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

What is a Gedle?

It's probably time I explained the title of this Blog.  At least a little bit.

"The Gedle" is a character in an unwritten children's book... My unwritten children's book. Considering his part in the tale he's probably not the most appropriate character to name as the voice behind a a rambling, tangential, sometimes bitter and occasionally esoteric internet diary. But, the good users of gmail had taken both of the two names I would have used already...

Of the two, the title character (who mercifully plays a very small part in the story) is definitely bitter, frustrated, overworked and misunderstood, and given the chance would moan on till long after those legendary wandering cows were inside, milked, fed, and fast asleep; the other possibility, a jolly, "all knowing" lay expert on popular-everything would probably still be droning on after said cows had woken up and gone out again if he had the leisure not to attend to more pressing matters (most of these the fault of the first character).

... and I like the Gedle. He's loyal, and unexpectedly helpful, and, seeing he doesn't "sez" much, there's perhaps no reason to suppose that underneath it all he's not jolly,bitter or esoteric. 

He certainly has a taste for flies.

I will have more to say

I just don't seem to be able to find the time at the moment.  It's not only the time.  Just like I find with my nemesis in the corner of the room, some days I sit down and the music will not be held down.  No matter how hard I try to grab it it eludes my fingers and instead they crash dully against the keys. At other times, when I least expect it, my fingers for some reason feel safe as they cling to the keys and my hand dances with the music, never touching it but moving in perfect time like an ancient dance where the dancers move together, close but neither touching nor drifting apart.  The steps of that dance are at the same time precise but variable, with cliche lying in wait for those who stumble to the left and chaos waiting to the right.

Freaky mystic madman you say.

I find the same with writing. I now have three unfinished posts for this blog which seemed inspired at the time and may yet prove to be.  I am forming the idea of chucking up a poem every Sunday and some music during the week but less frequently. 

One of my fellow bloggers has mentioned a reading challenge  for next year.  If I was to take on such a thing it would be to finish all the books in the shelf I have started but not quite reached the end.  There is a pile of open books at the end of the shelf, some with very little left of them to read. Off the top of my head they include:

Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy - couldn't finish it.. too close to home
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie - shaping up to be very funny
The Confessions of St Augustine
Language, Truth and Logic by A J Ayer
Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery - already read it but he's great
The Summer Book by Tove Jannsen - ditto the above
Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky

There's a Jeffrey Archer there too, equally important I would say

Looking forward to having time,
The Gedle

Hello World!

In order to begin any journey, one must first establish a point, however lowly from which to begin.  With this in mind I here publish my first serious poem, written around 1998.  While I am no longer in possession of the original manuscript of this poem, the words are emblazoned firmly on my conciousness and still speak to me on some deep level even now.  They capture the circumstances surrounding their creation succinctly, and, while twelve years is a long time in the modern world I think this poem still has very much something to say.

Thattered Scoughts

The rain pelts, heavily upon my architrave
I wish it would not so...
I scream! but still the giddy knave
Bombards my woodwork etc.

Shun ye the hellhound's rainy ranks
That endlessly pour forth.
They rain on cars they rain on banks
And also noisome Geriatrica

Yea Geriatrica I say to thee
They live upon the hill...
...and piercingly glare down on me
Whilst I prepare my famous curries

That issue forth with fiery glee
E'en after they be consum-ed
A ring of flame that's hard to see
by all but those famed contortionists

Who with the fabled toasting chant*
To the rain to cool the scorch,
And skyward Cyclops' faces slant,
More soothed than if they'd used Optrex.

I think there is a message in there for all of us, don't you?

* "bottoms up"