The master of the piano

On Sunday 24th I went to Warsaw to the concert at the Chopin and his Europe festival. It has been organized every year in the second half of August since 2005 and it offers listeners classical music dating from Mozart through classical times (Chopin to a large extent), with some XXth century music in addition. I chose a piano recital by Grigory Sokolov, a pianist of whom I’ve heard a bit on the radio and from other sources, but I never imagined his playing would be so captivating. I must admit I was totally taken aback with his performances of the two Mozart’sSonatas and Chopin’s 24 Preludes.

First of all, he amazed the listeners with an extraordinarily brilliant sound he managed to get out of the piano. Thanks to that, every note was heard well even at the fartherst rows (I sat in the 20th), even when he played pianissimo. Also, Grigory Sokolov presented an extremely high level of musical technique, understood not only as the ability of playing correct keys in a very fast tempo (which he also had), but as a set of different means of expression. Especially in Chopin’s Preludes he included an incredible number of fascinating ideas, put a lot of attention to the details others tend to skip, and managed to play each of 24 short pieces in a distinctive way. And, above all, his performances were really natural and could appeal to every listener, regardless of their musical education.

And they really did. The whole audience admired his playing and clapped enthustiastically, willing to hear more. Grigory Sokolov ended his recital with six encores, confirming that he is one of the best present-day pianists.

If you want hear Grigory Sokolov, go here

Souvenirs, anybody?

Did I hear it right that someone collects wine corks? I just came back from Portugal and I have a few of them, ‘coz they drink wine to almost every meal. They’re not as pretty as in the picture in gv blog, but are made of genuine cork (eh, I mean they’re not made of some kind of gum as they are in some wines). So my question is, should I keep them?

Canterbury Tales (12)

Lig-Lig-Le grew up, learned to walk on his own two feet, to feed on things other than the milk from the mother-body. And by the same measure he became more independent; sometimes he would not obey the big body. Xua-Xua was terrified – it was like telling one’s hands to pray and instead they start to box, or telling one’s legs to sit and they walk away. A rebellion was taking place, led by a small part of her – a small but precious part of her body. And she would look at herself-mother and herself-baby; both of them were she, but one of her was playing tricks, being naughty, disobeying. Li-Peng merely watched them (watching her-big and her-small). He kept his distance, just looking.
One day, Xua-Xua was sleeping. Li-Peng was curious, because he could not understand the relationship between Xua-Xua and her son, and he wanted to try to establish his own relationship with the boy. So when the boy awoke before his mother, Li-Peng attracted his attention, and the two of them went off together. From the start Li-Peng knew that he and the boy were two different bodies: the boy was ‘the other’ and not himself, not Li.
Li-Peng taught Lig-Lig-Le how to hunt and fish, and the boy was happy. When Xua-Xua awoke and looked for her small body and could not find it, she was unhappy. She cried and cried – because she had lost part of herself – and shouted and shouted, hoping her cries would be heard, but Li-Peng and the little boy had gone away.
However, since they belonged to the same horde, a few days later Xua-Xua saw them both, father and child. She wanted to get her baby-body back, but he refused, for he was also happy with his father, who taught him things his mother didn’t know.
Xua-Xua had to accept that the small body, even though it had been born inside her – it was she! – was also somebody else, someone with his own needs and desires. The refusal of Lig-Lig-Le to obey his mother made her aware that they were two, not one; she did not want to stay with Li-Peng, whereas Lig-Lig-Le did – each had made their own choice! Each had an opinion. Each had their own feelings. They were different people, and she had to accept their difference to enable dialogue to become possible!
This recognition forced her to identify herself: who was she? Who was her child? Who was Li-Peng? Where were they? What would happen next time, if her belly swelled again? Did she like Li-Peng as much now as she had done before? Would she try other males, as he had tried other females? Would all males be as predatory as Li-Peng? And what about she herself? Would she stay the same? What would happen tomorrow? Xua-Xua looked for answers by looking at herself.
In this moment, theatre was discovered. The moment when Xua-Xua gave up trying to recover her baby and keep him all for herself, accepted that he was somebody else, and looked at herself, emptied of part of herself. At that moment she was at one and the same time, actor and spectator. She was spect-actor. In discovering theatre, the being became human.
This is theatre – the art of looking at ourselves.

Canterbury Tales (11)

In his mother’s womb, Lig-Lig-Le – this was the name of the child, even though he had no name because no language had yet been invented, but this is an old Chinese tale where all liberties are licensed – Lig-Lig-Le was growing bigger and bigger, but he could not determine the scope and bounds of his body. Did his body stop at his skin? At the fluid in which he was floating? Did Lig-Lig-Le end at the limits of his mother’s surrounding body? Was that the World? He, his mother and the world were one single unity, he was they and they were he. This is why, even today, when we immerse our naked bodies in water in our bathtubs, in the swimming pool, or the sea, we feel again those primal sensations and we merge our bodies with the whole world.
This confusion of body and world could occur because Lig-Lig-Le’s senses were not yet fully activated; he still couldn’t see because his eyes were closed, he couldn’t smell because there was no atmosphere in that tiny, cramped space and he couldn’t breathe; he couldn’t taste because he was fed through the umbilical cord and not through his mouth. He couldn’t feel because his skin was always touching the same liquid at the same temperature, and there was nothing to compare it with. All feeling is comparing: we sense a sound because we can hear silence, we love a good perfume because we can smell bad odours.
Hearing was the first sense to emerge. Lig-Lig-Le was stimulated by his ears. He heard continuous rhythms, sounds and noises – his mother’s heartbeat and his own, blood pulsing through his veins, gastric sounds, voices from outside. His first clear sensations were acoustic, sounds he had to organise, to orchestrate; that is why music is the most archaic of the arts, the most deeply rooted: it comes from the womb. Music helps us to organise the world but not to understand it; it is a prehuman art, created before our birth.
One bright, sunny day, Xua-Xua gave birth to a child, on the banks of the river. Still Li-Peng watched, from behind a tree, taking no action, frightened.
This was pure magic. Xua-Xua looked at her child but could not understand. That tiny little body was part of her body; it had been inside her, now it was outside her, but undoubtedly it was she. Mother and child were one and the same; the evidence was that the small body wanted to come back, to join up with the big body, by sucking her breast. So she could rest assured, she was both, both bodies were she. Without doubt. From afar Li-Peng, the good spectator, observed.

Canterbury Tales (10)

Vina Gala. A velvety red wine with sumptous heavy fruit flavours and an evocative hint of vanilla. Made from a blend of grapes in one of Spain’s best-known wine-producing regions in the north of the country. Lavish enough to be consumed on its own, Rioja also complements most of full-flavoured foods.
Grapes: Tempranillo. Use the daily guidelines for sensible drinking. Refraining on one day should not mean excess on another. Do not drink and drive, operate machinery, play sport. Do not drink when too relaxed or optimistic. Do not engage in writing and/or reading emails after drinking.
1-2 units of alcohol once or twice a week do not cause harm. 9.8 of alcohol per 75 cl bottle. A bottle holds an average of 6 glasses.

Canterury Tales (9)

(Mario. Isn’t he like an unleashed dog that marks his territory in the park, so that other dogs would know who was there at a certain point before them? But of course, there were dozens of other dogs whose trails had crossed. This tale belong to many. If Mario marked it for me, Boal had done it for him, as had numerous others for Boal.)

Xua-Xua lived hundreds of thousands of years ago, when pre-women and pre-men wandered from mountain to valley, from land to sea, killing other animals to feed themselves, eating leaves and fruits from trees, drinking water from rivers, protecting themselves inside caverns among the rocks. These times were long before Homo sapiens and Homo habilis, who were already almost human in their physical appearance, in the weight of their brains, and in their cruelty.
These pre-human beings lived in hordes to defend themselves. Xua-Xua – who of course had no such name, nor any other, as no verbal language had yet been invented, Xua-Xua was the most beautiful female in her horde, and Li-Peng was the strongest of the males. Naturally they were attracted to one another; they liked swimming together, climbing trees and mountains together, they liked to smell and lick one another, to touch, to embrace, to have sex together. It was good to be with one another. Together.
They were happy, as happy as two pre-human people could be.
One day, Xua-Xua felt her body becoming different. Her belly was growing, and growing. And, as her belly grew, she became shy and started to avoid Li-Peng who couldn’t understand what was happening; his Xua-Xua was no longer the same Xua-Xua, neither physically nor in her moods. They kept their distance from one another. Xua-Xua liked to stay alone, watching her belly; Li-Peng went off in pursuit of other females, but could find no one like his original female.
Xua-Xua felt her belly moving; when she was on the point of falling asleep, her belly would shift from right to left, from left to right. As time went by, her belly grew bigger and bigger, and moved more and more. Like a well-behaved member of the audience, Li-Peng simply looked on from afar, very sad and very afraid. He just watched without acting, spectator to her incomprehensible actions.

(Shall we continue?)

Canterbury Tales (8)

Soun is noght but eyr ybroken,
And every speche that ys spoken,
Lowd or pryvee, foul or fair,
In his substaunce ys but air.
(Geoffrey Chaucer)

You need to find a space where you will not be disturbed. Stand in the balanced position. Close your eyes. Start to tune in to your body – feel your heartbeat, the weight of your hands, the rhythm of your breathing. Feel your feet in contact with the earth. Relax your jaws and let your body groan through your mouth. Feel the sound rising up through you from your feet. Groan as loudly and as long as your body wants to. Just let go and allow the sound to come out.

Canterbury Tales (7)

I suppose, I dunno, when my sister and I were children we had a small erm little patch you know kind of a little bit tucked away at the back of somewhere at [name of house] and we used to grow tomatoes and the odd vegetable and things.
Does bad grammar and sloppy style upset and frustrate you as a teacher or learner? Is it bad manners to speak like that? Is it something to discourage or just ignore? Send them back to school? Re-educate?
Things don’t seem to look as simple as that. If you write spoken grammar, it looks and reads strange. If you speak written grammar, it often sounds even stranger. And language like this is spoken all over the place by millions, it is to be listened to, not written. But what happens if millions listen to it on the radio or TV? Well, the chap speaking about his childhood on the BBC, is … Charlie, son of Betty you know … just popped in and asked me for tea at the Palace, if you know what I mean …

Trains (and boats) and planes

(after Bacharach) 6.30 am. Eight floors down in the lift. Cool and fresh outside. Thirty metres to the rubbish place with this and that from the cleared fridge. Reeking bins. Thirty metres to the taxi. Musty seats. A ten-złoty-thirty-groszy ride to the station. Seventy metres to the train. Toilet odour all over. A 196-kilometre beeline for Warsaw Central. A foul smell of cheap food and urine. A 40-minute bus ride to the airport. Hot and sweaty bone-shaker. Blinding sun outside. Alienating spaces inside. Stench suppressed with disinfectant. On the plane, 11 kilometres high up. Stinky confines of modern travel. Gatwick. More air-conditioned stench. A train to Clapham Junction. Perfume and sweat. One more dusty-musty train, Clapham Junction to West Brompton. Four hundred steps down Old Brompton Road. Dense fumes of Friday afternoon rush hour. Bromptom Cemetary on the way. Vivid early 90s memories of the green refuge in the heart of Kensington. Two hundred steps down Coleherne Road. No traffic. Unchanged and safe. 28 Westgate Terrace. Six steps up to the doorstep. The bell buzzes, the door opens.
Home. A faint scent of two blood-red roses on the kitchen table reaches the nostrils.

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