Neurodivergence and The Piano

 This startling video of a young woman with severe autism and a visual impairment was a reminder to me that we should never make assumptions about those who are generally assessed as "less able" because of their neurodivergent presentation or communication manner but who might possess other aptitudes, understandings and means of expressing themselves we can be unaware of unless we make an open-minded effort of empathy and offer meaningful opportunities for these to manifest themselves. 

  I came across this on the recent Channel 4 series The Piano, quite an interesting twist on the formula of uncovering hidden talent. Various members of the public are invited to play a piano located within a train station, a sizeable yet informal and largely transient audience. The resulting performances have in many cases the unexpected charm of the amateur player improvising their own untutored compositions, a form of outsider art probably very prevalent in the same way that many people write poems or paint landscapes in their own time without necessarily thinking of garnering acclaim for it. 

    That desire to engage with music, move our fingers on the keys and link sounds together in a resonant way (within the ambient bustling soundscape of a train station) seemed to say something important about the innate connectivity of music and how you don't have to be a "unique talent" like Lang Lang (one of the judges) in order to use this marvellous instrument to externalise a small part of your inner truth to the world, as Lucy in particular was so remarkably able to do in her sequence.

'One’s form is one’s tool': New Yorker Interview with Jorie Graham

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/jorie-graham-takes-the-long-view?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Lit%20Hub%20Daily:%20January%203%2C%202023&utm_term=lithub_master_list 

George Saunders Interview and Story Club

 This is an intriguing interview George Saunders did with Stephen Colbert on The Late Late Show recently. Even though I haven't read his new book of short stories Liberation Day which he's plugging here, I've become an avid follower of Saunders' Substack blog called Story Club. 

    Some of the themes and approaches he advocates in chatty, witty form during the interview are explored in more depth in the weekly posts of Story Club, often via the prompts of a famous short story he wants to examine or by thoughtfully responding to an email from a reader or aspiring story-writer. The importance of seeing where the story takes you without too strict a plan or structure in place; the pre-eminence of discovery and risk-taking over premeditated invention or having a point to prove (or something unitary to say); the embrace of fun, surprise and humour in how you approach your writing, rather than seeing it as a tortuous, self-lacerating process. 

   I really warmed to how, in one of his posts, Saunders described his own evolution from a struggling stylist endeavouring to write like Hemingway or Tolstoy or one of his other realist masters and not having much success in terms of publication and not feeling he was getting anywhere artistically; but then pretty much giving up on trying to write "great literature" and (with a sense he had nothing to lose) instead starting to just "goof around" and write more intuitively and spontaneously, seeing what would come out. Only then did he start getting published and begin to garner acclaim, ironically discovering his own voice just when he'd given up on trying to find it.

   

There'd Better Be a Mirrorball

 

"I'd throw the rose tint back on the exploded view"

Dean Young RIP

Dean Young passed away last week at only 67, a poet I greatly admired. A moving tribute from his editor at Copper Canyon Press here.

The Ancient Mariner at Watchet Harbour, Somerset

 

Bring Down the Government

  Like many people, my music-listening habits tend to go in phases, often influenced by what I come across on the radio (mainly Radio 6 or 3) or websites like Bandcamp or The Quietus, or read about in Wire magazine. I prefer that aleatory quality to it, as I do with the poems, books and authors I come across, at odd moments believing there's an underlying order or interconnectivity to my magpie-ish pecking which signals to me I'm heading in the right direction, whatever that might be.

   The last few months, for example, has seen a revisiting of Radiohead mostly sparked by a celebration of OK Computer's 25th anniversary on Radio 6.

  

Among numerous delights, 'No Surprises' shone out for me in its overlayering of an apparently mellow, anodyne melody with subtly dark, almost dystopic lyrics, especially the lines "Bring down the government/ They don't speak for us now" which could come from a raucous punk song but carry so much more force and depth when delivered in this subdued, understated context to acoustic guitar and a glockenspiel-lead tune.

   In this summer when by far the worst, most inept, most corrupt British prime minister ever to hold office has led his own government to all but implode, Thom Yorke's sweetly crooned lines seem to have resonated with all the more significance.  

Homage to Joyce, Dedalus and Kate Bush

 To celebrate the centennial of the publication of Ulysses, here are three very different responses to that astoundingly multifarious and kaleidoscopic masterpiece, whose lasting resonance has yielded generations of notable epigones, byworks and intertexts. Firstly, the modernist composer Luciano Berio (1925-2003) with his Thema: Omaggio a Joyce (1953), startlingly ahead of its time in taking a recitation of Chapter 11 of Ulysses by Berio's then-wife Cathy Berberian and - using tape-manipulation techniques - subjecting it to a "reorganization of the phonetic and semantic elements of Joyce’s text".

  Secondly, I've been reading Chris McCabe's novel Dedalus (2018), a beautifully presented edition created by Henningham Family Press. At first I thought the concept behind this project was too ambitious to work: a sequel to Ulysses? Which writer would think they could manage a continuation of the greatest novel ever written? But in truth I've been won over by McCabe's wildly imaginative take on the day after Bloomsday, very much his own revisioning of the interweaving stories and themes and characters of Ulysses born of an intimate knowledge and passionate enthusiasm for the novel. Years ago I did a Poetry School course lead by Chris on "Ulysses as Poetry" and as well as some chapters that stand as worthy imitations of Joyce's interior monologue prose-style, other chapters metamorphose into visual or sound poetry in a way which feels much in keeping with Joyce's ludic approach both in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.

  Finally, the wonderful video for The Sensual World by Kate Bush, which memorably uses the words of Molly Bloom's soliloquy in 'Penelope'. As we know, KB is having a moment this month thanks to Netflix's Stranger Things, which I'm a big fan of particularly for the nostalgia-drenched soundtrack and a plethora of references to tropes from early 80's TV and movies. It's great to see a resurgence of interest in 'Running Up That Hill', which will hopefully send people back to the marvellous Hounds of Love album - and indeed The Sensual World in all its far-reaching, haunting beauty.

Ilya Kaminsky: Testimonies from Odessan Writers

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2022/03/24/conversations-to-the-tune-of-air-raid-sirens-odesa-writers-on-literature-in-wartime/ 

Electronic Music from Ukraine

A new release on Bandcamp from the US label A Strangely Isolated Place: "To help continue the much-needed support for the people of Ukraine, we have produced a compilation from one of our favorite Ukrainian-based netlabels, Energostatic Records. Released as part of our Portals deep dive series, the feature includes a remaster of specifically curated tracks, in both individual and mix form. These tracks are available here on the ASIP Bandcamp page as Name Your Price, with all proceeds going to Save The Children and their specific activities supporting Ukraine at this time. asip.me/stcukr"