He flew across the road in front of me on huge silent wings. I peered into the forest and, for a moment, I couldn't see him. I gave a low whistle and then he looked right at me.
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| Saint-Étienne-de-Bolton, March 22nd 2023 |
Sunday 26 March 2023
Friday 24 March 2023
Irish songs we learned at school
Well I learned them at school in Dublin, but my sons learned them in the car on the way to their French school in Montreal, thanks to the album by John Spillane. I re-discovered the CD last month as I cleared out the car before selling it, and the boys were filled with nostalgia. They still know lots of the words, pronouncing them almost perfectly in imitation of Spillane's Kerry Gaelic, though they've no idea what they mean. They were stunned to learn that 'An Poc ar Buile' was about an angry goat!
Turn up the volume!
They're young men now, no longer boys. And the VW has left us after sixteen Montreal winters of ice salt and potholes.
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| My new VW GTi in September 2007 |
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| When I sold it in January 2023 |
Reading list
I haven't updated the list of books I've read since a post in August 2021. Here's my reading list for the period September 2021 to December 2022.
Fiction
Barnes, Julian: Levels of Life
Barrett, Colin: Homesickness
Borges, Jorge Luis: Labyrinths
Erskine, Wendy: Dance Move
Ishiguro, Kazuo: Klara and the Sun
Keegan, Clare: Small Things Like These
Magee, Audrey: The Colony
Mansfield, Katherine: Selected
Stories
Mitchell, David: The thousand autumns of Jacob De Zoet
Murnane, Gerald: The Plains
Rooney, Sally: Beautiful World, Where Are You
Saramago, José: Blindness
Shafak, Elif: Three daughters of Eve
Tóibín, Colm: The Testament of Mary
Woolf, Virgina / Emre, Merve: The annotated Mrs Dalloway
My top three would be the books by Magee, Mitchell, and Saramago, with honorable mentions for Ishiguro and Tóibín. I didn't get on at all with the book by Murnane, simply finding it dull. The book by Sally Rooney was good, she writes well, but I really don't understand what all the hype is about. The narrator's voice in Rachel Cusk's 'Second Place' got on my nerves a bit, but thinking about it afterwards I sense that was deliberate on Cusk's part and I've resolved to read the book again.
I also read a lot of non-fiction and particularly enjoyed the personal history 'We Don't Know Ourselves' by Fintan O'Toole. His Ireland is also my Ireland, and unfortunately it includes the perverted and sexually abusive Christian Brother we both encountered in Colaiste Chaoimhin, me six years after him.
Poetry Collections
Caldwell, Anne: Alice and the North
Ducker, Christy: Skipper
Mahon, Derek: New Selected Poems
Ní Ghríofa, Doireann: Lies
Ní Ghríofa, Doireann: To Star the Dark
These are all great but the collection by Caldwell was particularly illuminating, showing me possibilities that I hadn't imagined before in a themed sequence of prose poems.
The Magnolia Electric Co.
I've only just discovered Jason Molina. I'm too late. He died ten years ago, in March 2013, from the effects of his long-term alcoholism, while his greatest recording, The Magnolia Electric Co., was released twenty years ago in March 2003. But since I first heard it a few months ago I've been playing it over and over. Musically and lyrically it's almost perfect - Molina had a writer's gift for an arresting image and a voice that made sure you saw it and felt it too.
Long dark blues
Through the static and distance
Long dark blues
A farewell transmission
Long dark blues
Listen.
Wednesday 22 March 2023
Ainadamar, Opéra de Montréal
I went to this opera without any real idea of what to expect, and I was blown away.
It was all the more surprising because the last two operas I saw were disappointing. I had found the storytelling to be poor, the pace lurching between way too slow and far too fast, and even though the singing was often very good and the sets extraordinary, the overall effect was dissatisfying.
But in Ainadamar the pace is really well judged. It opens quickly and you have to pay attention as it switches from scenes of the Spanish civil war featuring the poet Lorca, to a performance of one of his plays in Uruguay in the 1960's. The connection between these two is the character Marianna / Margarita, a role superbly acted and sung by Emily Dorn. As we get to know the characters the pace slows so we can feel their feelings, and the ending is just exquisite, long lines of melody and heartbreaking singing.
The music is a highlight. Each scene has a signature rhythm, sometimes flamenco, in one stunning part the sound of gunshots and rifles reloading brings us through a massacre in the war.
The review in La Presse was very enthusiastic too.
I had been thinking of not going to the opera for a while, but maybe I should change my mind.
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