptly named Curiosity has conducted an experiment and boiled off water from Martian rocks. A bravo moment for human ingenuity .

As the Wall E like rover trundles around the Martian surface it's discoveries make science fiction fact. Americans should feel proud of their NASA in what is a prelude to human boots on Martian soil. I was an aficionado of science fiction at school. Now each day brings new understanding about our place in the firmament.If I was to contemplate a university prospectus again I would pass over legal matters and contemplate astrophysics . The array of telescopes in the Atacama desert in Chile would make a great office.

I recommend a documentary called Nostalgia for the Light by Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán. An exile from Pinochet and his repellant regime Guzmán focuses on the similarities "between astronomers researching humanity’s past, in an astronomical sense, and the struggle of many Chilean women who still search, after decades, for the remnants of their relatives executed during the dictatorship" - Wikipedia".

What could have been grim subject matter instead moves and reveals . The fortitude of the women as they piece together their history and that of their loved ones is awe inspiring. As they comb the soil of the Atacama desert their bravery outstrips any astronaut.

 

 

 

Othello

We went to see an acclaimed production of Othello at the National Theatre. Adrian Lester played the Moor and Rory Kinnear Iago. Mr Lester was excellent and Mr Kinnear astonishing. The latter's body language was a masterclass in itself. The inexplicable malevolence of Iago mirrored in the nervy contortions of his frame.

I worked with actors before on a short film and was unsure how to direct them. The textbooks say directions must be specific and avoid abstraction. I wrote the script and found myself unable to explain why they would say what I had scribbled. You live and learn. From speaking to thespians a good performance is instinctual - you give them instructions and they assemble the character . Whoever you cast determines the performance .

 

The director of Othello in the (overpriced) programme wrote a good piece on the Bard and acting. He noted that Shakespeare was an actor and he wrote plays not novels. The novel contains multitudes while a play implies them. Each performance of a play is different with endless possible interpretations by different actors.

 

He also said something that was a relief. He admitted he couldn't follow some of Shakespeare's plays for the first five minutes or so because of the language. I have trooped for the cultural porridge of an unfamiliar play and panic as I cannot figure out the hey nonny nonny. I am not alone with the dunces hat.

 

I have tendered notice on my gainful employ and been offered part time work in lieu to retrain . I have to make a decision.

 

The attached photo is of a statute from Anne Hathaway's cottage at Stratford upon Avon. Given Othello's wracked jealousy it seemed appropriate.

 

 

 

 

 

Risk

When studying law and medicine at university there was a module on cause of death. A coroner presented slides of high velocity exit wounds, death by blunt trauma and asphyxiation . He was a cheery man which seemed a prerequisite for the line of work.He digressed from tales of personal catastrophe to dispense a bon mot - there is no such thing as a risk free life.

That stuck with me . If you trawl the information landfill of the web you are presented by one study/analysis after another of risk. If you go out of your door you are likely to be mugged. If you drive you are likely to be hit by a drunk driver. If you go to sample the simple (and free) pleasure of association in a public place you are likely to be atomised by a jihadi. Fear as control.

Instead you retreat to the security of your private space. You cannot make sense of the risk. You plug into the web and Tweet and Facebook your impotence and rage. Many smarter folk than the writer have theorised on control by media. Google (the irony ) Noam Chomsky or Adam Curtis.Why control ? Money I suppose. Until the banking apocalypse we had irrational exuberance spurred by greed and stupidity. Now we have irrational caution spurred by greed and stupidity.

 

I had a discussion at work with a mortgage company.They wanted me to quantify the risk of underground mining on a property. There is government legislation to compensate for subsidence but they wanted more. They wanted me to tell them all would be ok. Given this irrational caution I would assume there are no mortgaged properties in San Francisco. Modern life seems to consist of not relying on our senses . The world seems senseless or we lack common sense because we having nothing in common.

 

We went to a wildlife park last year. There was an enclosure with silverback gorillas . We christened the male Sid. We were told he had seen his parents slaughtered by poachers and had a healthy scepticism about Homo sapiens .On the glass surrounding his enclosure a note asked not to stand near the glass or use flash photo. So all spectators stood near the glass and used flash photo. This enraged the gorilla with the damaged psyche and a group to protect. After a few warnings he punched the steel and glass enclosure with such force it shook. I nervously scrutinised the glass for cracks. I wondered what his fist could do to a human frame.

 

Real risk would be getting in the enclosure with Sid the silverback. As you lie down in front of him and play dead you pray he shows the mercy our species has not shown him.

 

Remember me

When I was back in Ireland I helped my mother gather material for a book she was writing. It is a memoir and a life story.

 

We went to a graveyard in search of the spot where her grandparents had been buried. After uncertain steps through overgrown grass we drew a blank. No headstone had been put up to mark the burial spot.

 

The photo shows a military cemetery outside San Francisco from a succession of wars. My wife and I noticed some headstones had different inscriptions on either side . The wives of the soldiers had been buried on the other side of the plot.

 

Poets have long mused on remembrance and loss. The German poet Rilke asked if the space we dissolve into tastes of us . Keats asked that no name or date be placed on his headstone - only the oft quoted (and wonderful ) " Here lies one / whose name was writ in water". The rest of the inscription including the date was added by others railing against Keats treatment by critics.

 

Headstones are for the living. They have nothing to do with the dead.

 

Wolves in Scotland

We went to Scotland for New Years during the harsh winter of 2010. Friends had booked us into a log cabin near Oban. We made our way from Stranraer in our trusty Volkswagen through blizzards and temperatures of -15. We almost made it - Godfrey (our pet name for our Golf) could not negotiate the last few miles.

 

We abandoned our car at the nearest village and relied on the kindness of strangers. A couple made us tea and called a friend with a four wheel drive to take us to the log cabin.

 

The friend was called Phil. As his truck wound through the snow capped hills he told us about his work. He was a farm manager for a large estate. He had studied for a degree in wolf husbandry in Poland and there were plans to reintroduce the grey wolf to the Highlands.

 

When safely deposited at the cabin we enjoyed the rest of our stay. At some point we had to retrieve the car. There was an alternate route the car could negotiate to the cabin. I simply had to hike back to the village, retrieve the car and take the alternate route. I did some research - it was a three hour hike of approx. 10 miles. Our friends needlessly alarmed my wife with stories of her husband having to camp out for the night and kill game.I am not Bear Grylls and I thought this hyperbole .

 

I set off and made good time . I collected the car and returned with it before sun down. Our trip passed off without further incident .

 

When tramping through the hills I did think of Phil and his plans to reintroduce wolves. With nothing for company but my own footfalls I thought of night approaching . I thought of the Swiss Army knife in my rucksack and my meagre tent and flint . I imagined I heard the howls of animals that had not been heard in the hills for centuries.

 

Fear concentrates the mind. I felt vital and alive.

 

 

 

Heathrow

We have returned from our trip back in Ireland. It was too brief but we managed to relax . A lot of time was spent sleeping.

I am not a relaxed flyer. I am unsure why - I used to enjoy the experience. But I still enjoy the experience of coming into land at Heathrow. There is something magical about flying over East London and following the course of the Thames . The Dome, St Paul's and Hyde Park seen from the vantage point of an astronaut.

I went to see a video installation a few years ago at the Whitechapel gallery. It was called Threshold to the Kingdom by a British artist called Mark Wallinger. It was a video of people arriving at an international airport. As the arrival doors part their expression is remote and unreadable but then turns to joy when they see a familiar face. These passengers could be at the threshold of the United Kingdom or, alternatively, the kingdom of heaven. One of the security guards seems to be a St Peter figure accompanied by the celestial music of Miserere by Gregorio Allegri. On reflection it is not a reassuring artistic conceit for the timid flyer.

Heathrow is cast as a portal ushering people through time and space to arrive reborn at their destination.
 

Seamus is Famous

We arrived back in Ireland a day late due to work commitments. I have referred to the satanic mill  in jest but I wasn't laughing on Saturday. 16 hours in Canterbury chewing legal sawdust is not a laughing matter.

Enough. I am home. The air is clear and there is an autumn chill. We are lying low and being treated like children by my mother.

I was introduced to the term inner emigre by Seamus Heaney.  In an interview he said  "from the beginning to the end of the Irish tradition, there is this example of exiling yourself from the familiar in order to compose your soul — which is a parallel activity, I suppose, to composing poetry".

I glimpsed the funeral of Mr Heaney on the TV. I was aware of his passing through the Guardian  online who asked Sir Bono of Vox to ruminate . It would  have been more appropriate  if they asked regular folk but instead they asked the messianic one .

At school I had difficulty with poetry . I couldn't connect with Wordsworth , Larkin's sourness or Hopkin's prosody. That changed when I read Mr. Heaney . His poems were concrete, spare and the rural imagery familiar. When he described his pen as a gun he took a hold and his struggle to find images  for  adversity were an inspiration. His work led to others like Czelaw Milosz and back again to Hopkins . As a writer he engaged with his time and made beauty out of madness.

A great poet and, from all accounts, a great humble man.