Twilight? Not yet. Brideshead takes over.

I'm looking, no, staring, at the front page of Twilight by Stephanie Meyer and I just can't do it.  I will. ...just not today.

The problem is I've just finished reading Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, and, perhaps fittingly I'm reluctant to hurry the drifting away of that world from my mind by pushing another story in just yet.

This is the only of Waugh's novels that I have read, but, judging by other of his titles - A handful of Dust, Decline and Fall - there might be an overall theme to his work.  Certainly these two titles would be excellent titles for a review of this novel, which follows the descent out of the heavenly state of youth and into bleak adulthood for its narrator, and also the last years of a wealthy english aristocratic family.  The novel ends with the once grand house empty at the end of world war II, and with the last members of the family unlikely to produce heirs.  The glory of the twenties, both at Oxford, and in the lives of the privileged, so enchantlingly portrayed when the story begins, has drifted away like a handful of dust.

Charles Ryder, who narrates the story looking back from the point of view of a lonely middle-aged army captain at the end of the war, befriends the flamboyant Sebastian Flyte in their first year at Oxford in 1920 after Sebastian, passing by drunk, vomits into his window.  For the next two years Ryder, Flyte, and Aloysius - Flyte's teddybear - are inseparable.  Sebastian, the spoiled second son of a well-to-do aristocratic and catholic family, takes Charles home to meet his old nanny, taking care to avoid his actual family as it seems he is reluctant to involve Charles with them.  That involvement is inevitable however, and as Charles, who for close family has only his hostile and sarcastic father, becomes closer to the rest of the Flytes, Sebastian becomes more distant.  The story, painfully beautiful, gives the impression of an ancient edifice, with time, like a chill wind, blowing through it.

It's been three days since I began this post.  Stephanie Meyer has still not got my attention.  I went  back to read the introduction of Brideshead  and, though I'm a bit busier this week, have found myself halfway through it again.  It's completely put me off fantasy for the moment. Why do you need fantasy if a story on earth can be told so well?

Evelyn Waugh was a convert to Catholicism.  In part the story portrays the passing of an ancient family line; the end of the age of privilege with hints of the rise of mediocrity.  But as much as that it is about catholicism.  The six members of the Sebastian's family are - for want of a better word - infected with Grace, and each responds differently to its overwhelming presence in their lives.  From the eldest son, Brideshead's complete unquestioning, boring adherence to the tenets; Sebastian and Julias' individual rebellions; to their father's - who converted on his marriage -  complete rejection of it, Grace gets them all in the end one way or another.

The book brought meaning to the oft-quoted "once a catholic, always a catholic".  It echoed exactly the way my catholic sister describes her religion, and also came some way to explaining to me why the couple of catholic girls for whom in my late teens I had such deep but unrequited feelings were not interested even when at the same time they seemed they might be.

I haven't been affected this much by a novel for quite some time.  Most people I know think of the TV series from 1981 when the title is mentioned.  I've not seen it but I might have to now.

If you haven't read it, do.

Oh what a fraud I have been...

Isaac Albeniz.

Long ago, when the internet was still a novelty and hotmail was nearly new I decided to get me one of them e-mail addresses.  At first I used my real name, but as hotmail was only nearly new it had to be timrobinson_27 or tim_robinson3 or something like that, and after obsessively e-mailing all my friends and wondering why they so swiftly tired of replying I forgot the password and didn't bother again for a while.

The next time I decided that I needed e-mail, I resolved to choose a really cool and original handle for myself: one that reflected who I was and what I aspired to at the time.  Being a fan of the french composer Debussy, and vainly convinced that I looked just a little bit like him too, I decided that I was to be debussy@ hotmail. 

"debussy" was taken, the much less cool debussy27 or debussy36 were  available, but such also-ran alternatives were not for me.

I thought again.  At the time I had been enjoying crashing my way (badly) through a couple of the late piano works of Brahms...

By the way I love Brahms. His music is to me like great pieces of rough-hewn rustic oak furniture: big gestures drawn in big strokes.  Not pernickity like Mozart or Haydn, bigger than Beethoven, but despite all that as finely crafted as Bach.  .. and that reminds me of an episode where I excitedly played one of these pieces at one of our local composers, a man twice my age at the time, and him afterwards massaging his stubby fingers into the fleshy part of my thigh and telling me he thought I'd make a really good Brahms pianist.  I was a little shocked and leapt a little too fast out of my seat.  Perhaps he thought I was flirting when I told him I didn't really like Tchaikovsky as the indulgence of it all made me feel dirty...

Anyway, I digress... I was to be "brahms@ hotmail".  Much better.  Much less girly-sounding than debussy too (not that I think Debussy is girly, ...did you know that the freudian interpretation of L'isle Joyeuse is that it depicts the male orgasm?... just his name).

"brahms" was not available.  brahms27 or brahms_36 however...  you get the idea

Thinking again I remembered I really liked a particular piece of music I had found in a second hand bookstore earlier in that year.  The Godowsky arrangement of the Tango by Isaac Albeniz.  This is it:

That was nice wasn't it.  Apparently Jorge Bolet was a student of Godowsky, so if you think it was too slow or out of time you can (at least according to the comments in youtube) go jump...

Anyway.  "albeniz@ etc" was available.  "Yes!" I thought to myself, and on the strength of one piece of sheet music which I couldn't really play I assumed my hotmail identity for the next ten years. 

Of course that made me look spanish. For the first few years I recieved many joyous "Hola Albeniz!" type mails with photos from people's vacations or of their new babies with all the text in Spanish.  Somehow I got signed up to something called "boletin el plural"  which still arrives weekly in my inbox because I don't know how to unsubscribe.

Worse than all that, when I started using msn messenger I had to always set my status to offline because turkish people would keep messaging me.  "salem" they would say... or "merhaba".. or both.  I would open messenger up and literally ten windows would pop open:

"salem"

"merhaba"

"merhaba"

"salem"

and they didn't understand when I told them politely in English that I didn't have a clue what they were saying to me. 

Eventually one did.  He explained to me that "salem" was a friendly greeting and that "merhaba" was slightly more formal. He told me that Albeniz is a very common turkish surname. Then he kindly posted me the link to the online medical journal in which the young student doctor he thought I was appeared...

Truth is stranger than fiction.

Needless to say I do feel I've misled the good people of Turkey and Spain for misappropriating one of their names for my online use that any number of millions of them have far more right to than me. (I'm not giving it back though.. I was there first!) 

What's far worse is that in all those years the only piece of music I've ever played by Isaac Albeniz is that tango, and that isn't even the version as he wrote it: it's been prettied up by Godowsky.  So when last month I was at the local library and browsing through their small collection of sheet music I found a way to begin setting things right.  There on the shelf was a collection of Albeniz piano music.

I've been looking at these two:

I had thought that one was originally for guitar but no!  twas originally a piano work,  and this one:

which will take me a while to learn.

There.  It's been a while since I posted anything much on here.  I did try, but was thwarted in my minor goal of using pianists exclusively named Jorge. I did make sure the last two were spanish however. 

Perhaps if I learn these pieces I will feel less of a fraud when I use hotmail in future.

all the best

The Gedle