The Place Beneath

Opera vs. Musicals: Which is Which?

2011-07-19T16:24:00.000+01:00

Anthony Tommasini has written stimulating article for the New York Times entitled, " Musical or Opera? The fine line that divides them" - a good read.

Interesting (and I like both). Though I think the lyrics vs. music bit falls down - Candide (witty and very text-heavy, though with beautiful arias) is more suited to opera performers than West Side Story (more dance than text, as demonstrated in Lin-Manuel Miranda's Spanish lyrics in the recent production - something I wish the writer had mentioned). Both are equally challenging to play. Wonderful Town and On the Town are more obvious Bernstein "musical musicals", but are not less skilled. I'd also balk at the idea that RENT succeeded because of lyrical brilliance, since I have no problem with the music but feel it's the lyrical rough spots that would have been smoothed over in previews had Jonathan Larson lived.

I'd swing towards the idea that the craft is what distinguishes genres, as the only fairly consistent distinction (styles and periods aside) is in the craft of singing, with opera a particular craft (across a few key styles) and musical theatre employing others. Opera requires its own space, being unamplified, whereas musicals can be adapted to a variety of settings with skilled technological intervention. Due to its level of specialisation, opera remains, in general, more expensive and more demanding - but comes with its own integrity that is harder to challenge than that of musical theatre. Opera is less vulnerable to certain compromises, such as the slashing of pit orchestras in recent Broadway shows. Can you imagine La Scala trying to get away with two violins, a tuba and a synthesiser in the next production of I Pagliacci?

One key point that I love about the article, though, is the message: back off! I am an enthusiast for both musical theatre and opera, and do not want to hear any more "opera is stuffy!" or "musicals are silly!" talk. Because that's both stuffy and silly. It would seem crazy to expect contemporary dance and Shakespeare to tick all the same boxes just because they both happen on stage. Furthermore, the most successful adaptation of source material - a la opera - to the stage that I've seen happens in Les Miserables, and by far the daftest piece of theatre I've ever witnessed is The Magic Flute.

Bits and Pieces

2011-05-03T14:42:00.002+01:00

Well, that worked... day 2 was "a song you hate" and I don't like being negative. We shall move on to day 3!

In other news... I've typed up a few random pieces of writing that I came across while typing up some notes. I have the Portugal trip diary to come!

Some are quite old.
Sailing into Kristiansand
Reflecting on the Empire State Building
New York blog, 2003

30 Day Song Challenge #1: Favourite Song

2011-04-13T15:20:00.000+01:00

It's been too long. Again. I've been journalling personally more throughout my recovery - things I wouldn't post on here either due to their personal nature or to fears it will reveal the depths of my narcissism - and I think with facebook's longer status boxes, that has become an outlet for things I used to blog - but I prefer the discipline of having to think back to what's been going on.

However, this seems like a fun challenge. On facebook, the 30 day song challenge appealled to me, so I'm going to dive in as I could hardly pass up an opportunty to write about songs, could I?

Day One is to post your favourite song. That's a really hard question - so I chose one I really like at the moment and never get sick of. This is Buried Boy by John Gallagher Jr.

Content Insomnia and the "Minister Incident"

2011-01-30T02:02:00.001Z

The medication is keeping me awake again. It can do that, even when I lie there yawning!

I thought, instead of reading mindlessly (I'll get back to that in a moment) that I would reflect, yet again, and give those I've neglected for far too long some kind of update - especially since all is good news. I will, however, keep it brief so I can go back to bed pleasantly tired but make it to church in the morning with both eyes open!

Yes, the drugs are heavy, but they're also working, and I'm feeling much better than I did in the months during the run-up to the Big Flareup. Memories of the extreme pain are fading, as they do, and I'm left with the feeling that I have become a better person, certainly having had an education, and have in spite of it all been blessed with more friends, deeper relationships, a clearer mind and a more content spirituality than I had before. Net result is good.

I have a wonderful care worker, Stacey, coming in three times a week. She knows me well and we have a great time doing our supermarket shopping together and assessing the quality of the chicken skewers once a week. We really should start a blog about that - we certainly have deep thoughts. I couldn't manage without Stacey at the moment, and certainly couldn't have got through the last few months without her coming in to do all the things I couldn't do around the house. Now I can do a bit more we can do some things together, and it's so reassuring to have someone there when I hit the bits I still can't cope with!

I've still been on medical leave, and for the time being I won't be able to go back to work full-time, but I don't want to put it off further (and don't feel I need to) so I will be returning to work in March. I've been reading again and am confident this will be my year for the big steps towards the finish line! Finally!

I saw a metabolic specialist who sent me for tests and my dietician ascertained that I can't process carbohydrate properly. My metabolism might not be ridiculously slow after all; I just need to eat protein and minimal carbs. What has more carbs than drippy bacon? All the low fat mayos and spreads I've used for years. Typical! But no more 1200 calorie eating programmes that make me put on weight, and I haven't been hungry in three weeks now. I love my bacon diet! Of course, it's a huge change, but it came just at the earliest moment at which I felt I could cope with something that drastic.

The chance to renew friendships and make new ones has been a real gift. I have a lot to be thankful for, having emerged from the crisis unscathed but profoundly changed. I have healthier friendships, more resilience, more self-confidence, a better opinion of myself and more clarity in where my life might go next. I feel blessed and, as I have throughout this experience, feel that God is in control whether or not I'm making a "special effort" and my job is to recognise the blessings. Things that have dropped into my mind have been amazing - for example, I had thought about looking for museum work a while ago but it was a bit like there was a complete embargo on all such thoughts until this week, when I was lying in bed and suddenly had this brainwave that my dream job, using my skills, would be something to do with ritual or sociology and religion in a museum setting. Since this thought, I've found a course that's brief and to the point, works with collections in which I already have an interest and connection, and is right where I felt I should go next. I have a while to think about all of this and to prepare accordingly, but focus was needed!

I feel more like myself than I have in years. My brain is working again, insomnia aside, and I feel so energised and positive - and not just compared to where I was just a few months ago. I really do feel like myself again. I've been working on languages, too, which has really helped.

One of those languages was Portuguese! I also got to go to Portugal (for therapeutic reasons, naturally) with my parents in October. Yes, I kept a diary, and just need to edit in the photos! We all needed a holiday - me for warmth and vitamin D, of which I was catastrophically deprived over the summer indoors, and the two of them because my grandmother had been ill in Glasgow on and off for months and they had been visiting almost every day to one hospital or another, with her going rapidly downhill three times before stabilising. Many of you will know she died in October, and in characteristic Burt fashion the funeral was hysterical, and not in the sobbing way.

My mother and sober occasions are an interesting mix. It's fair to say that while my family doesn't lack decency (and I think we have a fair degree of gravitas when we put on our serious faces), we are possibly slightly prone to those very Scottish virtues of black humour, sarcasm and irreverence. Funerals are just the sort of thing we enjoy as a wee day out... And we were happy that it was the right time for Granny B, and everything had gone well with the minister in organising a nice tribute.

First thing: my Granny Burt's friend Cathy also has arthritis and just had an operation, so she and I found ourselves unable to gather with everyone in the first-floor flat. We were to be left in the car, and they didn't even leave the window open for us.

After we had agreed on this, we set off for the gathering place. Now, I think to say that the planning did not go entirely smoothly might be a generous view, and my father's opinion that we practically organised the whole thing ourselves by nagging them for ten days was not at the opposite end of the generosity spectrum. He dubbed them the Rikki Fulton Funeral Parlour, and if you don't know who Rikki Fulton is go and YouTube him NOW for your amusement and enlightenment.

As we neared the right street, we saw these two long black posh cars inching towards a roundabout looking a bit on the aimless side. They then had a burst of decisive energy and drove straight past the right street. We gave chase. When they pulled over to confer, we drew up alongside and asked (as well as we could since we were all laughing pretty hard) if they were the Burt funeral. They were. We gave them directions. Unfortunately, what you also have to understand is that I had just returned from Portugal where the heaviest coat I needed was a denim jacket, and did not want to return to St Andrews just to get a ratty old coat to look decent. Therefore, I had some essential dental work and took my anaesthetised self down to the town centre in Stirling to find something three-season-ish. The best I could do (leaving out various other complications) was a beautiful purple tailored raincoat. Naturally, I had to buy accessories to match. I spent the weekend before modelling this coat for various family members and was quite proud of it. Well, back to the mourners' cars - the man in car two had a purple waistcoat on. As we drove off with the windows open, I'm pretty sure they were treated to a chorus of, "That man matches your coat!" - "He's purple!" - "Waistcoat!"

While Cathy and I were left giggling downstairs, my mother had tried to find her coat in the sea of black coats upstairs and had to try on three before she got the right one. I believe the inherent ridiculousness struck everyone, as they seemed quite jolly when they returned.

Next incident: remember the Rikki Fulton Funeral Parlour? As the (very nice and competent) driver ushered us in, told us to mind our heads and said just to ask if there was anything we needed, he had the misfortune of ending his lovely speech with, "You see, we try to offer a professional service." Poor dear suddenly had a car full of hysterical passengers again.

The funeral service at the church went really well and was a great balance of elements. Summarising the things that were slightly off-kilter in our collective exit, however, would take a while, so suffice to say Cathy and I had to take an alternate exit so rather than following the coffin and getting straight to the cars, we had to fight through a sea of people to get there on schedule (we only had twenty minutes to head through Glasgow at lunch time), many of whom were being lovely and sympathetic and hugging, and I was just all elbows (sorry). By the time we got to the car we discovered that my mother had picked up an extra mourner (of course). She had not noticed the minister in the front, coming with us to the crematorium.

This became painfully obvious when the door slammed and she uttered the immortal phrase, "WELL! How do we think he did?"

You can imagine we all felt a bit awkward, but she was not deterred, still failing to realise what was - quite literally - inches from her nose.

The back-seat mourners (as in, the ones in the back seat, not really bossy ones) interrupted her, "Hmm? Well.." with a chorus of "Excellent!" "Yes, he did REALLY WELL" with much exaggerated pointing to the front. Apparently she took this as a hint to ask our row, too.

"Yes, it was an EXCELLENT service," my father intoned, eyes wide with too-vague significance.

I leaned forward to the front seat. "It's not often you get your reviews this early, is it?"

I hoped, against all previous evidence supporting the contrary outcome, that my mother would get the hint and that would defuse any tension by revealing my family's interaction - played out with all the understatement and subtlety of a Chinese Opera set in the circus - as an elaborate in-joke played on unsuspecting normal people. She responded exactly as I'd hoped. NOT.

"OOOOOHHHHHH! Oh NOOOO! I didn't realise you were THERE!" We drove off to the crematorium leaving snatches of "Oh noooo!" and "Oh, that's DREADFUL!" in our wake.

Our First Mistake by Kerrigan-Lowdermilk

2011-01-30T01:09:00.000Z

Possibly my favourite contemporary musical writing team - and their album has just come out. See their website for details and links to samples. They ran a phenomenally successful campaign to raise funds to produce the album and have been charting impressively since it came out on the 18th.

Full review coming soon! In the meantime, check out the link - this is the sound of being a twenty-something in the twenty-first century.

The Wheel of Death: A Christmas Story

2010-12-24T22:21:00.000Z

Gather at my feet, children - AAAH! No, not on my feet, as that was kind of painful, actually. Okay, once you've stopped fidgeting I will recount for your listening pleasure -

Timmy, stop hitting your sister -

Now I will begin, and I am going to tell you a tale of woe. Wait, that's not right - I'm going to tell you a tale of WOAH!!! Such a tale that will turn your hair on end and make you appreciate your simple lives and families. Yes, Timmy, even your sister. Timmy, I'm serious. Do you know what happens to bad children? They get thrown onto the Wheel of Death.

But more on that later. First, we set the scene.

It is late December in the Town of Magical Learning, and the Beautiful Princess Who Walks With a Limp (we'll just call her Princess Limpy from now on) observes that the snow from the previous week is no longer deep and crisp and even but looks very similar to tripe that has been run over by a turkey driving a steamroller. Magical Hogwarts has turned into Fife again, and instead of happy children with merry and bright hearts flying around on broomsticks, we are left with only seagulls. Having spent much of Advent fighting off evil snowmen (that's another story, for next Christmas), Princess Limpy determines that more festive shores should be sought.

The carriage is summoned. Princess Limpy sweeps her faithful nurse, Miss T, into the expedition and sets of for the royal train. Unfortunately, the happy band had failed to recognise that as the Town of Magical Learning was closing for the season, all the Sages and Scribes-in-Training were departing for their villages and townships, trunks full of gifts, cloaks and laundry for their appreciative kinfolk. Princess Limpy and Miss T do not realise this until they are stranded in a third class carriage with the commoners and have little chance of escape, but accept that in this time of Advent it is good to reflect on the Son of God and how he was willing to hang out with the normal folk. Princess Limpy condescends manfully but wishes she had brought hand sanitiser.

The journey proceeds smoothly, albeit in a standing position, except for the indignity of being clambered over by ordinary people trying to reach the swill compartment. Princess Limpy is unsure quite what people eat if they are not roasting swans for dinner, but it seems to be tasty if so many passengers are keen to elbow their fellow travellers so vigorously in their attempts to reach the food.

A very relieved pair of adventurers arrive in Capital City, where it is cold but decidedly steamrollered-tripe-free. The crowds bustle around them, brimming with festive energy and glowing with cheer, or possibly mulled wine. Both, perhaps. Heads spinning, the Princess and the Nurse behold the Big Wheel, carriages wobbling in a friendly humour and it turns, and down below they see well-cushioned day-trippers jostling for safe passage on the ice rink, teetering and colliding alternately in their pursuit of grace. Harnessed youngsters bounce high above trampolines and seem to enjoy their endeavours, but our heroines decide that they are best served by leaving their stomachs on the inside, and at approximately the present height.

They wait, noses high in the air to catch the delicious smells, until their friend and associate the Teacher appears in the vicinity of the giant chicken snow globe. They find themselves in the middle of a market full of treats from the neighbouring kingdom of Germany. Overcome by hunger, they hit the sausage stand and drown their sandwiches in sweet German mustard, savouring the tasty, tasty sausage lunch. Fortified, they investigate the nearby doughnuts recommended by the Teacher.

In a sugar haze, the masses of shoppers, carollers and pickpockets merge and when they recover their faculties, the Princess and her companions find themselves in possession of bags full of traditional merchandise. Confusion abounds, but the handcrafted items are of such quality and beauty that they do not mind much. The discovery of an outdoor heater leads the party into the mulled wine and beer garden, where they enjoy steaming beverages in ceramic goblets, wrapped up against the chill. Caught up in the revelry of the beer garden's atmosphere, Princess Limpy and the Teacher lead a chorus of the old German drinking song, "When Santa Got Stuck Up the Chimney". Distracted by the smells wafting from a recently-opened smokehouse, they follow a large joint of smoked pork to the stall where a local artisan slices it with a thump and offers them some of the delicious meat on a roll.

Inside the artists' tavern, the Princess, the Nurse and the Teacher divest themselves of their outerwear and sip tea and luxurious melted chocolate while they warm their hands. The Nurse espies a Wizard with whom she has previously debated, but feels less than capable of reawakening the acquaintance after so much deliciousness. The Teacher and Princess conceal her as they grant safe passage from the tavern into the cold evening outside.

The lights of the fair are aglow as they meet their dear friend, the Snow-Watcher. She has been a treasured advisor of the local governor, between stints as town crier and yak barber, and has just recovered from a shift watching for signs of snow, so that the town guards can strap on their shoes of finest bear-hair and their horses can be shod in silver snow-shoes, ready for whatever the winter may bring.

Headdresses of cattle are bought, a tribute of friendship from the Teacher, then the attention of the Princess is drawn to the lights cycling far above her head, spinning and spinning as, one by one, each carriage traces a giant wheel in the air before the national literary monument.
'The Wheel of Death!" exclaims the Princess. "I have heard tales of it, but have never had the chance to see it with mine own eyes!"
'Ah, " says the Teacher. "I have seen in before, in my childhood. Indeed, verily, lo, this wheel you see yonder defeated me in my youth and I do believe we are destined to meet again!"
"Um," says the Princess. "I'm really not all that bothered." The Nurse and the Snow-Watcher shrugged.
"Princess," says the Teacher. "You brought it up."
"'Tis true," Princess Limpy admits. "You have me there."
The Teacher considers. "For once, Princess, allow me to guide you in this task. We shall conquer the Wheel of Death, or return enbalmed!"
"Yay!" cry the other adventurers, beginning to feel the heady effects of their delicious beverages.

They approach the attendant and cros her palm with silver, proceeding up the marked path towards the mounting post. A wheel-butler holds the door as the four friends climb into the carriage.
"Not too bad so far," remarks the Princess.
The Wheel of Death begins to spin.
"MUMMY!" cries the Princess.

Faster and faster they climb, pausing at the top suspended only by hope and a large metal bar, before the carriage surrenders to gravity and they plunge, leaving their hearts at the top and beginning to have second thoughts about the day's indulgences. As they pass the wheel-butler, they see that he has transformed into an Evil Wizard, and casts a spell to make the Wheel of Death spin until they can barely remember their names, nationalities and pin numbers.

They spin and spin, faster and faster, whirling and whirling until suddenly all is still.
"Are we... dead?" asks the Princess.
"I think they're unloading," says the Snow-Watcher. "If I use this bit can I make it spin?"
"NOOOO!" cry the adventurers.
"If you do, then I will throttle you," threatens the Princess. "Actually, worse - I'll hug you."
The Snow-Watcher thinks about it for a moment. "I'll be good."

Painfully slowly, the Wheel of Death crawls around. The winds whistles through the surrounding girders and all the Princess can hear is her pouding heart. Finally they are at the top. The view is magnificent, but all the four friends feel is the chill of the night air, tinged with abandoned dreams and missed opportunities, garnished with the stale, cold smell of vague disappointment. As they descend, these afflictions ease, and they feel instead the promise of relief, when the wheel- butler will open the door and welcome them back into a safe world populated not by Evil Wizards with carriage-spinning intentions, but by good, kind people who wish to live secure lives surrounded by grandchildren and puppies.

The carriage halts. The door opens. The Teacher and the Snow-Watcher alight first, followed by the Nurse, who tends to her Princess by taking her Limpy Stick and her satchel as she tries to find the most appropriate disembarkation procedure. Crawling around the central pillar, she pulls herself into a position from which she might bend her better leg, thus rendering her capable of sliding to the door. A shift here. A slither there.

Just as she is about to push herself out of the door, another Evil Wizard takes control of the Wheel of Death and letting out a mighty cackle, pushes the lever in the control house to "DEATH SPEED".

The ground disappears. Princess Limpy sees only the stricken face of her faithful Nurse as she attempts to effect a rescue, but is cruelly stuck down by a blow from the following carriage. In thrall to the Evil Wizard Wheel-Butler, the Snow-Watcher can only laugh, laughter that would surely turn to tears of distress were she able to wrest full control of emotional faculties.

High above them, the Princess shrieks in fright, but after a few moments of paralysis she is able to roll away from the open door - and certain death on the streets far below - and slam the door behind her. As she breathes a sigh of relief, below her she hears the welcome voice of the Teacher.

At ground level, seeing that the Evil Wizard has fled, the Teacher attempts to reach the enthralled safety attendant by issuing a command: "STOP THE WHEEL!"

The power of the Teacher's social position and the respect in which she is regarded by those in her city of residence alone could have stopped the wheel, had not the safety attendant shaken off the trance and reversed the Evil Wizard's actions. The Princess was rescued from the Wheel of Death and disaster was averted. The Town of Magical Learning would never know how close they came to the loss of their heroine.

Exhausted from the trauma of the night's events, they repair to a public house to deconstruct and reflect, before the Princess and the Nurse bid farewell, all too soon, to the Teacher and the Snow-Watcher.

The Nurse is overcome with hunger for a meat pasty, for although they are a food beloved of the common people and rarely consumed in the Town of Magical Learning, Miss T comes from a far-off land where such foodstuffs are traditional and had been afflicted with the fever they call, "Nostalgia". There is no cure but food that brings memories of home. She leaves the Princess in the Royal House of Burger, where Princess Limpy seeks some golden wheels of onion, and visits the pasty vendor. Our heroines make their way back to the royal train and enoy the snow-covered landscape in the moonlit night.

And this is why, children, the commoners eat pasties at Christmas and dangle their loved ones from wheels.

Music and Life

2010-08-28T21:50:00.000+01:00

It's going to sound stupid if I say that intellectual work, theatre, writing and music are really important to me, but I need the reminder myself, sometimes!

Watching - as I am - the Rodgers and Hammerstein prom, I feel like I'm another shaky step on a journey towards achieving some sort of balance in life. I'm actually far too tired at the moment to get into a fraught battle-for-survival emotional rollercoaster, so that's a positive.

Part of recovery, as it turns out, is allowing for the fatigue and irritability (especially when I'm alone a lot - no one to get irritated with apart from myself). And setbacks. Various people have been telling me I should be getting much better recently - frustrating when I've definitely been struggling and sore - and couldn't understand the lingering aches, but it turns out that I'm catastrophically vitamin D3 deprived which explains that. Working on it...

In any case, remind me to play the piano. And write music. Very important.

Muddled Serenity

2010-07-04T22:35:00.001+01:00

I do and don't have news. Things are and aren't progressing. This is a really funny stage of illness - I want to connect with people and I want to have restful time, I want to sleep and I want to fill my days with activities, I want to do far more than I should be doing at the moment but get frustrated with all I can't do.

Crafts are keeping me going, and getting back to the library at least to read or be there, which wouldn't have been possible not that long ago. I still fall asleep if I read a lot, but I recently made it through my first novel in ten months (yeah, exactly) and am working on a second! Physically, I feel so much better when you think of where I was just three or four months ago, or, worse, back in September-December. I was so relieved at Christmas when my steroid injection kicked in long enough that I could just about bear to sit in a fairly high dining chair without being in extreme pain. Now I could do that without seeing it as overcoming a huge hurdle, and I need to remember how much i longed for the immense relief of feeling as I do now, which isn't pain free, but while I'm prone to fatigue and aches, it's nothing compared to having someone lift my legs to move me around in bed.

Doctors say that we forget pain - the childbirth effect - and it's true that I can't quite conjure up the precise feeling, though I remember well enough the emotional parts. Somehow in there I felt relief that things had come to a head, after months of going downhill without any sense of what was at the bottom. That was odd. I also knew that I would come to a point where I saw the spiritual work that was being done in me, and my pained-self was adamant that recovering-self remember the pain and that, regardless of how much I felt I had learned, I was on no account to come to the conclusion that the pain had been Worth It. It's in my head like an imprint, carefully impressed by my former self, knowing how I would remember selectively and come to conclusions of which former-me would not approve.

So soon, though, I saw the changes that my illness was bringing. I've said here before that I felt relieved to find myself again, even as my identity was under threat from a totalising illness, and I feel like I rediscover my entire illness-experience whenever I take stock. I appreciate those who sat with me, lifted me, paid for long phone conversations because they couldn't cross oceans to be with me, shared my confusion about what was happening, brought me hot chocolate because I couldn't get out, looked at travel brochures with me and planned trips we didn't take, told me what was happening in their lives and made me feel like I had something to contribute. I clung to brief messages of support and prayer that confirmed that the world hadn't forgotten me. Whether because I was enjoying an elongated stretch of denial or because these things hit when you're tired, I don't know, but I've been upset about the loss of the past year while coming to the conclusion that, if this is the worst arthritis experience of my life and the medications only get better from here, a year isn't that much when I'm 26. I've been distressed on behalf of my pained self and euphoric about my current fatigued-but-recovering self - a kind of survivor's guilt, maybe, based on pity for the "me" of six months ago.

God and I have had some frank conversations about the whole thing, and while emotionally I felt like I was being cast off like a faulty doll I have never felt God's presence in such a comforting, disturbing, detached, internal, inexplicable way. I wanted to be independent and I didn't want to be left alone. I wanted to go backwards and forwards while being, more than ever, trapped in the present. I want to make up for lost time, living a life of the utmost significance while appreciating the details. I am appreciative of being able to walk to the car while frustrated I can't walk the length of the town.

As a walking mass of contradictions, I don't really know what to do but live with all the conflicting emotions and impulses, and I'm finding it strangely easy to continue as I hold all of these thoughts in tension.

East Neuk Designs 2

2010-06-24T01:20:00.002+01:00

And some more new designs! I'm really enjoying this and it's a good life balance.

East Neuk Designs

2010-06-18T13:13:00.000+01:00

I'm really excited that, having got interested in beading and jewellery making while I'm ill, I've bought some beads that have become these items:

Aaaaaages...

2010-06-17T00:35:00.000+01:00

It feels like a really long time since I last wrote anything on here. That isn't to say that nothing has been happening; I have had a wonderful break with my parents in early May, with lots of photos to come. Recovery is going well, though it's going to be a long road.

Good news is that I got my status with the university sorted out. That's been pretty stressful and hs been holding me back a bit when it comes to recovering, as fatigue and tension are big issues for me, but I'm pleased that it's over for now.

I haven't been idle, either. I've been scrapbooking, making jewellery, trying to bake...

More soon!

In Defence of Sightseeing

2010-04-20T11:34:00.001+01:00

The air was heavy. A red mist began to rise around my head. I had a vision of myself vaulting over the child below. What kind of stupid man would block the bus exit with his buggy and refuse to budge? If one cannot respond to a kind request, I fumed, what hope is there for humanity?

Then it happened. I tutted. Loudly.

My mind flashed back to a similar bus situation, four weeks earlier, as the blue-rinsed commuters telegraphed their disapproval of one woman's pram-wrestling boarding of the number 81. It struck me: I had become a little old Parisian lady.

This kind of self-discovery, to my mind, puts Marco Polo to shame and is the holy grail for the introspective travel writer. Especially as it's about me. Except for one thing: all of the above took place in the shadow of the Sacre Coeur.

Thousands of independent travellers share a horror of the overfamiliar; we want to emphasise our thorough appreciation of a place and its culture, gain an insight into the people - and we would not be caught dead up the Eiffel Tower. It seems self-evident that the worst parts of any destination, the most money-grabbing, tourist heaving aspects, will be found in impressive proportion within viewing distance of any major monument. Much of it gives the impression (not entirely inaccurately) that tourist are a bottomless pit of money. At Notre Dame one may enjoy waving bits of paper before the nose if one stands still for more than thirty seconds, the aforementioned Tour Eiffel boasts unrivalled queuing, while at the Louvre a prospective admirer of the Mona Lisa will no doubt appreciate the tranquility afforded by four hundred jostling elbows. Worse still, we find ourselves surrounded by pale imitations of ourselves in the form of novelty T-shirt wearing, socks-with-sandals sporting, tacky fridge magnet purchasing tourists. I choke on the word.

The disappointments and inconveniences of major tourist sights are well documented, and the reasons for avoiding such tourist-crammed areas are considered and well-meant (as well as a little snobbish). When one wants to gain a deeper understanding of the local people and their lifestyles, there really isn't a lot you can do about it when yelling your crepe order over the heads of an idling tour group.

In a city like Paris, however, non-touristy sights are thin on the ground. Nowhere in the world have I encountered such a density of - gulp - attractions, but the annual turnover of tourists within its twenty arrondissements more than compensates. More to the point, had I gone to Paris as a student and not visited any of the tourist destinations, what would I have missed?

I may have missed out on the beautiful Pantheon with its confused ecclesiastical heritage, or the view from the Pompidou Centre. When you've got postcards to send anyway, why not buy them at St-Michel with everyone else, where genuine Parisian students hang out and you can witness a political demonstration or two?

There's a reason that the Musee D'Orsay is a popular destination - its collection - and while Versailles can be downright unpleasant with its surfeit of tourists, once you get past the gritting of teeth and grumbles of, "Someone should really do something," the apartments really do provide an insight into the ambitions of Louis XIV. While travellers may be justly disinterested in the doings of the tourist masses, there's little point in getting snobby towards those who have a genuine interest in and knowledge of local history.

People travel for all sorts of reasons. I find it quite wrong to suggest that going to "see things" is in any way an invalid proposition. There are good reasons for travellers to be interested in people and character, but many of us have more physical interests, particularly those with a passion for architecture. In the style and decor of a church many travellers can read insight not only into the current population, but into the priorities and preoccupations of long-dead designers and craftsmen. In this spirit I chased down the Lavirotte-designed public toilets at Madeleine - perhaps off the tourist trail themselves; certainly under it - and the Opera Garnier, my spiritual home and favourite building in Paris. And I don't care if it is crawling with tourists. It's magnificent.

Much is dependent on outlook. One can find oneself immersed in a city, speaking the language, surrounded by locals, and still gain no insight into the society. Equally, one can queue for the Louvre with a thousand tourists and be motivated by a love for their extensive collection of pre-19th century art, ancient Babylonian decor, or Levantine religious sculpture. Is this wrong? Is it shallow to be concerned with anything beyond the local community, or to be primarily interested in other things? An interesting question.

I confess that I do own quite the tacky fridge magnet collection - but I still haven't been up the Eiffel Tower.

Things I Like (Somewhat Unexpectedly)

2010-03-24T03:12:00.002Z

- Choosing gifts for other people. I know we all say it's better to give than to receive, and I've always enjoyed the project and seeing people pleased, but I think I've definitely hit the point where it's much more fun to give.

- House. The TV show. I love Hugh Laurie, and always thought it was a quality show, but you would think that the last thing I would want to watch over the past few months would be a show about a grouchy, manipulative character with chronic pain and painkiller withdrawal. Nope. Enjoying it more than ever (maybe it's all the time I've been spending in hospital - makes it a much more natural and far less depressing setting)

- Lady Gaga. Seriously. I'm not really into the whole performance art bit, but since the (below) dance routine on SYTYCD and finding out that the 70s style rock ballad was hers, I've realised that I quite enjoy the electronic pop scene at the moment. In a true father-daughter synchronicity, he greeted me the morning after I finally downloaded both her albums with, "So, do you like Lady Gaga?"

- Pop music in general. I'm probably meant to sing jazz myself, and I would like to think that I want to write for theatrical settings, but I really enjoy and respect a good (note: good) pop song.

- My current hair colour. More than a year ago I decided to try brown, and I'm pretty sure that the couple of years during which I had psoriasis on my face have darkened my skin tone. I always kept it auburn-y (or occasionally dyed it gingery or had highlights), since the Burt genes demanded red hair, but I can actually wear a pretty dark brown these days without looking ill like I used to.

- Exercise. It's totally natural to me to be working on the cycling in my chair, the physio exercises and going for wee walks, and quite enjoyable. Two things I have realised: first, that a lot of my complaints about having to do any kind of organised exercise probably came from a lack of leisure time in which to do them, and two, when you're ill with time to kill, it's nice to have a project.

- Scrapbooking. I'm not saying I'm going to be a top interior designer within the year, but it's good to be working on something creative, even in assembly only.

- Handwriting. I've appreciated the instant logging aspect of computer-based research, but I genuinely enjoy the therapeutic side of the physical task. My Christmas cards, even, were a lot of fun rather than something I wanted to do because I thought it was worth the effort.

- Living with my parents, sort of (steady on, Burt). I didn't have a difficult adolescence at all (unless you count everything up to the age of three, which we tend to do), but I honestly thought that I had got past the stage where I could imagine moving back home and having it be constructive, or perhaps it would be more honest to say that there were disadvantages to my living in Stirling (away from social circles and so on) and combustible aspects to an intense living situation that were quite all right as long as Kathleen Got Her Space. And Internet Access. And Regular Holidays... I'm not saying I'm high maintenance... I will say, though, that over the first few months of my illness things went pretty smoothly, surprisingly, and we all managed (for the most part) to live in a one-bedroom flat without too many incidents. My father and I did, however, spend three weeks almost constantly in the same room, without leaving the house very often, and after a couple of days we were bickering like an intergenerational Odd Couple. And wittering not infrequently about flying squirrels, but that's a story for another blog. My mother and I took to watching Chess in Concert on a loop and communicating solely through Facebook. This, however, is really quite functional and sentimental for the Scottish family as personified in the Burts.

- Vegetarian food. This is in no way a flimsy pretext for telling you, dear reader, about my mother's yester-daftness when she walked into a butcher's in Castle Douglas and asked if they did vegetarian food. Okay, maybe a wee bit. But I go meat-free for a long time, these days, and don't usually miss it - only were I to remove it from some essentially meaty dish.

- Kind of mean reviews. I feel bad for this one. I would like to be a completely sincere and gentle person (with a healthy appreciation for good, native sarcasm, if such a thing were possible), but I keep giggling at things like this:

"Being the title character of “The Phantom of the Opera,” the most successful musical of all time, wasn’t enough for him. Oh, no. Like so many aging stars, he was determined to return... And he might as well have a “kick me” sign pasted to his backside."

From Ben Brantley's NY Times review of "Love Never Dies".

- Dieting. Short version is that my body is definitely changing the way it does business. Or processing, rather (which used to be quite dysfunctional). This may mean that I have to wave bye-bye to my automatic low cholesterol but it does mean that the reward for my eating plan is the more normal-person experience of the weight falling off at my calorie intake. As long as that keeps going... and while I'm pretty much just sitting around, which is the really weird part.

- My thesis. Okay, this isn't exactly surprising, since everyone has known for some time that I tend to view the world through a biblical and ritual lens, but right before I got ill I finally felt I'd had a breakthrough in terms of actually being able to put one word after another and write the thing. After all, it's not much use knowing a lot about the issues if there's not a tangible output, and intellect alone does not the doctorate make. I've had a real problem with tangents the whole way through, since I'm generally quite insecure about bits I may have missed and avenues I have not explored. However, I feel that I know what it is I need to do to get from here to there, so to speak (does anyone actually talk like that?) and my enthusiasm for the actual process, as opposed to the topic, is back with a vengeance. Now to stop myself nodding off every time I try to read a book...

- Academia. Again, this both is and isn't surprising. Over the past year or so I've been quite resistant to the idea of an academic career, partly out of a sense of inadequacy and inexperience and partly for practical reasons - i.e. with my medical condition it would be hard for me to have that kind of international mobility to follow a career path as a priority, since I'm really dependant on the kind of system we have in this country. Following the employment opportunities to an insurance-based system with a pre-existing condition just wouldn't work. But putting that on one side, I've had a lot of time to think over recent months about how much I have enjoyed the teaching, as well as the research, and am a bit more laid-back and realistic in my goals. I may not be about to cry at the thought of not lecturing and going to conferences, but I would like to end up using my specialist experience in a somewhat specialised environment, if possible.

- Travel brochures. Travel is a given, but at one time the thought of sitting around reading about exciting places while being stuck in a chair and housebound would have horrified me. However, they have been a great source of entertainment and excitement as well as giving me food for thought in how (assuming a certain level of recovery) I might think of developing my travel desires.
Top of the list: Syria (permanently), Morocco (ditto), Spain (ditto to the ditto), China (the bits I haven't seen), Philippines (new), Mexico (returning to the list), Cuba, Brazil, Tunisia, Vietnam.
Usual suspects temporarily deleted due to difficulty of access to particular interests in current condition: France (sigh), Poland, Egypt, Israel, Hong Kong, Peru, Tanzania. Morocco should probably be among them, but there would still be lots that would be accessible, and I just couldn't bear it...

- Colour. From someone who is redecorating her bedroom in black and white, I'm falling in love with colour again. Lots of colour. Everywhere. I will probably focus on three colourschemes when I eventually have a place of my own: 1. black and white, 2. crimson with dark wood, 3. a riot of colour. I'm all about the sensory experience in that respect. And I've been watching a lot of Ugly Betty. I could move into that show.

- Spanish. It's not surprising that I'm into languages and I've studied Spanish before, but not really thought about it for a few years. German is very natural to me but the romance languages never quite clicked with my brain in the same way. Even now, French takes a couple of days in France to truly warm up and be easy for me. However, after making a lot of headway with French in the past couple of years, and getting over the difficult building-block stage with Italian, I have returned to Spanish on the grounds that it needed to be revised from scratch, a lot of grammar and vocab is probably dormant in my slightly frazzled brain, and it's definitely one of the most useful languages in the world where travel is concerned, probably at least on a par with Arabic and French (and English, of course). I've been making a concerted effort to transform my Castilian Spanish ("c" = "th") into Latin American Spanish for that very reason. Not only is that coming quite naturally - and it never did before - but things I don't remember ever learning before are flooding into my brain and sticking, probably as a result of intervening French and Italian. Fabulous.

- Singing in public. I'm hooked. I get terrible nerves, but oh, the adrenaline rush. I blame Whitney. She started it... then Meg demanded crooning... then John gave me an opportunity and his impeccable musical taste.

- Having friends all over the world. Now, that's not to say that there are disadvantages, such as having been taken in so warmly by Whitney's family and not having the opportunity to see them for more than three years now due to my illness in November. Or my former neighbour and frequent wake-up call Allison all the way over in Denver. Or not being able to see Whitney in Evita. Or having my faithful burger buddy (and fellow student of the Dead Sea Scrolls), Narges, disappear into the Yukon. Or having Shawna and Jeremiah, two of my very best friends and two of the nicest and most caring people ever in Boston. But I feel very blessed to have all these people still in my life, despite the distance, and we have Facebook so I could have a good long chat with Narges on my wall on my birthday. Jeremiah came back for a visit and he and Danny made me a nostalgic meal of red pesto and pasta. I spoke to Shawna on Skype fairly recently. Whitney and I are never going to get rid of each other. Meg has been so constant in her phone calls and support, while starting a major job and getting her thesis finished. I really owe a great number of people a great deal of thanks for the prayers and messages of support (especially on my wall on facebook) over the past few months, and in many ways the online community has been every bit as real as having you all around me. The post office still sends the Christmas cards, the internet does the rest, and I feel like there are so many great friends within reach, even if months pass between emails, and so many reunions to come. Also, there will be visiting.

- Making new friends. I remember when Whitney left and I (being an introvert) was so socially exhausted from the beginning of the PhD that I struggled to make the effort to get to know all the new people in my programme. Of course, it was worth it, but I've always found the process quite tiring and costly. Not so these days, it seems. I've really been enjoying meeting people, even those who are only here for a year (after all, Whitney was one of them). I'm not only interested in people, but have lost that insecurity that would have stopped me asking questions and probably made me look a bit self-obsessed (moi? Never!). And not just friends - nurses, phlebotomists, physiotherapists, assistants, electricians, estate agents, waiters, IT technicians, librarians... all sorts of people with whom I have had cause to interact over the past few months have borne the full force of my enthusiasm and fellowship. It's not safe to be around Fife any more.

- Teenage things. It's probably a bit late to start getting into the 'scene', but I think the combination of hanging out with younger theatre enthusiasts and teaching teenagers got under my skin. I love the upcoming generation and get quite defensive of them - the lingo (though I feel I'm probably too old to start yelling "Dead Sea Scrolls FTW!!!1!1" in a seminar), the fashion (I've readily adopted turquoise nail varnish), the music that, sadly, is new to them but takes me back to the 80s... Well, I've decided to buy green eyeliner, hang out in the shopping centre with a friend, and hit Primark on Thursday.

That is all.

Music in Pain #2: Hold your own, know your name

2010-03-08T14:12:00.000Z

Details in the Fabric - Jason Mraz feat. James Morrison

This has been a very comforting song since last April, and has calmed me down and got me to sleep when things have been really bleak and/or painful.

At one point I was literally going to sleep and waking up with this song.

"Calm down,
Deep breaths,
And get yourself dressed"

"Hang on,
Help is on the way,
Stay strong,
I'm doing everything"

Speechless - A Dance Obsession Continues

2010-02-18T01:22:00.000Z

While dance may sound like an odd thing to fixate upon during a time of unsual immobility, I got ill the week that Strictly Come Dancing started, and am very happy to say that (as much as my slight obsession with it sustained me), by the time we got to the final I could see definite improvements, and it was a fantastic way to track how things were progressing without counting the days.

Being a bit bereft after it was over, I turned (not too optimistically, I have to admit) to So you Think You Can Dance - and loved it! Especially the contemporary routines and I'm so glad to see great choreography being showcase and acknowledged so prominently.

My favourite dance of the series was this magnificent contemporary piece, and everyone else seemed to agree as it was the most requested to be reprised in the final last Friday.

Music in Pain #1: Come Home (From Paris)

2010-02-15T13:35:00.006Z

I thought I'd revive my blogging habits (for fun, rather than the Very Serious Update) by going through a few songs that accompanied me during various stages of my illness. From last spring I had difficulty sleeping with pain and anxiety (sometimes worse than others) so I spent a lot of hours listening to music in the dark on my iPod, and eventually trained myself to go to sleep when I listened to a playlist marked, "sleepy music".

A One Republic song that SA cast members performed in a cabaret entered YouTubeLand a couple of days after I arrived in Paris, and it was stuck in my head while I was going through the fun and the trauma of that period! I found it unusually reassuring and calming, and probably should have let its message - "Come Home" - penetrate earlier. At the time I felt it was just torture, as I wanted to enjoy being in Paris but just wanted to go home, and my head was chanting, "Come home, come home" at me. Still, it worked out in the end.

Specifically, this version

Bury the Pain

2010-01-20T23:08:00.001Z

Things are looking up. All signs are positive. My physiotherapist only wants to see me once more. There's no permanent joint damage - so all signs indicate, though my left knee might be a point of debate - and, all personal feeling to the contrary, this will have been a short flare-up (less than six months) and has only been coming on two years, which, added to my appealling and eyelash-fluttering youth, is a good sign in favour of a good recovery. My side-effects could have been much worse, given the somewhat sledgehammer-ish medication regime in its high dose. I've found my stick helpful, but it hasn't led to my becoming dependent on it, nor to any further problems in that arm and hand (already the worse affected), and as my legs have strengthened a bit I've naturally moved on from total dependence. I was concerned about moving from having constant company to getting my own space back, but that has felt right at the appropriate point. I've been complimented on my positivity and seem to be recovering far more quickly than might have been expected given the severity of my illness. Yes, I'll probably be on medication the rest of my life and can expect another few flare-ups, but there's no reason I have to have another one like this - it came on over several months and with no effective medication in my system.

I've learned some important lessons about how generous certain people can be with their time and care when a friend has problems, and hope that I live up to their example. I've learned how poorly the world at large deals with disability and how grudging or incompetent the access measures can be - something I hope to be able to use in future. I've also learned some difficult lessons about how my work community approaches life, and both the things I miss about being a part of that while I'm ill and the things that aren't necessarily healthy to begin with. I've discovered I'm far more motivated than I gave myself credit for. (I also discovered that some sentences sound less silly if you just surrender and end them with a preposition.)

I can't tell you how lost I was feeling around the middle of last year. Having come through a period of difficutly with my thesis and having everything snap into place at the crisis point, I was slightly disorientated to find myself feeling very unlike myself. I had the arthritis coming on over at least the past couple of years, probably longer, and had dropped my hobbies and interests one by one in favour of getting by in the essentials. Suddenly I began to feel like I couldn't even cope with them - focusing on the whole work-emotional crisis had caused me to miss a lot of the physical deterioration - and I had a bit of a crisis of self-worth. I remembered the things that I used to like about myself - creativity, integrity, generosity, humour - and I couldn't see any of them. I didn't really recognise people reacting to me as if I possessed any of those talents and, quite honestly, I had begun to depend of my own sense of contribution or achievement for my feelings of self-worth. This perhaps sounds all very anti-spiritual and daft, but I'm a doer and a facilitator who didn't really feel like I was doing anything and felt that I was getting in everybody's way!

One positive aspect of becoming ill, apart from reaching the necessary crisis point with my health where I had permission to be ill and the illness was quite unambiguous, was the need to stop short and to leave my usual routines and circles. Meeting with endless cycles of GPs, specialists and other medical/social work professionals allowed me to observe how all these new people interacted with me, which was - quelle surprise - pretty much like they'd just met a creative, genuine, generous, funny person. So she says, modestly. But it was quite a surprise. Sometimes we just find ourselves in situations where the things that we value are at odds with general demand. I had been reduced to my thesis, which focuses on a particular contribution to particular people, so of course I didn't feel like I was living up to my potential in other areas. These areas were simply not part of the criteria.

I say all of this because I came to this realisation a couple of months ago, and it really needs to be recorded at this point. I don't want to forget how horrendous and traumatic it was to spend those first six weeks of the flare-up in what was close to all-consuming pain. I feel it's actually done good in my life, but when I began to see this while still in the extreme and unstable phase, I would have traded in the insight not to be in pain, and that's something that's important to remember. It's important to remember that net gain is no real, substantive comfort from a position of pain, and that is something I am beginning to read into the Bible as I reflect on suffering and illness in that period, without modern pain relief and without my prognosis, which just fifteen or twenty years ago would have been incapacity and disfigurement rather than recovery.

I find myself coming out of the really painful phase, slowly, and beginning to do some things for myself again. I'm not back to the way I was before the flare-up, nor do I want to be. Up to this point I was comparing, as it was reassuring to see the pain level lower to degrees that I could correspond to events last year, and get a sense of how far off "normal" I was. It's helped to give me a realistic picture of how things are actually moving, as it has not been possible to discern that from physical abilities alone for some weeks. Things are very different at this end, however. I am no longer going to run myself into the ground comparing myself to "normal" people or berating myself for my inability to keep up. I have helpers coming in several times a week and I will not be trying to keep house and work and have a life and run people to the airport every five minutes. I just can't, and that's something I have to accept.

Similarly, I find that it is no longer appropriate to gauge my progress in relation to pain. It has accomplished a great spiritual work in me, but it is no longer the most prominent feature of every minute and I do not want to treat it, still, as the defining factor.

Therefore I recognise the end of the period of extreme pain, and appreciate that, even if it takes some other things with it.

It's an end...

...to expecting pain every day. It hurts. Frequently it twinges. But pain is something else.
...to feeling culpable for or complicit in my illness. It's an autoimmune disease that strikes randomly.
...to feeling inferior for my incapacity.
...to fears that I have nothing to contribute.
...to wondering where my personality went.
...to draining pasta, lifting heavy bags, exhausting ceilidh dancing, and to a hundred other things I can - or should - never do again. That one's a real loss.
...to my fear of the Oxford comma (not really to do with the pain, more the previous sentence)
...to fortnightly blood tests (it will be monthly for the rest of my life, possibly, but it's an improvement)
...to sleeping 11pm-11am
...to taking the phone to bed and wondering whether I'll be able to move in the morning
...to trying to keep up with other people's theses. I'm writing mine!
...to that panicky feeling when someone else doesn't approve of me - I can survive a lot!
...to a fear of childbirth (word on the arthritic street is that it's less painful, and doesn't last six months - not currently a priority, but useful to bring up at parties)
...to taking ten showers a day
...to not leaving the house for weeks
...to any suggestion of boredom in the supermarket - it's a cave of wonders!
...to any reservations about using a prayer book
...to privacy. A lot. Oh well.
...to my Stirling bedroom that I decorated when I was 14. I need a new bed, and a sick girl needs a project.
...to feeling crammed in by competing demands. I'm going to try to be realistic and gentle to myself.
...to having a month-by-month plan for 2010. New one: get better.

So there you go. I bid farewell to the extreme pain. May people know it was here by its legacy.

(And how ironic that I write this on an ouchie day.)

New hair #2

2010-01-20T22:10:00.000Z

A better picture...

New hair!

2009-12-20T15:07:00.000Z

Flare Up!

2009-12-18T01:10:00.000Z

I must confess that I had been meaning to a few weeks now to write a proper blog entry explaining some of the dramatic happenings of the past few weeks. Finally, having thoroughly trained the dictation software, I decided I might as well get on with it! The following is something I have been meaning to post for a while, and while I have far from completed or filled out the story, I didn't want to sit on it any longer!

Almost 3 months ago, I was aware that my arthritis had been getting worse, but I had no idea how bad things were about to get. On the Tuesday of that week in September I had seen my doctor and for the first time she and I had discussed the pain aspect of the arthritis. I went away with a prescription for painkillers. Not dramatically powerful painkillers, but still over-the-counter drugs on prescription so that I didn't have to keep buying them in small quantities. Looking back, I honestly can't believe that this was the first time that we had discussed pain in more than a year of me having this condition - I had accepted a certain level of pain as part of the condition, when what doctors have been saying to me ever since is that I didn't have to be heroic, and I don't have to accept pain!

I had had a bad day that day, but after the appointments. I went on to the supermarket I went about the rest of my day and went home thinking I would have a nap before the evening. When I woke up after sleeping for two hours, I was paralysed and shaking from pain. I was unable to move my hands a few inches to turn off my alarm clock, which as you can imagine was extremely annoying! In all seriousness, I was concerned by the level of pain I was experiencing and on a more practical note, was slightly concerned that I needed to go to the toilet! After one hour, I managed to get out of bed, and having got to my feet were terrified of sitting down again. I had never experienced that kind of pain in my life. I watched TV until the early hours of the morning and I was able to go back to sleep at the pain having subsided somewhat. From that night, until now I've been suffering from an arthritic flareup that the doctors have classed as severe

I moved swiftly up the painkiller scale until I reached the point where, the only option was to continue with periodic relief or to go on to morphine-based painkillers, which would require a hospital supervision. I chose to stay at home with the lower level of painkillers not because I was heroic, but because I was convinced that I would be completely bored in hospital! At least at home, I had a custom-built chair, a walk-in shower, a bed at a reasonable level, and by this time, the occupational therapist had given me several mobility aids at home. That particular week when something like this: Monday: incredible pain. Tuesday: arts and crafts, discuss hospitalisation with doctor. Wednesday: go to college welcome reception and give joint presentation. Thursday: discuss morphine with doctor. Crazy! However, I did it somehow.

At this point, finally, my third set of anti-inflammatory drugs seemed to agree with me, and things improved slightly after that. Through the first four weeks of this flareup, things changed from hour to hour. After the change of anti-inflammatory drugs. I found that I was able to achieve some kind of stability, until I saw the rheumatologist. The rheumatologist started me on disease modifying drugs the same as those used in some types of chemotherapy for cancer, of which I am having to take a very high dose once a week.

Through this whole period. My parents had to stay overnight, as I was unable to get myself out of bed, especially in the early stages and need a lot of help. In practical ways. Three months on, I still need a lot of parental support and one of the contributing factors for all of us is that they have not been able to take me to Stirling, even for brief respite as we have high stairs in the house. Now occupational therapy in Stirling is on the case and they are providing a stairlift, as well as a few other aids for the house there.

Trying to condense into a few paragraphs, how painful these last few months have been is difficult, because nothing I can say can capture the level of pain involved in this flareup, even to recall that to myself. It also fails to do justice to the level of help I have needed, in practical terms, and the importance that contact and your messages of encouragement and prayer have had to my general well-being. I want to explore further - not right now - the impact of the flareup, having covered the bare facts, as I don't want to downplay the traumatic and downright painful nature of the whole experience. However, I feel it has been an incredibly important period in my life, as an education in illness and vulnerability as well as spiritually, personally and (perhaps surprisingly) academically. If you can cope with that many adverbs, stay tuned.

Bearing Up

2009-11-01T12:37:00.000Z

Having got quite a bit worse over the last few weeks - the saga is coming in a separate post - I've had occasion to reflect on how we cope with chronic illnesses and acute pain, and how others try to help. I don't wish to sound ungrateful, and I don't want to be mistaken for having a faint theology, but I strongly believe that a bit of compassion and awareness must be used when being pastoral towards the ill.

There's a lot of guilt associated with faith for a lot of people, I think, especially these days when there is such pressure (both in and outwith the church) to excel in certain areas as a sign of having a successful life and being a "together" person. I can't think of a time in history when society has had such an inaccurate self-image, being able to package and market itself regardless of reality. Accordingly, few of our Western societies really understand illness and death as it is hidden, and we are not exposed to its realities on a daily basis.

Chronic illness can be a bit of a taboo in the church. I've always found faith and prayer to be a point of making sense of reality and interaction with what I see in the world, so I can't fully understand why so many people try to make the world conform to a received image of it. However, I can now say with some confidence that many do struggle to understand chronic illness - if God is faithful, how can suffering continue right in front of us? - even as they dismiss the so-called "problem" of suffering as a theological issue. An acute period of discomfort or a dramatic but finite critical illness is fine; chronic illness, lasting for years with flare-ups persisting for months at a time, is taken as a challenge to a (fictional) promise that Christians will have it easy. It's not scriptural; Jesus never promised you a rose garden. In fact, Christians were guaranteed suffering beyond that which they would experience having never come to faith. In our minds, this has become limited to suffering inflicted by the misbehaviour of others, when I see no reason why we should not also suffer because we live on a planet riddled with disease and illness. Yet we have become prey to a marketed lifestyle expecting to see the fruits of the spirit in various forms of success, whether this is in the form of financial success or familial stability. We follow a messiah who poured himself out for others, but we would rather not go the extra mile to give of our time and energies to others if it means we might be caught with a cobweb in our bathroom corner.

An outward appearance of success is marketed to us as an excellent form of evangelism; we can see how twisted this is when we find out that some preachers are advocating cosmetic surgery for women so that the heathens will see how much prettier Christian women are and want to be just like them, apparently not making the distinction between the external and the spirituality within. A similar kind of imbalance can be seen in those who are dedicated to theology but are so convicted of their calling to mental dedication that they would not notice their granny falling over three feet away.

Quite often this inability to make sense of someone else's chronic illnes (within a distorted frame of reference) spills over into a "blame-the-victim" mentality - your outward appearance and circumstances must reflect the state of your Christian life, so (a) you must have brought this on yourself, and (b) there's an obvious way out if you would only repent. Sometimes a "compassionate" version of this comes from those who wish to pray. I have found prayer (including, or especially, those of others) to be a great support and very real help. But there is a difference between those who have generously prayed for God's will and my ability to deal with it than the people who tried to sit me in a chair so that they could pray for healing, making clear that bringing the faith to make me better was my responsibility, with the unspoken assumption that I was suffering because I had not thought to ask God before, or had not had enough faith to preempt my autoimmune flare-up. Multiply everything by ten for mental health.

I don't mean to suggest that when people react unfortunately that it is in an attempt to beat down the sick - quite the reverse, usually. But I do think that these reactions are misguided and misdirected, though well-meaning, as much as those who suggest that everything can be cured with superfoods, a different sleep pattern or (how I hate this one) giving up bread and dairy - neither of which I eat, normally!

I've had great support from far-flung people - phone calls from Whitney, lots of powerful prayer and concern from all my favourite Whitney-connected people, phone calls from Meg, lots of messages with great empathy from Tanya, who's recovering herself - and a couple of regular visitors in St Andrews - Laura-Claire and Alexis barely missing each other during the week, with great counselling and solidarity, and Mary popping up on gmail constantly and in person every weekend, to entertain us! My GP has been wonderful, even phoning to check up on me and to wish me luck before I saw the consultant. And yes, my parents have been here constantly, now being halfway through their eighth week as carers. We're all going a bit bonkers.

I'll give you the whole saga later. However, returning to the guilt issue, I wanted to bring up one verse of Scripture that, from discussing it with others who have experienced long-term illness, elicits guilt like no other. It's a perfect example of the perils of caring for the chronically ill, as we have enough going on in our heads that you never know how it's going to be received! This isn't exactly fair for others, but it does illustrate that chronic illness is a psychological minefield, and care is advised. Enter pastoral region at own risk...

Oft quoted at the chronically is the maxim, "God never tests you beyond what you are able to bear." What we hear is, "You're struggling? Sign of weakness, you know. You should be upbeat. Life and soul..." First of all, that's not necessarily the intention of those offering the advice (though it can be), but, as I said before - GUILT! Part of it is the expectation that "bearing up" is to be able to continue as normal. I think those who feel badly because of this verse should remember that still being conscious with the ability to process language can, for some situations, be "doing quite well". Second, this is the actual translation of 1 Cor 10:13:

No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

Thus, not quite the same situation. I've learned a lot from this flare-up, which I hope is passing, and one of the things I have learned is that it's really quite astounding what the human body and mind can bear. I hope there's a use for all this accumulated knowledge.

New Stages

2009-09-21T10:53:00.000+01:00

I'm excited about the arrival of the new people this week. Having been a bit out of the loop this year I can't wait to meet the incoming students and feel really optimistic about all this year's committee has planned. Sounds like a good social year.

Some of us natives are planning a "Welcome to Scotland" event - our feeling is that there have been some tensions in the town recently (from our perspective, a weariness about constant complaints about what we don't do/have without recognition of what might happen/be offered in its stead) and we want to preempt any fears that the newcomers are not welcome by (a) giving a sense of welcome and orientation not just to St Andrews, but to Scottish culture which may not always be apparent in this idiosyncratic place and (b) invite people to enjoy all Scotland has to offer and let them know that we are available and excited to share!

In the meantime, some developments in my illness have been a bit concerning. I went for a nap on Wednesday night and woke up paralysed and shaking in pain for a whole hour until I could move. For the past few days I've been in a lot of pain, my left ankle and foot have been swollen (it looks, and is beginning to feel, like a sprain though it is not) and I can't be left alone at night as I am unable to get in and out of bed without a lot of help. I'm really hoping that this is a dip and I'll be a bit better and more mobile by the end of the week, in time for the barbecue and those sorts of events.

A Week On...

2009-09-07T18:29:00.002+01:00

Well, frankly, given how frequently I have posted of late, a gap of one week is hardly serious.

Have been reflecting on two things:

1. I can understand that Leibniz biscuits are only arbitrarily named after the eponymous philosopher. What I can't understand is why they don't advertise themselves as, "The best of all possible biscuits."

2. Though I am not quite "weak and heavy-laden", when one is weak one does not have to be quite moderately laden before one feels that the universe is out to get one.

Still plodding along. Feeling a bit lonely and realising how many key people have left recently or are currently away or busy, but am coping.

The prodigal returns - and final Paris blog

2009-09-01T21:00:00.021+01:00

Greetings, readers!

Many of you will know that I went to Paris again, to study in the summer programme for students of French. Many of those people will also know that I came home after thirteen days and just four classes. When I went to Paris, my mobility was severely limited. I was using a toilet frame (just as it sounds - a frame around the toilet to help with sitting and standing) and a helping hand (thing for picking things up). I had also ordered a special custom chair. Since this has been getting steadily but slowly worse over a number of months, I must admit that I was quite shocked to see the difference between Paris last year (when I was very aware of these problems starting) and this summer. I wasn't prepared for the level of difficulty, even getting from bed to the bathroom in an unfamiliar environment, and the constant pain. For the first time, I appreciated how this condition could have as great an impact, in chronic terms, on the ability to function intellectually in class. In Paris, I couldn't manage either the pain or the mobility, and I lacked the mental resources just to cope. As much as I appreciated the interest and concern of those around me, no one could make the situation tenable. I agonised over the decision, not wanting to quit, but eventually I realised that things were getting worse. I also came to terms with the decision to leave as a positive move and took a reality check by letting myself see that I didn't have anything to prove after "doing" Paris already when it was busier, my French wasn't as good, practicalities were not so familiar and I hadn't studied in that way before.

Even though, I had to spend most of the last few days doing very little, I managed a few things of interest before getting on the plane! As you will see in the following blog:

6. Final visits and comfort tourism

Just a thought, on the plane front: who thinks it's a good idea to combine the "special assistance" groups into one catch-all category which leaves people tottering on crutches sharing the same confined space with thirty under-napped under-fives freshly wound up from Disneyland? Show of hands. Anyone?

In a very "don't cry for me, Argentina" way, I would like to say that, although I had to come home early, I have no regrets about returning - life in Paris was becoming unsustainable - but equally, I had the chance to revisit some old haunts, plug up a few gaps in my Parisian experience, and discover a few new places before returning home. Obviously, much of the trip was physically and emotionally gruelling, but if nothing else (and there were several something-elses) it gave me a very vivid picture of just how limited I had become over the past year, comparing like with like. This has led to very clear communication with my doctor (who is just wonderful) and me getting treatment quickly, as well as a referral to rheumatology. I have a clear diagnosis of psoriatic arthropathy, as well as having an X-ray that shows absolutely no permanent damage so far, both of which are reassuring under the circumstances. There is every chance that I could return to a perfectly normal level of mobility, the way things stand, and I am getting very good care now.

As a side note, I really like Kings of Leon, whom I've just discovered.

That random note just about wraps things up for this typically chaotic return to blogging, post-Paris.

One last thing? Here are my two photo albums from Paris, which have some additional commentary.

Paris album one ---- Paris album two

Paris Blogging so far - NOTE #5 added!

2009-08-04T19:05:00.006+01:00

Just to say I've blogged a couple more times and have now added photos to the earlier posts. So here is the entire saga so far:

1. Nothing Ventured, No One Pained
2. A very not-like-the-way-Cliff-did-it summer holiday
3. The curious cat was a victim of drowning; or, an illustrated lesson in button-pressing
4. LOST (in France, sans polar bear)
5. Chilling, in every sense but the literal

Nope, it's not going to be something every day this year, but that's because I'm a bit more worn out, a bit sore and I've also got more modest ambitions as far as sightseeing goes. This year I also have work with me so I'm taking things at an easy pace.

(I confess it's nice to have something to blog about, as I've been missing it while keen not to turn it into a source of guilt or stress)

Paris blogging #2

2009-08-01T17:40:00.002+01:00

Post two of the blog, in which Kathleen airs her random historical knowledge and impresses with her knowledge of fruit.

Paris blogging begins!

2009-07-29T17:32:00.001+01:00

Oh yes, I am in Paris again! And with the greater challenge of time management comes greater organisation, with which comes blogging.

First post here. May be less detailed this year, but I want to record it all!

Biblical Literacy

2009-07-15T12:37:00.002+01:00

Blog post coming soon (believe it or not, I've been blogging in a dedicated fashion lately - I just haven't had all that much to blog about unless purity measures following childbirth are of wide interest).

In the meantime, I wanted to note this essay (Whose Bible? Anyone's?) by Prof Philip R Davies on the Bib. Interp. website on biblical literacy which is really worth reading and with which I agree wholeheartedly. Prof Davies has written a great deal on my sort of subject, and his book on the Damascus Document has been very influential on my research.

Londonderry Hulk

2009-06-24T13:34:00.005+01:00

Back in April, a dear departed friend (departed home to East Tennessee, not dead) once tried to write a song while under the influence of fermented products. He was very systematic and wrote a list of things he felt should be included in a great song, referring to himself as "the Appalachian Robert Burns". These included general requirements - a city (Chattanooga), a plant (ivy), a colour (green), an amphibian (toad) - as well as death, mopeds and the scholar Walter Bruggeman. This is what he came up with:

In the green green hills of chattanooga...
i was riding down the interstate on my moped...
when i had a mishap and broke my clavicle..
and dear Kathleen lay dead.

I am the incredible Hulk
Almost as green as the ivy of Chattanooga
I find joy in flexing my muscles - No wait, scratch that -
A wee town in the southland
Not to far from the seminary of Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann...

Then he asked me to mould it and complete it, while he drifted in and out. So, preserving as much of the original as possible, including my untimely death, here's the song, to the tune of Londonderry Air (Danny Boy). The first couple of verses were a communal effort at the party, mostly between Tina and me, though the whale is Meg's. Tina is responsible for my gory death.

If you're curious about the sausage roll reference, it comes from a day trip when three of us were stuck in traffic in Aberdeen and he mused from the back seat that maybe he could get a date with a local by luring pretty girls into the car using our Morrisons own brand sausage rolls. As good a reason for using child lock as I have ever encountered.

In the green hills surrounding Chattanooga
I like to speed and on my moped ride
When I espied a Tennessee beluga
I hit a cyclist - dear Kathleen - she died.
Her innards spilled were lying on the roadside
the bird and toads, they came and had their fill
They flew away, well, hopped more, on the toad side
With something green emerging from my clavicle..

As I came round my muscles tore my vestments
And all at once the change to Hulk began
I felt an urge for guidance on Old Testament
And went to visit Walter Brueggemann
It brought me joy, I thought I looked like Moses
For when I flexed my muscles they were fine
But to my shame, I should have brought him roses
Alas, I found my welcome far less than divine.

And now the mem'ry brings me so much agony
I thought we'd talk of prophets over tea
He disagreed; he found me kind of dragon-y
I was escorted off his property.
Out in the rain I found my soul was beckoning
So as I walked the roads of Tennessee
There in my brain I sought a Hulk-like reckoning
Of course, the only course: to do a PhD.

I moved to Scotland, where they get creative
I read my books, to see what would unfold
With sausage rolls, I entertained the natives
And I declared, "It's beautiful, but cold."
Well, four years passed, I read a lot on Hegel
Loved Schleiermacher, plus some guy called Ched
Ate chicken bakes, occasion'lly a bagel
And felt no guilt – NO GUILT – that poor Kathleen was dead.

Friendly Fire

2009-06-15T21:01:00.004+01:00

Still busy. Only now I'm writing about childbirth and pigeons.

My friend Alissa has her viva tomorrow, Meg leaves in a month, Jeremiah and Shawna have left - all change around here. Makes for strange times and odd social schedules.

I'm trying not to listen to the voices in my head. This has been bothering me for some time now, that all the internal voices that criticise and second-guess are real voices, and voices from the church: people I have known, still know and those I have never met but who make their views very clear. I'm coming to terms with the fact that doing anything active in the Christian world, even existing as a Christian, draws fire from inside. Add a thick layer of academia, and you discover a whole new layer of people who don't rate your conclusions and have no idea why you value your topics of interest so much.

It's easy to listen to the voices. No one can fill you with self-loathing like a friend, and no one can demean you like those you respect! I hold to my combination of reason and emotion; to be rational is not to dismiss or ignore emotion, but to carefully consider the relationship between perception and reality. It helps.

In the end, I need to do what I'm here for and not seek to control its fallout. The world will have to deal with me, and I with it: I will be sorry if I offend anyone; I value people and my beliefs will be both sincerely held and the product of much prayer and thought.

What can we do beyond that?

Happy Birthday, Meg!

2009-05-30T16:04:00.002+01:00

Ah, Meg. Soon to be gone from our hearts, but never leaving our town.

Or should that be the other way around?

In any case, a happy birthday to Meg who is 29, um, again.

Praise the Presbyterians!

2009-05-23T23:00:00.002+01:00

Those of us in the C of S pose a threat to our own denomination in two ways:

1. We are, practically by definition, Scots, and often the most dour, pessimistic ones.

2. There are times when all we seem to do is complain about our CofS upbringing, how we were traumatised by excessive duck-duck-goose, being crushed by the Christmas tree during the Sunday School nativity play, etc.

So I merely note, for posterity, that I am very happy with the CofS right now and how they have handled some difficult debates in this General Assembly decisively, with integrity and authenticity.

Immobile

2009-05-19T23:01:00.009+01:00

I feel like I'm supposed to come out with some great analogy or revelation of a hidden purpose to validate how I feel. That's what I'd usually do. Find some larger meaning. I don't like to moan publicly, but lately it's been bothering me more that I don't when, were I less self-critical, I might think I had reason. And, as I noticed lately, even when you're issuing a cry for help, it doesn't mean the people to whom you are saying "help" in a loud voice actually pay any attention. Life is a bit challenging at the moment, and sometimes, I hate bits of my day.

I hate that any emotional stress translates itself into physical pain. I hate that I can sit for half an hour after I decide to go to bed and put off movement because I know I will be stiff and sore. I hate that I feel I'm living this narrow life, sitting in chairs when I'm supposed to be doing things that young people can do. I hate looking at old pictures of me with thick hair, since so much of it has gone with the psoriasis. I hate that my skin is aging more rapidly than it should. I hate carrying a phone around with me to the toilet. I hate having to think about what I can and can't do. I hate slowing people down and explaining why going down stairs takes me so long. I really can't stand any more platitudes or glib Bible verses that are supposed to help in illness - I know the drill, but when I am still hauling myself up and down staircases one step at a time, it feels like a judgement on a hypothetical lack of faith that hasn't left me miraculously healed. I hate that I'm such a wimp about it.

I'm sick of being sore, and I'm sick of saying I'm sick of being sore. I feel boring on the subject.

It never helps when the work isn't going well, or I don't feel I'm progressing. I've been feeling stuck. I've put three years in so far, and you wouldn't know it. I read things I wrote only a few months ago and it's like I had forgotten that I knew some of the words I pulled out to express concepts precisely. It's times like these that I don't feel particularly talented. I'm a black hole into which money disappears, and not much seems to be coming out.

I used to be able to reassure myself that I had other skills - creatively, in particular - but I haven't felt inspired in some time. I don't have the time and I don't have much energy to put into it. I don't even enjoy it - it reminds me of how easily I used to be able to do it. I don't feel much use to anyone else and I don't have a sense of direction or purpose.

So, in conclusion, I don't just feel like a waste of space; I feel like a self-pitying waste of space. It's a cycle.

The reality is, none of these thoughts are invalid. They are, more or less, accurate. What fluctuates is my ability to cope with the above as a few of the defining features of my current life. When I'm fairly positive I can cope, but when difficulties arise, I'm tired or I'm working too hard, everything kind of crumbles.

New Post Coming Soon!

2009-05-08T13:04:00.002+01:00

Honest! I haven't forgotten about blogging. I've just been working hard and not keeping too well. See you soon!

Ooh yeah, and open mic went really well and was fun. Hoping to do it again tonight, though I think I've got a cold coming on, so maestro John is coming over to rehearse and we'll see if I'm up to it.

Gone Quiet? -- An Ethical Interlude

2009-03-31T13:41:00.018+01:00

Photo: the Divinity school, Oxford.

Didn't mean to go all silent on you there. Still have emails to answer (shame!) and thank you letters to finish from my birthday, so don't feel bad, beloved blog-ees. Unless I owe you an email or a thank you letter, or both, in which case, sorry. Especially to those to whom I owe emails after you read my magnum opus (a 7, 500 word pre-final-edit article) on suicide, of all topics, before I went to London...

So I will soon be summarising the interesting bits of my trip on the travel blog, along with New York in all its freezing glory and the last little bit of Paris. But in my newfound preoccupation with having a life, I'm going to make an effort to pop up more often than I have this winter. Spring has sprung!

Probably singing at open mic this Friday. Whitney, I hold you personally responsible for this, with Meg a close second. Theme so far appears to be "songs with nonsensical lyrics" - if you think I'm kidding you should check out my set. Stage fright should kick in about tomorrow, I expect, but I have my parents' touching birthday present - "Overcoming Anxiety for Dummies" - to hand and I'm having a fantastic time working with the amazingly talented and musically informed John on the piano. Thankfully, he's the organiser of open mic night, so if he's willing to put me up there having heard me sing, I'll trust his judgement. Won't help the anxiety, though.

Interesting thoughts spring from the word "anxiety" - wee tangent being that I'm surprised the judgementalism that often accompanies the word, at least from Christians. We're not talking worry in the non-birds-of-the-air sense, i.e. wondering where the next meal is coming from or failing to trust that God has a plan (though, while we're on the subject, as mass starvation shows, it may not be a stupid question to ask - I often wonder why we try to tell people what God's plan is when history and observation suggest it might not be what we think it is). But I digress - I'm talking about anxiety in the clinical sense, where there are observable involuntary physiological reactions to certain situations, regardless of the "stress" level felt by "normal" people. I don't mean I'm worried about Friday, except for maybe being able to achieve something approximating breath support. I mean, and only mean, that I fully expect to start having odd shaking sensations, butterflies, shallow breathing and so forth, whether or not I am engaged in worry about the event, which I'm not, particularly. I've been thinking lately that I'm definitely called to do something with interpersonal ethics and mental health within the church. To go on having the vulnerable under attack presented in spiritual terms - well, that's too close to exactly what we should not be doing as Christians, to me, and strays into that area of cultural hegemony that I react against.

All the above, by way of getting to the point - I'm interested in the ethics of biblical interpretation. Now, I don't mean the ethics of the Bible - I mean, the kinds of presuppositions with which we begin our research or our exegesis and the lens through which we read and interpret the text, because we are, after all, constantly interpreting and reinterpreting in context, whether we think of ourselves as contextual or counter-cultural or wherever we may fall on the spectrum. Those of us who work in the historical context of the text are often surprised how many layers we need to peel back to find what a commentator is saying about the original events or the text itself. Okay, I'm starting from a very biblicist perspective, to the chagrin of the very underappreciated theologians by whom I am surrounded, but I absolutely think we need to consider all those disorganised thoughts that we bring when we do Bible study and how they affect our readings, especially where the text is ambiguous. Who are we trying to serve? What do we secretly want to see confirmed? Can we come to some level of self-awareness that allows us to continue our task well?

These questions, though not always phrased that way, are major concerns of biblical scholars is undertaking an academic task, especially in the post-modern era! Much has been made of them, are rightly so. Now, for the church, I think it is important to ask these questions about our own presuppositions before we start taking our ethics all willy-nilly from texts that we interpret without much thought, in many cases - to be motivated, not just out of a love of God and truth, but in concern for others. A love of God and truth will ask questions of inspiration and seek Spiritual guidance (capitalisation important, in this case), but that interpersonal consideration puts an ethical imperative before us to be honest in our readings and to consider the other. We cannot abdicate responsibility by hiding behind "guidance" when we're really just looking to stay comfortable and sidestep our accountability to one another. So I believe that it is crucial to truly examine our motives, not only in scholarship but in personal bible study and church groups. Are we really looking for fresh understanding or do we want to confirm our own beliefs? Do we want to be challenged, sometimes afflicted, by the Bible or do we want reassurance that we're doing all right, really?

When considered in relation to others, those with whom we interact and discuss the Bible, and if before we bring these concerns to the text we truly examine ourselves and ask for guidance on that, I think that's a bit healthier than being in danger of interpreting on our terms and using it as a buffer. I've said before that in the western Protestant tradition we forget that as much as sola scriptura is the favoured mantra, we, as all interpretative traditions before us, attach our interpretations and traditional interpretations to the text. Unlike groups that don't claim exclusive reliance on the Bible, it gets hard to distinguish the text from interpretation. A blunt instrument is still a blunt instrument, whatever you're trying to do with it. Those who question can be unfortunately dismissed as "stretching" the text, when it's only that they don't interpret in line with the received traditions. When we lay the interpretative debates on one side for a moment and concentrate on how we have imagined the text - whose Bible is it anyway? - and ask whether we are right or if we have misunderstood, we develop a sense of humility that would help our interactions with others.

We trust the Bible. We don't have to come saying, "I'm open to new insight, but I have no interest in changing my position on X, Y or Z." We don't have to feel defensive that someone might challenge our interpretation, and by extension us as people, because we are truly approaching the text with humility and integrity.

If we consider the potential effects of a reckless interpretative exercise on others, how can we fail to ask these simple questions? To do so seems like a very unchristian level of apathy to our fellow human beings. When we think about those "others" of various descriptions who may find themselves excluded in different readings - lepers, women, the environment - and hold ourselves accountable, I don't think we're really approaching the text with special interests, unless we approach the text with special interests. When what we're asking is, "Are our motives right?" and "Can I be confident that I haven't misunderstood?" I think we're on the right track.

We can also stop beating up the people with whom we disagree - the Christian life is a journey, not a package you install at your first pit stop.

Speak truth to power - and that goes for inside the church, too.

I've had a few really interesting and directive conversations with very clever people on these kinds of issues - friends who have recently finished their theses, for example, working to (if I may quote) "reclaim the ambiguity" of traditionally exclusive texts, or asking difficult questions as to how people can claim empathy and yet behave in an apathetic manner.

That's all from me, for now. More thoughts may spill from my brain in due course.

Twitterpated

2009-03-11T21:29:00.009Z

I'm back from London and a surprise day trip to Oxford, which was very enjoyable. I'll round up soon. It's my birthday tomorrow and I may be singing in public on Friday, so I've got a few little things on on top of the work going on in the meantime.

I find when I'm busy, these days I'm "micro-blogging" more than blogging, as I use Twitter. It gives you 140 characters in which to tell people what you're doing. If they want to know. On Facebook, they can comment, which leads to some very entertaining exchanges. My profile is here. I like to keep track of what I'm up to, but sometimes it's too much to sit down and write a few paragraphs. I also have a few emails I'd like to respond to from before my trip!

However, since this is how I like to share what I'm doing and feeling, I thought I would pull together a few of my updates to give those of you not on Twitter or facebook a sense of what's been going on (or not going on) in my head.

Kathleen is alarmed by the number of Americans who seem to have developed shortbread habits since she started firstfooting. And really wants to be in Paris. Again.

Kathleen oW OW OW OW OW! Don't go outside right this instant. (Hailstorm!)

Kathleen when she grows up would like to be Alan Bennett, Eddie Izzard or a cat.

Kathleen has a very neatly stocked fridge again after last night's cramming and shoehorning. It's like tetris with use-by dates.

Kathleen is invisible - someone just cut right in front of her in the queue in Waterstone's and tutted when she went to the newly opened till first.

Kathleen is never going to get finished, is never going to have any money, is never going to amount to anything, is never going to leave the house. (That was the low point to which I was referring in my recent blog)

Kathleen is an idiot. A complete idiot. (Comment from "supportive" friend? "Sweetie, you may be a kooky weirdo but you are never an idiot")

Kathleen is having an interesting day involving airports, Pilate's handwashing, carpet colours and not vomiting. (Comment from airport pick-up-ee? "Somehow I'm glad I was only involved in the airport bit")

Kathleen just had a very enjoyable five hour lunch. With a SLACKER!!! (It was Mariam, the layabout)

Kathleen should not have skipped breakfast before tutorials - especially on a day when she will be talking about the Marcian sandwich.

Kathleen is a squeaky chew toy that is worth less than a bowl of soup. (Don't even try)

Kathleen accepts that, no matter how many people tell her she should, she has absolutely no feelings about her inability to see the new Our Town.

Kathleen is losing track of what her hair colour has been, month by month, since last summer. Is it time to kick the serial 24-wash dye habit? (It's black at the moment)

Kathleen is having a really hard time focusing on this whole rite of expulsion. Mostly because she's stuck in a circle anyway.

Kathleen has GOT to stop listening to Act II of Bare while driving, even if it is the perfect length for the Perth-St Andrews leg. (It's very sad, and fraught)

Kathleen was woken by her Grandad turning up about two hours early to tell her he doesn't like her hair. *sob*

Kathleen welcomes all textual analyses on "Come Together" or "Whiter Shade of Pale"... imagination required.

Kathleen is attempting to sing and is disquieted by the sudden exodus of all the birds from the garden.

Kathleen is freaked out by the fact that the upstairs flat is completely silent until I listen to very quiet music or run water then they walk/talk..

Kathleen is on vocal rest.. till she gets the hang of talking an octave up! :(

Kathleen doesn't know what the point of the Brooklyn bus map is if you have to look up the Queens one to find buses in Greenpoint. (Does anybody want to take out a business loan to startup my remote travel advisory service? Meg, c'mon, you've had experience of this.)

Kathleen actually feels worse for missing church so is soothing her soul by making facebook events for the next six months. Eurovision par-tay!

Kathleen is NOT feeling well and hopes it's not going to turn into something nasty - and this week of all weeks! (It didn't)

Kathleen is trying "Morningside" by Sara Bareilles on for size. (It fit. I added it to my potential open mic repertoire)

Kathleen really hates when the computer restarts itself while she's away rummaging through things. Then firefox keeps crashing. Boo.

Kathleen realises it's a lot easier to sing at open mic night once you've found your sheet music.

Kathleen says, "Out with the corpses, in with divorce!" It's a rites of passage day. And possibly a library one. (Oh, the life I lead)

Kathleen knows that rational people do not have a crisis over losing the Kikkoman, then squeal upon finding said product and spray it up the wall. She is not rational. (General comments consensus: people like me weird)

Kathleen talked about Rashomon in second tutorial today - clearly a cry for Meg's attention! Does she approve? :)

Kathleen just realised she only ate one meal today - whoops. Paella before bed? (this one resulted in me practically giving out my favourite paella recipe on the comments)

Kathleen just saw 1 Samuel 20:41 in the Living Bible - David and Jonathan shook hands, apparently. Seriously? They're censoring the BIBLE?

Kathleen is happy for rock theatre... Next to Normal is going to Broadway.

Kathleen is in discomfort that two months ago would have made her curl up and cry. Instead she marketed tree frogs as medical solutions to fellow Gradskills enthusiasts. (It was a presentation skills seminar, and I have a whole spiel - I could sell you an Ecuadorian tree frog right now, if I wished)

Kathleen meant to open one of her lyrics, struck by an unusually inappropriate muse,and went through her impeccably organised PhD folder to "Rites of Affliction".

Kathleen was inspired to resurrect a rejected idea for the French writer with an original melody and is now writing "The Husband Song". Friends with wives, beware.

Kathleen is trying to have a proper look through her sheet music but keeps getting distracted by starting to sing things.

Kathleen is so excited about the St Louis cabaret and Novello transfer that she doesn't know where she'd rather be. As this is confusing, she's here.

Kathleen is trying to appreciate her educational importance and not get upset by people finding her blog searching for "selective mutism ridiculous."

Kathleen had full day - good drink and chat, met retired academic, got over writer's block, fun, sometimes musical and often hilarious evening.

Kathleen didn't realise Ben Folds' Song for the Dumped was about to come on iTunes, and found herself giggling in the middle of a trial narrative. (I was writing very serious things, and this song doesn't have many lyrics - he gets a lot of mileage out of "Give me my money back, give me my money back - you bitch, I want my money back". I was unprepared and hence helpless for ten minutes.)

Kathleen + washing machine = EPIC FAIL. (My mother said: "Mini-fail. You got there eventually, didn't you?" I did not answer the question, but some hours later..)

Kathleen FINALLY got the towels OUT of the washing machine! How cool am I? Maybe I should become some sort of technician.

Kathleen thinks she loves tutoring 1006, but can't believe she just told 26 people that her email address was her "robot name".

Kathleen could talk about My Little Pony all night. Something has awakened within me. I think it's a little pony.

Kathleen worked really hard this morning, so she went to the public toilet at Braemar in her pyjamas. (Photos from this expedition to come)

Kathleen has gone from the bathroom poltergeist to a Yorkie with ESP. Can't a sceptic get a little peace these days?

Kathleen is going to skin that dog and wear her as a hat. The barking... (moan)... the barking... doesn't she ever sleep? (Yes, I was Genki-sitting. I also just took a "Which dictator are you" test and came out as Hitler, so I was grumpy)

Kathleen resolved the "I want a blackberry" problem: 1. cost (ouch), 2. don't need one, 3. have 500 business cards with current mobile number on them. Success! Now sleep.

Kathleen kindly asks KLM to stop sending her emails with ridiculously low fares to appealing destinations. It's turning this afternoon into torture.

Kathleen "Your Amazon order has been dispatched" -- ooh! Whatisitwhatisitwhatisit? Why won't you let me in, email? Waah!... I need a life.

Kathleen is editing an old essay on SA and has "The Song of Purple Summer" stuck in her head. "All shall know the wonder..."

Kathleen is amused that someone in Paris found her travel blog searching for Porte Maillot Starbucks, who got Jo Ann's frappucino blend rant and my attack story.

Kathleen finds herself in the bizarre position of having to explain to a crazy foreigner that Scotland actually has ski resorts... back me up!

Kathleen "Music is the freight train in which God travels"... I need sleeeeeeep. (Note: That's from a great song from the rock musical "Passing Strange")

Kathleen now knows better than to admit she is having a quarter-life crisis on a posting board and not expect age jokes. Heartless, the lot of you. You know who you are.

Kathleen actually has an OK CV... thanks, D! And is going to talk in initials from now on... it's jaunty. Since apparently she can't pull off the groovy lingo. Man.

Kathleen has given some thought to this so called problem of time travel and changing the past, and isn't convinced it's a problem.

Kathleen has made it through this winter without drama and quite enjoyed it, but is glad it's spring now. What, it's snowing? LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA.

The saga of my flooded bathroom (still no carpet):

Kathleen thinks she's one of those people who makes water supernaturally come up through the floor with no apparent source. It did stop once she left Stirling, and now..

Kathleen has a flooded bathroom and has started throwing up again - it's the middle of the night, gimme a break! Just got to sleep, too. What's up with that?

Kathleen is, on the other hand, just happy that after three months she got the plumber and the joiners (to look at the draughty window) on the same day.

Kathleen just realised she's an enabler. i.e. her tea-making is enabling the plumber to stand around in the bathroom chatting & charging the estate agent by the hour.

Kathleen thinks the snow is lovely, if a bit inconvenient, and wonders how her bathroom carpet is doing hanging up to dry somewhere...

Kathleen survived her snow day and hasn't driven off the road yet! Doesn't mean she has a bathroom floor, but one day at a time.

Kathleen is floating around in a dressing gown wondering where her bathroom carpet disappeared to, and whether she will ever have one again. (Comment: "Did you fly somewhere and walk home?")

Kathleen 's toilet is being removed as she types. I hate to tell a plumber how to do his job, but isn't that one of the important bits? (Later updates to this status: "Oh good grief. No toilet and the plumber still can't work out what's wrong. It's true. I knew it. I'm a water diviner." -- "OK, the plumber was talking on the phone and I'm pretty sure he just said the word "poltergeist"." -- "Great. I've got the plumber to the paranormal." Comments? "If you have a poltergeist that uses the toilet that will be a first, won't it?")

A blow-by-blow account of my latest chapter of my thesis:

Kathleen keeping you updated, hour by hour, on her drafting. How thrilling for you. This morning: when does *moral* cleansing become poss. by water?

Kathleen find herself in a position to choose between work and watching High School Musical 2. Corpse impurity has never been so appealing.

Kathleen has a whirlpool in the mikveh. Metaphorically speaking. But not "metaphorically speaking" in the sense of Ps 51:2.

Kathleen just tried to calculate productivity in word count to hours worked and sleep lost. Wish I hadn't.

Kathleen thinks someone should impose a very conservative single-visit limit on library loans, before "thesis" becomes slang for "hernia".

Kathleen thinks her work is now actually going backwards.

Kathleen feels that this section on exorcism is going slowly but it's nothing compared to Herod's oath - her true Achilles heel. Head stuck in ancient world.

Kathleen was really discouraged this morning but actually seems to be getting somewhere today. But it would be nice if Word didn't auto-correct "pericope" to "periscope."

Kathleen is trying to cut four thousand words from one piece of writing, and needs to add about four thousand to the other. Now, if only lateral movement were the answer.

Kathleen is going to go potty if she reads or writes one more word on death today. You'd think that's be a good time to give up, but I have a Work Ethic. Stupid thing.

Kathleen YESSSS! YES YES YES! I'm DONE!........................(with this one bit)

Kathleen is getting there... one corpse at a time... (did I just say that?)

Kathleen wrote a bunch of words today and edited out about the same number. Getting ever closer to the end of this chapter. She hopes. Almost...:) (Comment: "And talked about My Little Pony", which was true)

Kathleen has one last thing to do on this draft... and that's spending this afternoon with a pencil in one hand and concordance in the other, looking up "pigs". My life.

Kathleen just had her day derailed by admin. Again. Not happy. Cry now.

Kathleen is still irritated but has put it so far behind her that she's now worried about her conclusions being too happy-clappy. Leprosy, anyone?

Kathleen finishes her conclusion, then she gets to eat the yum-yum. (Dear friends. First they tried to distract me by making me eat the pastry, then they tried to wean me onto vodka. Followed by...)

Kathleen caved - there's a little bit to go and the yum-yum is GONE. I hope you're all happy.

Kathleen was about to hit "send" but had a sudden realisation and started yelling, "DIshware!" so the neighbours think she's crazy. Almost done..

The best thing about using Twitter for the facebook updates? I can do it by mobile, as on my London trip.

Kathleen is down south till the weekend.

Kathleen is at Paddington, looking for a bear.

Kathleen can report that the white shirt-red sweater look is alive and well in oxford.

Kathleen nearly got run over leaving Pret-a-Manger this morning and now tours schools telling young people about the dangers of hot chocolate.

Kathleen thinks Lucy is brilliant and is looking forward to the evening show! Home tomorrow :(

Kathleen took the seat of some posh regulars in the lounge. She knows as they just announced it loudly. They are now surprised that she can read.

Kathleen fears a train riot is in the offing-they just announced they have no hot water and cannot make tea.

I feel this is value for money...

Having a Life

2009-02-28T13:09:00.007Z

In the past couple of weeks I've finished a draft of a chapter, caught up with some emails and started making contact with people I've been meaning to catch up with for a while. I've met people for coffee, I've gone to sleep every night, I've woken up at a normal time every morning, I've gone to Dundee to see friends, I've eaten out, I've gone to the pub and open mic night... I've had a life. I have been in control of that life. And how much better I feel.

It started more than a week ago when I met my friend Alexis for morning coffee (and a muffin that, in my case, was breakfast as I had no breakfast foods in the house).

Before that, I had been feeling off for a long time. For months I have felt like I was trying to catch up with myself, without any real sense of targets. I was working long hours but without much in the way of concrete output, I was trying so hard to use every hour that I wasn't sleeping enough or regularly, I wasn't playing the piano, I wasn't listening to music, I wasn't really cooking very often, I felt very stressed about trying to fit in times to see friends and I was constantly plagued by guilt. Guilt that I wasn't getting enough done, guilt that I no longer felt in tune with my project that I could get through work at my usual pace, guilt whenever I was spending time doing non-thesis things while I felt at a standstill, guilt at admitting on facebook that I was ever, ever doing anything other than working as long as people who knew how things were going could see, guilt that I was so unhappy and was swamping others with it, guilt that I wasn't enjoying my work, guilt that I wasn't enjoying my life and guilt about how much money this was all costing.

I had had a few rough patches, trying to be myself within the world of academia, which I now accept does not really suit me as well as I thought it did, looking for answers and responses that would help me from the wrong people, looking for emotional support from those whose first response was always going to be purely rational. It's not helpful to expect a sudden gear change to accompany such realisations.

I was frustrated. Frustrated with my health, that the psoriasis would go away for a brief period then come back with a vengeance, that both exercise and rest seemed to aggrevate things, that people kept telling me knowledgeably exactly what they thought would help me while assuming that I didn't know, wasn't doing it and that I had osteoarthritis, which isn't the right kind. I was frustrated that musically and theatrically I wanted to be writing and active and felt trapped. I was frustrated at still being in St Andrews when I have so many things I want to do next. I was frustrated with the admin situation still not being sorted out and some of the communication that was coming back at me. I was frustrated by that balance of trying to have people around me who can understand my calling to what we might call pretty conservative notions of the authority of the biblical text and appreciating that my own but educated interpretations have a pretty liberal output. I was and am frustrated by the dismissal by the all-round conservatives that any (so-called) liberal output is evidence of a (so-called) liberal input. I was frustrated that in some contexts, though surrounded by Christians, I was finding it hard to feel that we were having any kind of meaningful Christian fellowship. I was frustrated that I couldn't see a way forward - not as a life plan, but just day to day. And I wasn't moving forward. I felt inert and stagnant.

I had a sense of loss. I realised that I have spent three years of my life - of my youth - here, pursuing something that I wasn't sure would have a direct application. That's fine, because my life was never going to be school-university-career-retirement. But the feeling that these years had just flown by in a monochrome blur was not. I felt that I had lost my identity. I did not really know who I was, and I felt that the identity I actually liked was irretrievable and far behind me. I did not know who I was at that point in time, and I didn't know if I was going to become someone else I liked. I had lost enthusiasm for my work while it had become the only thing in my life. I had lost the voices around me who told me to keep a balance and not to work all my waking hours. I had lost any connection with my talents and passions outside academia, and all sense of being talented within academia. I had lost my self-image as someone who is capable and enthusaistic and allowed to have fun.

I was pretty unhappy. After a short while I realised I was pretty unhappy. I wrote an article on a suicidal teen, and I identified too much with the character - the sleeplessness, the frustration, the guilt, the pressure of high expectations and the sense of entrapment. The worst part was that in being cut off from some of the people who would have been appropriately supportive, I ended up interacting mentally with the "suffering is a sin" contingent, a vicious lie that would turn sufferers into sinners. I had to be an intellectual, part of the problem being the wild swing to this extreme, arguing that the psalmist had us walk through the valley of the shadow of death, not circumnavigate it and redact it out of our maps. I should not have had to go into theological battle; I should have been allowed to be a sensitive soul and live in the realism (and, ultimately, hope) of the Psalms. The whole time I was regularly at the house of a friend who has a huge wall arranged to reflect a chart by Auden (yes, he's a PhD student) talking about the need for balance and the perils of pure word or pure deed. The fact that, by concentrating on work, my life had become almost pure word didn't even occur to me. It's a warning that the PhD can be a spectacularly unhealthy process and destructive to the individual without leavening. "Mixed feelings" would have been a generous description of my attitude to the task.

I cried too much this winter, I hurt too much this winter, and I could not see things improving before graduation.

Then I went out with Alexis.

Alexis sat me down and told me some nice things, such as the fact that I am talented and capable and enthusiastic and I should not be allowed to tell myself otherwise. She said that my abilities and my interests were still alive and going to be developed into something better than I might imagine (similar to something Whitney told me about me having an audience somewhere that's on pause). She also said that if I needed to leave and not do this now, but come back to it later, even much later, then that could be part of the plan, too. Nobody has ever seriously given me permission to kick it all in before, and that helped me to think that I did want to finish this now, somewhat alleviating my feeling that I am trapped at this stage and don't have an exit.

That was all very encouraging, but Alexis continued to tell me lots of important truths. The most striking of these was her assertion that my thesis would write itself. This was a rather appealling notion, if a slightly unrealistic one, I thought. She explained. She said that the thesis reflected my personality, my interests and my strengths. By grinding away at it all winter, I had removed certain things from my life. I had removed a lot of social contact, being in touch with far-flung people I like a lot, I hadn't been home in a month, I had ceased to think about my interests on their own terms and has made them into sources of guilt or symbols of my captivity, I had stopped all hobbies because they seemed frivolous held against the serious work business, the things I want to make a career of, in an ideal world, had fallen off the map and I was miserable. These are the things that should be taking a central place in my life. By losing them, I lost touch with myself. Alexis was right. I haven't felt like myself in quite a while, and when I have remembered who I used to be it was with regret. She said that my thesis reflected me as a whole person in God, and if I was denying parts of myself, and I didn't feel like myself, then of course I wasn't getting the thesis done.

She was right. I made another coffee date for the afternoon and within two hours of leaving Alexis at the coffee shop I had not only banished the gloom but had finished the largest chunk of the chapter I had been writing since Christmas. Within four days I had done the whole thing. And with how much on my plate? Well, I had another coffee date the next day with Alissa at which we chatted to a retired academic and talked about another academic issue in which I'm interested, spent an evening with the friend-with-the-Auden-chart watching DVDs he bought me for Christmas, spent some of the weekend sitting around watching Desperate Housewives (whether this is or is not a self-defining activity I can't say, but I needed a rest from work), got back into a sleep pattern, took some friends out for tea, went over to Dundee and spent three hours talking to Alissa about a different academic project in Borders, tutored my tutees and went to open mic night at the Byre. And yet I got more done that I had achieved in the previous three weeks.

I feel like myself again. I even kind of like myself. I'm rested. I've been playing the piano every day. I'm excited about the future, I'm happy to be writing again, I'm enthused about my thesis again and - in a better way, this time - I can't wait to get it done.

And next time I feel unhappy I'm going to hunt down Alexis.

Selective Mutism on the Big Bang Theory

2009-02-17T23:02:00.002Z

The title makes it sound like a far-reaching post, but it's not. It's brief. I just wanted to mark the first utterance of the phrase "selective mutism" on TBBT! Leonard's mother visits, who is a neurologist rather similar to Sheldon in sensitivity and intolerance for those she sees as lesser minds. Her analysis of Raj and Wolowitz:

“That’s fascinating. Selective mutism is quite rare. On the other hand, a Jewish male living with his mother is so common, it borders on sociological cliche. You know, both selective mutism and an inability to separate from one’s mother could be due to a pathological fear of women. That’s would explain why the two of you have created an ersatz homosexual marriage to deal with satisfy your need for intimacy.”

Okay, okay, that may give the impression that SM is due to a pathological fear of women, but since Raj can't speak to women at all (unless he's drunk), she's got a point in this case. At least there's the anxiety bit in there, and no link between SM and the mother issue! It's progress, and I'll take it.

In any case, at least it acknowledges SM rather than it being an exciting secret for those of us in the know, and I hope that sound I hear is the tippity-tapping of a thousand fans hitting the net in search of illumination. Any who stumble by here... make sure you use the reputable sources. Try selectivemutism.org

The Parentals

2009-02-10T16:47:00.021Z

I would like to point out to my supposedly longsuffering parents that there's a lot of stuff that doesn't go on this blog. Here's just a sample of the classic utterances gracing my facebook quotes page.

Fatherhood: The Burt Method:

"God gave you two pairs of legs..."

"I don't care if you're sick; I do care if your toilet's not clean."

(on the frozen mass of lentil soup) "I'm breaking it up into little soupbergs."

"He was an unforgiving, rage-orientated type person."

"Looking to hire a psychopath? Try my daughter!"

(on the phone) "It now comes down to a choice between you and macaroni, and, I'm sorry, you lost." [click]

Maternal instincts:

"Older dogs live longer."

"I was listening! I was just... looking at the iron.""

Louise: "I don't recognise that man - I don't think I saw him around when I was there."
My mother: "Ah, he's mebbe dead.""

The Archbishop of Canterbury: (on TV) "Marriage is an act of faith."
My mother: (groans) "Oh yes, we know that."

A bizarre outburst from my mother, brandishing a knife and threatening to liquidise things, and accusing me of being a mercenary:
"Yeah, what would she have been like in Vichy France? Would she have been a collaborator or would she have been in with the resistance?"

"Now, I want to talk to your dad about this, and you keep your mouth shut, Kathleen, because your contribution is useless."

"There's definitely a different relationship between you and a piece of paper and you and the internet."

Combined efforts:
"If you feel a life-crisis coming on this weekend, get in the car and go home quickly."
"And don't drive off the pier or anything - there are still payments left on the car."
"Yes, you'll want to get out of the car and jump off."
"And try to remember to leave the keys.""

Mother: "We discussed whether Kathleen should move back here and finish her PhD from Stirling, but we came to the conclusion (at the same time though with slightly differing language) that this would not work."
Father: (hugging me and not letting go) "And in a stressful day there was a twinkling light of hope. You're not moving home. I mean... for your sake. Because... I feel you're... finding yourself."

Scenes from a Life of Madness

2009-02-09T23:01:00.002Z

Me: "I'm on vocal rest because I've been really stressed and over-talking and my voice is scratchy."
Mother: "Ratso?"
Me: "Scratchy."
Mother: "Fancy? I'm afraid I can't really hear you."
Me: "Scratchy!"
Mother: What?"
Me: "Scratchy!"
Mother: "WHAT?"
Me: "SCRRRRAAAAAATCHYYYYYYY!!!!"

And you wonder why?

This is a Crazy Town. Help Me.

2009-02-09T15:47:00.002Z

Sometimes (like "Refreshers Week") the Student Union emails make me wonder whether they've all completely flipped or whether they're all geniuses.

On Tuesday night come dressed in the colours of a Rubix cube and swap clothes with theother Rubixers, your task is to solve yourself and leave at the end of the night wearing all the the same colour. Expect prizes and freebies for the most eclectically dressed and choose your colours wisely. Good Luck!

I'm leaning toward genius.

SA: 18th of January

2009-02-07T00:13:00.002Z

Closing night.

Snow.

An air of anticipation.

Having travelled thousands of miles just to experience this event, I reflected as I settled into D106, empty seats stretching out to either side providing me with a few minutes of solitude. I was experiencing an odd mix of emotions.

I had caught on late, having been remote from Broadway since 2006 and completely out of touch since I started the PhD. I had heard of the rock opera Bare which had recently been recorded with Matt Doyle in the lead role, a new-to-me and clearly very talented young actor whose blog subsequently revealed that his current project was a version of Spring Awakening. I assumed the play itself at first, but further investigation was rewarding. Trawling through recent Tony performances, this startling, tuneful and exhuberant musical piqued my interest, and I had downloaded the cast album in May, listened to it twice, watched the video of "Touch Me" on the View, and vowed not to listen to it again until I had tried to get tickets while in New York in June. I staggered from TKTS to the Eugene O'Neill on the 4th after a long journey from Scotland, passing through NYC for a single day. I arrived at the theatre unslept, my body thinking it was well after midnight.

I was familiar with the source material, but common sense told me that an all-singing, all-dancing interpretation of Wedekind's odd, disjointed, proto-expressionistic (pace Wedekind) play would not have produced the album I had heard. It had a strong sense of narrative placement and character, not that I had a clue how the songs advanced or fit into the narrative. Wedekind's characters were often abstract and fleeting, but this weaved them together through distinct, original songs spanning several subgenres of rock (genuine rock, not "Broadway rock") that, all the same, had beautiful vocal arrangements (and this was before the magnificent reworking in the Broadway transfer) and had a quality that I can only describe as a colour palette. Across distinct styles, the ensemble singing had a warm, grainy texture that sat perfectly with the references to corn, bales of hay and the waving fields. In Wedekind's restrictive academic environment, the young people were - musically - laying claim to the elemental. So it seemed to me, without having seen the show.

What I got was something that combined classical theatre with a rock concert - and the best of both - which was challenging, moral and exhilarating, while every bit as shocking as Wedekind intended. It retains his shock tactics when confronting the wilful ignorance of the establishment in their mishandling of the young people while the youth were still very vulnerable to mishandling, and allows the young their inherent sense of personal drama within their small range of experience without denying the magnitude of their experience or the severity of the repercussions. It allows a release of frustration without denying that, despite the lessons that should have been learned by the adults, the young people remain trapped (a fact missed by one or two London reviewers, apparently, who think it all ends happily - of course, they seem to have all written articles on Wedekind...).

It was a night of the unexpected. I didn't expect the folky introduction and first classical mother-daughter scene to erupt suddenly into an angry, primal howl of oppression from the entire female ensemble. I didn't expect neon bars to start blinking on around the auditorium at musically appropiate points. I didn't expect Hanschen's monologue to stay in its scene-dominating entirety, never mind to hear the girly crush discussion of "My Junk" suddenly interrupted by "Have you prayed tonight, Desdemona?" I didn't expect the whole host of adult characters to be played by only two actors, to symbolic effect. I didn't expect the writers and directors to pull off Melchior's beating of Wendla and still have him be a sympathetic character to the end. I didn't expect the rewriting of Moritz's journey to eradicate all my misgivings about Wedekind's treatment of suicide. I didn't expect a play with undisclosed (except in song) child abuse in the first act and a suicide scene in the second to be so genuinely and sweetly funny. I didn't expect the whole thing to feel so contemporary even as it stayed very faithful to the source material where appropriate. I didn't expect the seamless melding of influences from expressionism (though that's a "duh", on reflection), world theatre and contemporary dance.

I certainly never anticipated (because who can?) that it would be the most exciting piece of theatre I had ever seen both in terms of the material and the creative contribution. Everyone - performers, musicians, set designers and (especially in this production) lighting design - shared the vision; everyone was making the same show. This is a tremendous achievement for any creative venture.

I was genuinely impressed. Not just in love with the show - impressed. I don't impress easily. I'm analytical and can critique things I really, really like without much of a problem, but this seemed to pass all my musings. So was the actress I shared the experience with, who had bought the only other ticket in my row of the rear stalls at TKTS around the same time.

That started my own very personal journey with Spring Awakening. For one thing, I found that I agree with NY Times critic Charles Isherwood on pretty much everything. I felt that its presence on Broadway was a beacon to great original musical theatre in a world of large-scale wow-fests and jukebox musicals - in other words, guaranteed hits, even though some are very enjoyable and artistically meritorious. I was encouraged that new ways of musical storytelling were welcomed and appreciated, as I consider how to strike forth with my own ambitions as a writer for theatre, musical and non. For the first time, I realised that theatre is the admittedly frustrating career path that would not only use my talents and make good sense, but would be fulfilling and might even make me happy.

Here's a quote from the review of the London production in the Telegraph that agrees with me (rather than the other way round, naturally:

Seeing it again I am more convinced than ever that this is a landmark show which, with a fair wind and a speedy move into the West End, will once again persuade young writers, and more importantly producers, that there is still a place for daring and originality in musical theatre.

I was devastated when I heard of the show's closing, along with several other Broadway fixtures this financially challenging winter, and (though, as my parents pointed out, in shock) soon had a great ticket and a trip planned to see the final night. One source of my sadness was the fact that, however soon I might find myself passing through New York, it would not be before the show closed. I felt I had just got to know SA and assumed it would be there when I made it back. So, to me, who was not among those who were close enough to see it ten, twenty times, I was just very glad I was going to get to see it again at all on Broadway. Especially with the talented new cast that I was hearing all about.

I say all this here, because I'm going to post my review of the closing performance below, which won't mean much if you haven't seen it, and I wanted to convey something of what Spring Awakening means to me, and to the others who gathered at the Eugene O'Neill Theater to give it a good send-off.

And since I haven't done it justice, here's where I really fell in love with the show, where Melchior has just hit Wendla with a stick and is having a contemporary dance crisis in a hayloft (see? no justice). The blue lights come down, the hayloft comes up, and you get a sense of how the other performers are a constant presence.

Matt Doyle, who is the unfortunate object of my gratitude for getting me into the show, described the final performance on his blog.

And Emily Kinney, the current (I'm still in denial) Anna, said this:

I thought the audience reactions might throw me off! When we first stepped onstage, we got a standing ovation. As soon as I stood up for the girls’s number, 'Mama Who Bore Me,' the audience started cheering and clapping as we were singing. I’ll never forget what an amazing feeling it was walking and singing to my place with people cheering me on my way! They clapped and we stood strong untill it was time to go to the next song. Everyone laughed and sobbed and cheered and reacted to everything we did more than I’ve ever experienced as a performer. The audience was not separate, but part of the show, and with us every step of the way.

It was quite the night.

There were bits of it that I would have enjoyed more as a performance of Spring Awakening had it been less of an "occasion", but it was the last night and it was partly about the special interaction between an under-celebrated Broadway cast of very talented people and people who shared an unusual appreciation and love of the show and its performers. At times, it was appropriate to recognise and celebrate the individual performances over the usual flow of the show. However, there were several points at which the high emotion of the night really enhanced what was happening onstage and, as the writers noted in their closing night speeches, Spring Awakening is about coming to terms with loss and the passing of life phases.

I'm posting the review elsewhere, but I'm duplicating it here for posterity, despite the fact that you'll either know who these people are and the scenes to which I refer or you won't. The word "perfect" appears a lot, but it's genuinely meant. But you can see above how long it's taken just to put the significance of this show in context.

So, for those in the know, who want the scoop:

So much for the "hidden" ensemble members who sit with the audience members either side of the stage. We knew who they were and they got applause and a standing ovation. As did the band, who rock (literally). And the cast when they came out to sit in their chairs. And everyone fell eerily quiet as Alexandra got up on the chair and raised her arms to her hair to start "Mama Who Bore Me".

MWBM/Stork: It's such a sweet and low-key opening that it provided a suitably meditative introduction to the final performance, and it really sank in that this was the last time this was going to happen on Broadway. I like that the first scene is funny, because it makes for a more shocking contrast when it is tragically undercut later. However, I found it a bit over the top this time, but then it was the last performance. I found Christine much more restrained after this scene. The denial theme of this scene was eerily close to home at the last performance!

MWBM(r): I love this bit, and it had a lot of power (though I'm matching everything to the OBC at its pinnacle, who were just fierce.) I really enjoyed all the girls' individuality that they managed to put into their characters from the start, and may I say that I thought Amanda was brilliant as Martha throughout - she never seemed to switch off and was a really interesting character to watch. Of course the boys got another round of applause bringing the chairs out, but then they do it so well.

Latin class/ATK: Suitably scary Latin teacher from Glenn, and I must say he was far more restrained than I remember for most of the show. He really walloped Hunter with that cane. Twice. People gasped. I winced. Yeah, Spring Awakening doesn't pull any punches. Gerard just seemed to "get" Moritz from the start, and I never really paid attention to the differences between the three - he was Moritz while I was watching the show and that's as much as I can say here, really. All That's Known was good, though I don't remember it in detail as I was more interested in hearing Hunter's voice, which wasn't immensely powerful but sounded good on this one, I thought. I enjoyed watching the other boys during the Aeneas discussion, especially Matt's silent interaction as Melchior sticks up for Moritz. Their reactions to Melchior's disclosures were really funny, as well. Gabe stuck out to me as Otto hasn't really before in this scene. More about him later.

BOL: Explosive. I just really really love everything about this song and it's staging, and the performance was as high energy as you'll ever see. I felt everyone had laid claim to their own character decisively from this point on, and there were few ghosts of the original performances. Which, considering the quality of the original cast in an iconic production, is another testament to the spirit of this cast. I never noticed the change in the lighting from the stalls, or the dancing they all do towards their teacher at different points. In conclusion, this should go down in history as a great theatrical moment, along with the opening (and several chorus numbers) of 42nd Street, Circle of Life from the Lion King, Seasons of Love from Rent, On Day More from Les Mis and whatever others may like to add to the list. I actually like that Melchior joins in with the shoulders early, as long as he doesn't get up from his chair. Post BOL I thought Hunter and Gerard made their characters seem authentically young, which really worked for me. Anyone who can say "conceal it in my satchel" without just sounding weird gets my respect.

Radical/MJ: Okay, okay, okay, now I get why people think Matt Doyle was put on this planet solely to sing the word "stereo". I do. Back to the preceding scene. I love Emily's line readings, and again appreciated why people were talking about her "orchids and chrysanthemums" line, her reading of which is burned on my memory for frequent enjoyment. In spite of my (shameful) expectations, I really loved Caitlin's Thea, not having ever paid much attention to the character before. She was cute. Poor Martha doesn't have much to do in this scene, but all four girls just fit together so well. For some reason I really enjoy My Junk as the last really carefree moment for the girls as well as the interplay between Georg and Hanschen. Christine and Andrew were hysterically distracting in the corner. Love the vocal arrangement towards the end of the song.

TM: My favourite. I may spend a while typing all my thoughts on this one... And as good as expected! Hunter's solo was fine, but I felt much more secure once Gerard started singing - love his voice, by the way. And Blake has made his solo his own over the last year - very pretty. All sorts of things I noticed in the staging, like the connection between Hanschen and Martha (it's interesting that she's the only girl not really scared of him), which was largely down to Amanda's brilliant acting, and the brief moment between Martha and Ernst when she and Blake put the chairs in the middle of the floor. From the mezzanine, the way they all spread out at different heights looked really good. I really wanted to pay attention to the dialogue between Melchior and his mother, but I got distracted by watching Matt and Amanda behind them! Actually, I was so distracted that I forgot Otto's solo was coming out of nowhere... And Gabe might just have the nicest voice in the whole cast. Though it is a cast of distinctive and powerful voices. Great crescendo and of course I didn't want it to end. I don't even want it to end on the CD. Andrew pulled this amazing riff from who knows where in his solo - the first moment that really stuck out as being something special that came from the energy of the last night. As a side note - I get envious on this song about all these people having their own unique part in creating such beautiful music, even before you get into the choreography. Sigh.

WOYB: I know it's not the liveliest scene but I've always liked it. It's small but kind of captivating as the quiet point in Act 1. I think the blocking is very powerful, and I really felt the push-and-pull between Hunter and Alexandra. They seemed really young together, which worked but is very different to other pairings. I'm used to them being closer to my age, but then I am getting on a bit. They have great chemistry, but they brought a kind of distance and unease to this scene that I felt really paid off later.

I passed/A certain dilemma: I don't remember much about the "I passed" scene. The teachers were pretty villainous, but thankfully I felt they their pantomime quality diminished as the play progressed while retaining enough to expel Melchior.

Braid/DIKW: I liked Emily a lot in this scene. Not over the top. I also felt that Thea's confusion was very natural. I don't know why I never noticed the irony of Thea's line "But how will we know what to do if our parents don't tell us?" - not just that Martha's parents are terrible parents anyway, but that none of them are being told anything by their parents in the first place. This was the section I remember thinking was most powerful when I first saw SA. Since most were fans, there wasn't the same sense of collective realisation as the song started, but it's still a great scene. The staging and lighting are impressive, especially the ominous long shadows from the parents. Amanda and Emma both have great voices and worked really well together, I thought. I like that most of the guys stay seated so you don't have a crowded stage, just the two girls alone in the middle of the stage as all these threatening male voices swirl round them. It's very effective.

Beating scene: Moritz's conference with the teachers is just heartbreaking and with Gerard starting to cry as he sat down at the front of the stage... I haven't seen it enough times that the effect of DIKW wears off quickly - I felt the tension carried through to give a sense of Wendla's motivation in a way that contradicts a couple of the less insightful reviews that have come out about the London production. I loved that I didn't really believe that she had that dream, but used it as a way to open that conversation. I think the scene works, but it needs more buildup, or to be taken more slowly - I still feel that Melchior's rage is disproportionate. Though Hunter brought out the part I really like - Melchior's genuine and slightly arrogant confidence that Martha's situation doesn't happen in their time. Can't wait to see this in London, where it seems to be playing differently. It was nice to have the completely silent audience, though. When he threw her to the ground, Alexandra made this unearthly shriek, and Gerard was sobbing on the step - that set the rest of the audience off. It's a really sad moment. The WOYBR just made it sadder... I really like that the previous scenes sets Melchior up as someone who is a young intellectual and has all the answers, then they undercut it by his lack of awareness about the society he's trying to change - it stops him appearing too grown up. I don't think it's a morally ambiguous scene; I think it's the character that makes it interesting - boys can go around hitting people without being thought of as inherently degenerate, though they will get a good telling off, but young men definitely can't go around hitting girls and be viewed sympathetically. Setting him up as confident and mature then showing him to be a bit out of touch and not practically aware leaves him on this very shaky and uncertain middle ground, and means that it doesn't look like condoning violence to think that he can be rehabilitated.

Failed: Intense and appalling as always. I don't have enough to say about Gerard's Moritz, because I thought he was so brilliant that it was really redundant to make mental notes.

ATTWN: This just exploded out of all the tension and emotion of the previous scenes. Gerard's reading along was perfect, and the energy of the boys was quite startling. Not much else to say, except that you could sense the moment Moritz decided to kill himself, and it got a standing ovation of some considerable length.

MBN: This is where I fell in love with Spring Awakening the first time, with the hayloft rising and the blue bulbs lowering, and Melchior in the middle with his contemporary dance. That's when it hit me how fast this act was going. Loved this scene as always, though I like to hear the last verse belted out properly.

IB: Liked Hunter and Alexandra again, and my goodness they seemed young together. I really liked Hunter's take on the scene (I saw Alexandra before). I liked that between MBN and IB he carried the feeling of crisis over and was an emotional wreck being comforted without really coming to terms with what he did. But then it was over and so was act one and I realised that it had flown by.

TGO: I don't remember the opening of act 2 being that enthusiastic the last time I saw it... but I liked Glenn's priest. The best part of TGO from the mezzanine was that I could see the effect of all the cast in the chairs doing the choreography - quite impressive.

DDS/BW/so dark: This was just the highlight of the show for me. Not because I like watching teenagers in distress, you understand, just because they do it so well. It's the most moving part of the show, anyway, but since it was an emotional night everything was heightened before they even started. Gerard just has an amazing, flexible voice and put so much into his "Don't Do Sadness" - and the atmosphere works so well that the entrance of Emma as Ilse felt like the rude interruption he felt it to be. Her Ilse has come so far since last I saw her and I was surprised to really respond to the drunk/possibly drunk spin she put on her monologue. She was looking very pretty as well as unhinged, but understandably unhinged - not out of control. Gerard's reactions were perfect. All the lines about loss and so forth you could feel setting off sobs all over the place - "This semester I'm through." - Sob. She sort of melted into "Blue Wind" with such wistfulness, Gerard crying and leaning on the mic to heartbreaking effect. Then the disconnect afterwards, with the feeling that they just missed actually helping each other. You could feel the whole unarticulated dynamic of regret and perceived rejection. After Gerard started singing again she was crying so hard that I wasn't sure where her "Spring and summer..." was going to come from, but she just grabbed the microphone and belted it out, so silly me for not recognising really good acting and talent. Oops. She has an amazing, envy-inducing voice also. Obviously. As soon as the trash heap line was done, and she got a round of applause, I could hear most of the mezzanine sobbing, which was intense and kind of sweetly funny at the same time. Moritz's end was perfect. Just perfect. Wrenching and horrible to watch, but in the way that it should be. It really resonated with the description in the book of Moritz as a modern rock band member who puts his equipment away before he does it.

LB: As if everyone wasn't a wreck already. Hunter's voice is really pretty, I realised at this point, not just in the good-Melchior way, but that if he were singing Gordon Lightfoot songs on a street corner I would wish I had him on CD. That's a nonsensical diversion. All their various reactions were so sad as they were dropping the flowers in, then sitting crying on the steps. I was transfixed by the whole thing, especially Matt D sitting right in the centre gazing right up the centre mezzanine! Glenn wasn't as loud-sobbing as I had expected from reading the reviews of others, but all I can say is: how tragic that Moritz's father should suffer some kind of heart attack at his own son's funeral. It was a bit convuls-y. Oh, and the ensemble sounded gorgeous.

TF: Yeah, it's a big rocky rebellion, and yes, it doesn't actually break through the structures of repression that the kids will have to go back to, but after all the emotion what struck me is the fact that it matters. In spite of the above. It's more than just a wry comment on the corruption of the teachers and society. Hunter really pulled it off, and the energy was of course remarkable. I thought his "blahs" sounded a bit - don't kill me - muppet-like. Absolutely terrifying watching him rock out standing on his chair. You can't call him chicken. Death-defying is his middle name. I liked that he kind of held off on the rebellion side of things until this point so that Melchior came into his own here. The ensemble were going nuts on their chairs and the steps, which was really entertaining. Then it was over, but the guitar chord kept going for a really long time, with Andrew dropping his arms and putting them back up a few times, a move which seemed popular. Then suddenly the drums started up again, everyone ran back onto the steps and they started again from the second-to-last chorus! And everyone was singing along in the theatre. And dancing with them. A very magical last-night kind of happening. The whole mezzanine shaking in rhythm was impressive, if terrifying. I mean, do they routinely check the Eugene O'Neill for stability in such events? Presumably we did not seek a realisation of the lyrics "You can kiss your sorry ass goodbye". Though I bet everyone else was thinking it.

WOYBR: Crazy - this didn't play the "normal" way as the first part of the scene pretty much went like this:

"...line..."
APPLAUSE
"...line..."
APPLAUSE

Well, we all love the vineyard scene, because it's funny and sweet and without it it would be misery all the way from the start of the act to the end. Here, you get the big release followed by this quiet scene that makes you laugh and then it all goes back to the drama. Current tour Hanschen Andy Mientus has a great insider-perspective blog on how the scene plays here - why it's funny and where it's funny, in response to the usual. The funniest thing was that with this audience every line got cheers up to the point when the music started and everyone knew the dialogue had to be timed exactly. It was another of those only-on-closing-night moments.

"Anemia": Again, no element of surprise, but the atmosphere in the theatre was amazing - tense! Glenn's doctor was funny with his little stories, but not creepy as I kind of worried... sorry, Glenn. I thought Alexandra played it a bit ditzy, which just doesn't seem like inquisitive Wendla to me.

Whispering: It's one of those moments where I appreciate how special SA's mode of storytelling is, as it's a definite tingle/shiver moment watching Wendla on her own journey moving in and out of the scenes with all the parents. I really like it sung with the strength Lea brought to it, whereas Alexandra sings more softly throughout, but her voice was really pretty on the last section, with everyting but Wendla obscured in the lights and the strength of her resolve and fear and anticipation - really makes you go, "oh no oh no oh no..." - As it should.

Reformatory/the procedure: I must have missed the intensity of this scene, or it could be partly because Hunter is so fearless, but they really seemed to be throwing him around. But with such precision - nothing in that was missable and all the different bits of information came across. The proscenium scene with the adults is chilling as Melchior resolves to escape back to Wendla. Now, I was impressed by Kyle suddenly scaling the bars and jumping over the side, but that didn't quite prepare me for Hunter taking the entire height in one great leap and just throwing his whole body right over the top - I thought he was going to break something.

Graveyard/TYK: Hunter's graveyard is the best I've seen. He didn't overdo it at all, and he conveyed each moment - his cynicism, wondering where Wendla is, uncovering the stones, reacting - with clarity and it was so sad. Gerard is the perfect Moritz - I decided this when he was emerging from the floor with all the sense of occasion one would expect. And despite Alexandra's mostly low-key performance, she had a beautiful mix voice on "I believe" - the interplay was wonderful and it being the last everything was, again, heightened. Sobbing all round at the end.

SOPS: Emma's intro was cute - little shrug and all - and did that person who called out after "a time of hope through the land" yell "Emma" or "Obama"? Differing opinions ensued. She has a really pretty voice. Of course it was perfect, with the beautiful harmonies and everything. When Hunter came out of the door he gave Gerard this really big bear hug. Very emotional rendition. And sad to watch them all standing there, Hunter with his hands on Alexandra and Gerard's shoulders all Groff-like, and the light fading. Sigh. How can this not be firmly ensconced in the EON any longer? I think this is the common sentiment.

Curtain calls: Great to see the current cast onstage with almost all the OBC looking spiffing. Enjoyed all the speeches and that the creative team acknowledged the sadness while talking about all the new productions opening across the world in the next few months. There is hope! And Steven Sater's speech was perfect too, when he talked about Spring Awakening as a catharsis in the grieving process and the beauty of passing stages. Sigh.

Took forty minutes to get out of the theatre! Stage door line insane... all a bit of a blur. Then I walked four blocks in a blizzard.

Totally worth going four thousand miles and getting ill for.

----
Now I have to go and share this with the others!

An Update. Not a Good One, but An Update.

2009-01-26T17:28:00.002Z

I came back from New York last Tues and discovered I had the winter vomiting virus/food poisoning/other tummy bug ten minutes over the Atlantic. Still inconclusive. Bottom line: don't hesitate to fly KLM. They're nice. Even when passing sickbags through the toilet door.

Great trip, though brief. The closing night of Spring Awakening was "twelve kinds of awesome", as a fellow Guilty One described it to me. I still need to write a review, and will share my photos once I get them sorted and captioned. Not much blogging to come out of three full days, but I arrived in NYC the day after the plane landed in the Hudson and left after watching the inauguration in Times Square (Duffy Square, really, but everyone branded me a pedant for arguing so). That seems like enough excitement to be going on with.

More soon!

Happy New Year 2009!

2009-01-01T00:00:00.002Z

Fighting my insomnia, I left a party in full swing (quality party though - potato skins, cocktails and pictionary) to see in the new year alone, at home, in bed!

Happy new year! Let's hope it's better than 2008!

I've Still Got It

2008-12-27T22:16:00.003Z

"I don't feel you're enjoying this."

"Kathleen, it's Saturday night, the day after Boxing Day, and I'm halfway up a bloody mountain, hurtling through the dark, bouncing over potholes en route to a chiropractor so that you can talk to Tim."

More on Tim to follow. Right after I finish torturing my father as above.

----
Edited to add:

And I'm done with the torturing. I think I made him crack.

I won't explain the game, but it was his turn to go through the alphabet until I stopped him.

"What letter are you at?"

"Eight."

New Post (see? see?)

2008-12-23T09:29:00.003Z

Lots of people have been telling me I never update anymore. I know I had a quiet three weeks there, but seriously? You all gave up after that?

Roundup of the year coming! I hope I don't have to go to my old computer to get the lists off that, but for you I would.

I've been back and posting the whole of December. Where have you been? Huh? Huh?

Activity: Substitute for Achievement

2008-12-21T04:50:00.005Z

Good times. Had a dinner party near St Andrews Day, decorated tree (with Danny, last year's Christmas Market purchases from Munich and some confusion), had a Christmas party to celebrate 90 years of women's suffrage in Britain (and also Christmas). My December in miniature photo essay:

This month also afforded me the opportunity to consider what my precise wording would be had I to announce my world-domination from a balcony in St Andrews, a la Evita. If I were a robot dictator, naturally.

It won't be easy, you'll find I creak
I'm needing my oil changed this week
Though it seems to the world
I've a human mystique...
No, I'm a cyborg
I came from a lab and a good engineer
Scrap metal with touches of class,
Assembled from old cans of beer

Cry, cry in fear, oh, St Andrews
The truth is, I'm here to rule you
I'm no philanthrope
That's idiotic
I'm making death lists
And I'm robotic...

Have I said too much?
I wouldn't want too much info to filter through
But all you have to do
Is a quick leaf through my manual
The warning's on page twooooooo...

(instrumental: cue cackling and lightning)

That's as far as I got before I was advised to speak to a professional.

As there are all sorts of things I should be doing, I updated my blogger profile and travel blog link to mask my masterly inactivity. I should be doing the following:

writing a draft of my chapter on rites of affliction, which take in leprosy, childbirth, oaths and exorcism.
actually looking up my bibliography to see what I should be reading for said chapter and visiting library for photocopying.
replacing the books I had to take back to the library six months ago, now that I have a library card again.
finishing revising that thing I wrote on suicide in theatre for potential psychology folk use soonish.
finishing my Paris blog, which is actually all written and just needs me to get around to actually putting the photos in at the right points.
checking what stuff got stuck on the wrong disc when I transferred files to my new computer and putting my random methodological notes file back where I can get at it.
delivering my Christmas cards and chocolates to people at the Roundel.
writing said Christmas cards.
actually going to the Roundel, which would help with to-do item #1
taking a large bag of stock cubes and one Herr Gabelman to see my mother in Stirling.
locating a tin of pumpkin and passing it on to Meg.
emailing my supervisor about tutoring NT next semester which I forgot to bring up in my meeting on Friday.
writing a musical play on selective mutism (well, that's what I'd like to achieve soon-ish)
drafting some heartfelt and lengthy emails to those whose Christmas cards were never destined to reach them in far-flung lands after I missed the posting date.
catching up with my list of French, German and Spanish verbs for this month (eek)
listening to my language CDs in the car

The last is more about the guilt of having about 200 CDs of language course that I got with a sort of audio website competition win, in Arabic, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish, and not yet having moved beyond the French ones - which, I must admit, really helped to bring me up to speed before going to Paris. I know the German ones make most sense next, but I already know at least up to the advanced course in German, but since the course uses all sorts of memory tricks I should start with CD one...

The only thing I am imminently to achieve is the publication of my magazine article on Selective Mutism by the 1st of January! I look forward to that.

Something I should also be doing is going back to sleep, as I may have bounded out of bed with good intentions, but four hours of sleep isn't quite enough yet and I need to be up at 8 for church.

Night night!

The Quality of Silence: Selective Mutism in the news

2008-12-18T18:07:00.009Z

I've been keeping tabs on how SM has been addressed since I first got an identification of my disorder. I thought it was about time I actually finished my roundup of the news stories I've been saving.

A mixed bag, with the emphasis on "bag", is the verdict. Since the Virginia Tech massacre, with the perpetrator revealed to suffer from SM, it has received more attention and, one would hope, greater awareness at large. The downside is that you have to look pretty hard to find any information that is accurate, non-judgemental and not tainted by the mass-murderer connection.

From before the VT massacre, here's an article from 2006. It starts out fine, but this section makes me sad.

Although treatment for selective mutism is only focused on the child, one can't help wondering if it is partly a family issue too, although both families would argue otherwise. Lindsay Wittington, founder member of Smira, insists that the anxiety factors are more likely to be genetic and it is a personality predisposition. Judith Lask, a family therapist for the Association of Family Therapy isn't so convinced.
"To some extent, selecting not to speak is very common. Children may well feel shy, especially when they start school. Most of the time it resolves itself, so in those families where it continues, I would be thinking about other things; is the not speaking creating a diversion in a family where there's an issue that isn't talked about? Also children can get an enormous amount of power out of it, which can feel quite nice."
Yet watching Robert you realise how ambivalent that power is. Yes, they do become the focus of attention - but not in the way they would ideally wish for. They may make the initial choice but it is one that makes them powerless.

They need to listen to the families. Also, it is baffling why the quote used is from a non-specialist who obviously makes no distinction between silence and selective mutism - exactly why the diagnostic criteria address the points raised and separate selective mutism from other kinds of silence. SMIRA is the main organisation for research and information on SM in the UK and has better information. Good research isn't about picking the idea you find most compelling.

Accusations about the family life are where we started, back in the elective mutism days, and the move away from that idea is, quite simply, that for twenty years the experts have known better. I think they would also have to go a long way to find a child with SM who wanted to be the centre of attention. This in itself is very uncomfortable.

It's also not a choice, nor is it motivated by a wish for power. You simply can't hold the power in that relationship if you are a child who can't speak in a particular situation. It's not the same as a wilful silence that has a specific purpose at a time - there are no aims or motivating factors. The child would not win.

I said it makes me sad, and what ensures that is this: imagine being a child who wants desperately to communicate, to project your personality and be known as a person, not merely as "the child who doesn't speak", and instead of working with you to give you that opportunity, the adult you reach out to latches on to one method of communication - speech - and defines you with reference to it alone. Not only that, but the character they assign to you is a manipulative, selfish child who is so consumed with your own aims - though no one suggests what these are - that you function primarily as an inconvenience to adults. One could be forgiven for thinking that if you had any sense, you would give up now.

Here is the Guardian article that tipped me off both where Cho Seung-Hui and the resulting misconceptions were concerned.

At the urging of his teachers, Cho went to counselling and art therapy and at about the age of 12 was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder. He rebuffed his parents' suggestions that he take part in more extracurricular activities, remaining withdrawn.

Without further assistance, that's like asking a child without legs to walk. Who exactly would be thought of as ignorantly wilful in that scenario?

He was diagnosed in therapy with selective mutism - an anxiety disorder characterised by consistent failure to speak when speech is expected. Sufferers sometimes show "passive-aggressive, stubborn and controlling traits", the report said. Antidepressant drugs helped and a year later he was taken off the medication.

I would like to know whre they got that characterisation of selective mutism which is decades out of date and plain wrong.

A school guidance counsellor urged him to choose a small college close to home, but Cho was determined to attend Virginia Tech. The counsellor offered Cho the name of a person to call if he had trouble adjusting, but Cho never called.

Spot the obvious flaw in that plan?

Letters home trickled off. He clashed with English teachers, wore dark glasses, hats and scarves to class, and wrote violent, disturbing papers. Roommates gave up on trying to befriend him after he stabbed a carpet in a girl's room.

That sounds like the "warning signs" they speak of - though not necessarily - none of which have any obvious connection to either his depression or SM (the former often comes with the latter).

The report in question is clearly suspect in its lamentable treatment of SM. Without getting diverted, the point the writers seem to miss is that what was never reported to anyone were the disturbingly odd behaviours like stalking, none of which were prompted by the selective mutism. Read the whole article to see that the behaviours linked to the killings are nothing to do with previously diagnosed disorders.

Selective mutism doesn't make you kill people. The writers by and large try to avoid coming across as apologetic - with good reason - but what they manage to do by way of compensation is to incorporate this condition into his culpability. By extension, those who also have this disorder are tarred with the same brush, a thought that never crosses the mind of these journalists. Frankly, it is hard enough to explain this disorder without grand public condemnation.

There are so many additional confusing factors in this story - first, some tried to link the symptoms of selective mutism to autism, erroneouly. Then, some wanted to distance autism from the massacre, but in the process, really only achieved a separation of autism and selective mutism which was treated as the transference of violent tendencies to their rightful corresponding disorder.

The final article I want to excerpt is from Time Out, on the documentary broadcast this May on the first anniversary of the attack. The documentary itself was reasonably well done, but again too much credibility was given to uninformed "observations" - one teacher who had worked with him said that "selective mutism" seemed like an appropriate title as "It did seem really selective" - from one who should have been aware of the most basic clinical information having been given an amazing opportunity unavailable to most of us, that of researching the disorder and understanding it in context, the fundamental failure to appreciate that "selective" refers only to the situational basis and that it is so named to distinguish it from its predecessor, "elective mutism", which suggested that it was a choice. Gaaaaah!

Okay, here is most of the Time Out article:

The This World documentary Massacre at Virginia Tech (BBC Two) closed in silence with photographs of faces. There were 32 of them, so the sequence took an uncomfortable time. Behind each portrait lay a story with an end prematurely written by a tragically inadequate student called Cho Seung Hui who a year ago did the world a favour and finally turned the gun that had killed them on himself. The sequence felt like a rebuke to us for wanting to hear Cho's pathetic story and not those of his victims. But Cho would have been chuffed by the scrutiny Jonathan Hacker's otherwise excellent film awarded him. All he wanted was to be listened to.
Not that, during his lifetime, listening would have been easy: when he was 15, selective mutism was diagnosed, although this was only really a restatement of its main symptom, his refusal to talk to people. When later he deigned to speak to his English professor, his conversation hardly flowed. She would ask a question and wait up to 20 seconds for an answer that, when it came, was delivered in a whisper. He said he was lonely and depressed and had no friends. The professor, a British writer named Lucinda Roy, noted astutely: “A lot of people thought Cho tried to evade attention. I felt he really wanted to be noticed in a way that was to me disturbing.” When his weirdness got him thrown out of the regular English class, Roy offered individual tuition and one of her books as a gift. She may not have got so very close, but she came nearer, one felt, than any psychiatrist had to saving him.

There are so many things wrong with this, that I will merely highlight. First, while this is a specific case in which the sufferer happens to be a killer, that could be any of us, and making fun of it is ridiculous, offensive and Not Right. Selective Mutism is a clinical diagnosis, not an observation, and this was clear in the documentary, never mind with a quick Google. Once again, one unqualified individual's comments override any professional comment. I am well aware of the tendency for people to try to be the sole messiah figure "saving" a sufferer. The writer makes a mockery of SM, social anxiety disorder and related mental health conditions, with a stunning glorification of adult bullying.

And, by the way - "weirdness"?????

If you want to see where this leads, even in an community such as the LP forum, have a look at this thread for some initial reactions to the press coverage (brief).

Thankfully, here is the voice of sanity coming from Roanoake in an article that surveys the coverage and assesses the toll on mental health awareness. Elisa Shipon-Blum quoted in the article is widely regarded as the expert on that side of the Atlantic.

After my experiences, I'm not surprised that there is little motivation to understand this disorder. I'm even not surprised that it's being addressed as something that renders a sufferer merely an annoyance and inconvenience to the "normal" person. I am disappointed, however, at the breadth of misconception, much of it wilful, when the most superficial research via one of the many reputable organisations that deals with this would have preempted the major inaccuracies. This kind of image can only be damaging to those who speak out about their experiences and makes it even more difficult for children and adults with SM, who have a hard enough time as it is. What I can't get my head around is why it is so important to many to denigrate and demolish those who suffer from this disorder.

That most of the "eyewitness statements" are nothing more than familiar misconceptions and comments on one sufferer's "weirdness" speaks to the prejudice that would not be tolerated in the case of less common, but better understood conditions like autism or Tourette's.

My selective mutism was a problem when people saw it only through the lens of their own discomfort and made misplaced judgements about my character. It's not about control - the diagnostic criteria preclude control-related silence being identified as selective mutism. No child would choose the problems and condemnation of motivation that come with selective mutism.

To quote the very apt Jonathan Larson song, "Louder than Words":

Cages or wings?
Which do you prefer?
Ask the bird.

Slippery Slopes

2008-12-17T23:46:00.004Z

This is exactly the kind of problem I've been concerned about in all the anti-headscarf rhetoric over the past couple of years - come to fruition in the US already. In brief:

A city judge in Georgia has in the past eight days barred two Muslim women wearing Islamic headscarves from entering his courtroom, jailing one, and prompting an inquiry from the civil rights office at the US department of justice.
Judge Keith Rollins of Douglasville, Georgia, yesterday ordered Lisa Valentine, 41, to jail after she refused to remove her scarf before entering the courtroom, citing rules governing appropriate dress. Last week, Sabreen Abdulrahmaan was forced to leave Rollins's court before her son's probation hearing because she would not remove her scarf...
...Security officers handcuffed her and brought her before Rollins, who sentenced her to 10 days in jail when she declined to defend her actions at the security checkpoint, her husband Omar Hall said. Valentine, an insurance underwriter, was forced to take off the scarf and don an orange jumpsuit, chained and put aboard a jail bus with men and women.
"It felt like I was naked, because that's how I feel without my hijab," Valentine said. "You could have taken off my clothes and it would have felt the same way."...
...Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said the matter does not merely affect Muslims.
"What if you're a Jewish man wearing a skull cap? What if you're a Catholic nun wearing a habit?" Hooper asked. "All would be denied access to this judge's courtroom. We need to know what's going here and why this has apparently been going on for so long."

Full article from the Guardian.

I wonder if this is a separate incident, related to general headscarf discussion or if, more sinisterly, it's related to the campaign incidents. Neither campaign was too kind to the Muslim American. But here's the video I watch when I get frustrated.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

An Arab Family Man

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

I think I need to stop reading newspapers online, as they're not helping me relax. I think the current trend in blogging-style news reporting is deplorable, with reactionary and often ill-considered pieces being published online under the banner of the legitimate "brand" papers without consequence. A lot of damage could be done in a short time. I also really despise the populist move towards letting anyone - with complete anonymity - comment on articles. In the olden days you used to have to write a letter to the editor, wait a day and supply details (even if not published). I think the papers owe their employees a little more protection from bullying - everyone is free to comment on the internet, but there are other places to make anonymous challenges than on the official website where abusive comments cannot be avoided by the authors. Cyber-bullying is alive and well. It doesn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy about humanity. Particularly as a small but brilliant victory by one journalist on behalf of PG students in Scotland was blighted when (having been named as the student whose case was brought to the journalist's attention) I was personally villified by those commenting online. This suggests that there is a flaw in the system somewhere.

Something that does make me all warm and fuzzy is the festive boom in recorded benefit concerts by the cast of my favourite Broadway show! When you put the incomporable voice of Matt Doyle (Spring Awakening, Bare) with Sam Cooke and my favourite of his songs, even the accompanist can't help sitting there open mouthed instead of playing. This is a Christmas present to the world.

And in a more festive vein...

Further to yesterday's inanity...

2008-12-12T23:36:00.002Z

So I took another test. Don't worry, this comes over me from time to time.

Your result for The 3 Variable Funny Test...

the Wit

(67% dark, 27% spontaneous, 5% vulgar)

your humor style:
CLEAN | COMPLEX | DARK

You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you're probably an intellectual, but don't take that to mean pretentious. You realize 'dumb' can be witty--after all isn't that the Simpsons' philosophy?--but rudeness for its own sake, 'gross-out' humor and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat.

I guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer.

Your sense of humor takes the most thought to appreciate, but it's also the best, in my opinion.

You probably loved the Office. If you don't know what I'm
talking about, check it out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/.

PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart - Woody Allen - Ricky Gervais

Your result for The 4-Variable IQ Test...

Verbal

25% interpersonal, 10% visual, 45% verbal and 20% mathematical!

Your strongest type of intelligence is Verbal. You thrive on words, word games, and languages in general. I'm feeling insecure as I write this, because you are reading it. You see, language demands a certain level of recursive thought, and, as someone who just scored highly on it, I'm guessing you already noted the intentional dangling modifier I just put in this sentence. Didn't you? Smarty pants. 4-eyes.

Your specific scores follow. On any axis, a score above 25% means you use that kind of thinking more than average, and a score below 25% means you use it less. It says nothing about cognitive skills, just your interest.

Your brain is roughly:

25% Interpersonal

10%Visual

45%Verbal

20%Mathematical

Take The 4-Variable IQ Test at HelloQuizzy

Your result for The Brutally Honest Personality Test...

Freak- INFJ

0% Extraversion, 0% Intuition, 0% Thinking, 0% Judging

Well, well, well. How did someone like you end up with the least common personality type of them all? In a group of 100 Americans, only 0.5 others would be just like you. You really are one of a kind... In fact, I do believe that that's one of the definitions for the word "FREAK."

Freak's not such a bad word to describe you actually.

You are deep, complex, secretive and extremely difficult to understand. If that doesn't scream "Freak!" I don't know what does. No-one actually knows the REAL you, do they?

You probably have deep interests in creative expression as well as issues of spirituality and human development.

You've probably even been called a "psychic" before, because of your uncanny knack to understand and "read" people without quite knowing how you do it. Don't fret. You're not actually psychic. That would make you special and you'll never accomplish that.

You're also quite possible the most emotional of them all, so don't take this all too hard. Nevertheless you most definitely have the strangest personality type and that's not necessarily a good thing.

*****************

If you enjoyed that test, make sure you check out my latest venture: The Presidential Capacity Quiz - It's much shorter, just as fun and just as accurate. Find out how far you would get in the race for President. Are you fit to rule the free world?

*****************

If you want to learn more about your personality type in a slightly less negative way, check out this.

*****************

Tickle Me Startled

2008-12-11T11:13:00.003Z

Two years ago I was Snuffy. It came up in conversation and I decided to see how I had changed...

Your result for The Your SESAME STREET Persona Test...

Elmo

You scored 67% Organization, 68% abstract, and 59% extroverted!

This test measured 3 variables.

First, this test measured how organized you are. Some muppets like Cookie Monster make big messes, while others like Bert are quite anal about things being clean.

Second, this test measured if you prefer a concrete or an abstract viewpoint. For the purposes of this test, concrete people are considered to gravitate more to mathematical and logical approaches, whereas abstract people are more the dreamers and artistic type.

Third, this test measured if you are more of an introvert or an extrovert. By definition, an introvert concentrates more on herself and an extrovert focuses more on others. In this test an introvert was somebody that either tends to spend more time alone or thinks more about herself.

You are mostly organized, more abstract, and both introverted and extroverted.

Most people either love or hate Elmo. I hope you love Elmo, because that's who you are.

You are both somewhat organized. You have a good idea where you put things and you probably keep your place reasonably clean. You aren't totally obsessed with neatness though. Elmo has the same basic approach. His place is pretty tidy, but he doesn't spend all of his time cleaning it up.

You both are abstract thinkers. You definitely are not afraid to take chances in life. You only live once. You may notice others around you playing it safe, but you are more concerned with not compromising your desires, and getting everything you can out of life. This is a very romantic approach to life, but hopefully you are also grounded enough to get by. Elmo's whole life is based on fantasy and his imagination. In the beginning he was a regular character, but now he spends most of his time in this fantasy world.

You are both somewhat extroverts. Like Elmo, you probably like to have some time to yourself, but you do appreciate spending time with your friends, and you aren't scared of social situations. Elmo spends some of his time with real friends, but he also needs some time just to chat it up with his goldfish.

The other possible characters are

Oscar the Grouch

Big Bird

Cookie Monster

Ernie

Snuffleupagus

Kermit the Frog

Grover

The Count

Guy Smiley

Bert

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Take The Your SESAME STREET Persona Test at HelloQuizzy

Play

2008-12-09T14:01:00.002Z

It's amazing how everything in Divinity seems to end up connected in a circular fashion to everyone else's research. Since I'm doing work on ritual, I seem to be closer to the religion and politics people and the arts people even more than the (obvious) biblical studies people.

Here's a great paper that my friend Danny has just published on play.

Danny has some great stuff to say on the wholeness of humanity - not just a "spiritual" person, a modern/Gnostic concept that I react badly to but which seems to be the general trend, but to realise that the image of God extends into the physical. In short, to be flesh is not to be fleshly.

The blurring of arbitrarily drawn lines is something that I make my business. As much as I believe that clarity of thought and scholarship is served by categorisation and classification, I also know that we must make a distinction between that which distinguishes itself from another and that which we make distinct for an experiment in thought or study. The problem that I think the modern church has is in recognising that, as much as we cling to absolutes, there are many areas of relativism which are built in. More on this later.

Christmas is Coming!

2008-12-06T20:34:00.008Z

And who knows where they're going to be on the day? Well, a lot of people do, but not me. Yet. I have options...

I have to own up to my American friends - I missed the posting date already as I've been so busy lately (hence the absence). I'm still making my Christmas card list, and I think I might settle for heartfelt emailing that actually happens on time. I can't really afford presents this year... sorry. But it could be worse this Christmas!

I'm going to be in New York City over a weekend in January to bid farewell to Spring Awakening on Broadway, in this most disastrous of winters for Broadway-scale theatre. People I've done some singing for are paying for that ticket, and I'm excited to have bought my own for Pal Joey at Studio 54. I'm always excited about new drama, especially musical, but you should never forget my love for anything involving Lorenz Hart's brilliant lyrics and the old masters of Broadway. I, like many of those who are eagerly anticipating this production, suspect that Stockard Channing's Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered should be worth the price of the ticket.

I've rediscovered my love for Candide while I've been working hard. If you're unaware, it's satire based on Voltaire. Here's "You were dead, you know" from Act 1. Good stuff.

I've been having a really productive work time, as I'm trying to get a complete-partial draft (the whole text-method thing without secondary lit) of my thesis together. However, I'm also tutoring and taking professional development courses (we have an 80-hour annual requirement) so I'm pretty busy. I spent a good five days a few weeks ago marking book reviews and my classes just turned in some essays that I'm marking! I also wrote a short article on selective mutism that's being published in a magazine in January and have been editing a drama analysis that I did on suicide in theatre. Sadly, I had to pass on the deadlines for next semester's theatre projects, even though playwrighting remains a career priority. Needless to say, it's been a morning to bedtime (sometimes past-bedtime) occupation recently. I am enjoying it, though - I work much better when I have to time-manage as opposed to having one task fill my days.

Still, I decided to go to open-mic night at the Byre last night, and (though I should know better than to think I can leave early) ended up staying till closing time again and I staggered home to collapse into bed. I slept till noon today! Noon!

I hope I sleep tonight. Sleeeep....

Zombie-Like, but Still Alive

2008-12-05T19:41:00.000Z

Need sleep. Need sleep. Need sleeeeeeeeep.

We'll catch up soon. Promise.

90 years

2008-11-11T11:00:00.002Z

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning
We will remember them.

Hail to the chief, etc.

2008-11-05T12:14:00.004Z

So, you Americans can look forward to President Obama. Congratulations! I'm going to be in Times Square on Inauguration Day! Seriously.

So proposition 8 passed in California, and all its ugly cousins elsewhere, proving that the rights of the minority continue to be submitted to the will of the majority against all principles of civil rights. That makes it a mixed day for policy, but with the final say in the courts, it remains a milestone for leadership. As my friend Shawna pointed out, the animal rights-related proposition 2 also passed, so it's a very good day to be a chicken!

Let the Bush era be ended! And just hope he doesn't do anything crazy before January. Though perhaps slightly jaded by spending our early years with the Reagan-Bush governments, I feel that my generation in this country was generally positive and optimistic about the admirable idealism of the USA, until GWB, the spin doctors and his administration took that idealism and twisted it into the glorification of wilful ignorance. The fear politics of the McCain-Palin campaign were a prime example. Let's hope we can be inspired again!

I'm delighted for many of my American friends here who have, over the past few years, taken on a fatalistic and dispirited look when discussing their politics. I hope this administration is everything they deserve and gives a voice back to the people, in all their varying opinions, and which values common sense and debate.

I thought I should record this historic moment, since I waffle about everything else.

October video roundup

2008-10-28T18:37:00.003Z

Since my computer crashes intermittently now and its replacement hasn't arrived yet, I may not manage to retrieve and post my October part 2 before the end of the month. Oh well.

Spring Awakening closes on Broadway on the 18th of January. I know this will sound melodramatic, but it's terribly sad for the artistic, creative side of Broadway and a great loss. It's been a terrific force of encouragement to many and, though its source was written over a century ago, it remains a challenging work that is so perfectly interpreted on stage and in music. It's been a big part of my life over these past few months and I will miss it.

Here's a new montage from the touring cast, who are widely reported to be fantastic, and whom I cannot wait to see on tour next year when I return to the midwest.

And another, with Blake Bashoff as the underslept, overworked and ultimately suicidal Moritz, whom I saw while he was on Broadway just before he left to join the tour.

The fantastic, stream-of-consciousness musical [title of show] I saw in a small downtown theatre more than two years ago very late at night, and it has just finished its Broadway run. So, it might be a bit late to post a promo video, but this is the opening song which sets up the concept and it's great to have a video!

For fun, here's a short tortured MTV ballad from Bill Bailey:

And his very-Jacques Brel-esque (satire and all) love song, which is, above all else I post here, a must-see.

---
ETA:

You should know by now that when I haven't posted for a while, I'm either travelling or reading/writing really hard and spending my spare time recharging my brain on YouTube or with telly (it really works!). You should also know that this is the sort of post that follows that situation.

I'm off to bond with fellow Spring Awakening mourners on the posting board... bye!

Colin Powell backs Obama

2008-10-20T00:29:00.000+01:00

There's a good survey of the interview on the BBC.

A Revealing Moment

2008-10-17T10:46:00.003+01:00

This is classic. As I tried to save my general thoughts file this morning:

Cannot save: (...).../Ideas.doc
Problem: The disc is full or too many files are open.

This could easily apply to my brain.

Excuse me, I am having my quarter-life crisis RIGHT NOW

2008-10-15T10:54:00.004+01:00

Let's examine the evidence. I've been spending time with younger people (okay, much of this is paid work or with the prospect of paid work). I have a problem with authority (okay, I've had a problem with authority - or, more accurately, people claiming to have authority, which is not the same thing). I have dyed my hair twice, in different colours, over the past few weeks. I have now dyed it a very dark colour. I decided to paint my nails yesterday. I painted them spring green and spent the day startling myself whenever I moved my hands. I'm wearing metallic turqoise eyeliner. My lipgloss has glitter.

Either it's the mid-nineties again or I'm having a quarter-life crisis. This all came to me at once last night in a horrendously sudden wave of self-revelation, and as I lay groaning over Danny's furniture I remembered this song (from the wonderful revue The Bad Years by the equally wonderful Kerrigan and Lowdermilk) that seems to encapsulate my recent behaviour, France and all, in an appropriately embarrassing manner.

P.S. That was Dennis Moench. He sings pretty.

October update, part 1

2008-10-08T22:53:00.006+01:00

I have a folder in my Internet favourites called “Things to Blog”. I think I have actually got round to it three times in the history of my blog. I see that it is threatening to expand beyond reasonable limits, so here are some of those things interspersed with a quick update on my life. Part one is the work of other people, part two will be about me.

This isn’t news to most of you, but Boris Johnson is the mayor of London. This frightens me, and it frightens the people who contributed to this collection of reactions to his candidacy:. If nothing else, just scroll down and see what comes out of his mouth when he speaks for himself.

On the Graham Norton show, aided by Eddie Izzard and Harry Shearer, our host pondered one of those eternal questions – are baboons evil? Meanwhile, if you don’t mind Frankie Boyle’s colourful language, I found the following part of Mock the Week the funniest thing to happen on the show all year. This is what happens when vaguely satirical panel shows meet paranoia.

The Guardian had a good article on the play Fat Pig. Article here, website here. I was in London last week and around theatre people, and this was the only thing I heard any buzz about.

Another article from the Guardian – okay, not the last, either – Ed Byrne’s travel piece on skiing.

An assessment of Braveheart’s historical accuracy.

After his lady love is murdered by the English, Wallace pretends to surrender. At the last minute, he whips out a concealed nunchaku. Wait, what? Glossing over its implication that medieval Scotland imported arms from China, Wallace's rebellion gathers pace at the Battle of Stirling Bridge, which the film has inexplicably set in a field. Rather than, you know, on a bridge. For pity's sake. The clue's in the name.

‘Nuff said. Article here.

Less infuriating, a good article on my favourite book, Brideshead Revisited, which concurs with my problems with the trailer for the new film (though I still can’t wait to see it), but goes far beyond that to explore the spectre of the Great War throughout Waugh’s masterpiece.
Even mentioning Graham Greene’s thoughts on the prologue – author of my other favourite book (I only have 4), The Quiet American – provides a kind of meta-textual event.

Still dying to go to Spain, and here are some reasons.
I just love Spanish art and architecture, and can’t wait to actually explore properly. Something that makes me sad is that it’s so cheap to go to a faceless beach resort and be surrounded by drunk British people, but still prohibitively expensive to go wandering for a couple of weeks. Sigh. One day. Maybe I’ll go when I finish my thesis. I keep saying I’ll go to India, but I can’t afford it and every time I mention it something gets blown up in my latest destination of choice. So for the sake of the people of India alone, I feel that I should maybe just keep my mouth shut.

This really brings home how long my list has languished – many, many months ago Paramount were running “Fakespeare” episodes between programmes, short films “modernising” Shakespeare, or rather, applying Shakespeare to a modern context.

Just watch this one for a start, and you can see the others in the same place.

Going back to the Guardian for a minute, here’s an appealingly short and direct response to the Tory claim that Bridget Jones is destroying family life. It also highlights the difficulty that remains for single women, when the political parties are keen for pawns that demonstrate their view of family, as if any single woman could solve the nation’s problems by getting married tomorrow.

Here’s a piece on the problems with the rapture that neatly covers most of my problems with the Left Behind series (though this is in relation to reality, which is a wee bit more troubling). I bring these things up because they are hugely influential ideas in which a lot of churchy material hitting our shores is saturated, but of which I think the average informed British churchgoer knows little.

On a similarly troubling note, there was much buzz in the blogosphere a while ago about this article from the Yemen Times, entitled “There must be violence against women”. Links to slightly different versions: here and here

I think a lot of these arguments are worth examining, rather than dismissing offhand, as I believe the same reasoning underlies a lot of very disturbing pseudo-Christian reasoning on the use of violence. I think it is often helpful to mirror back to people exactly what they are saying and the wider implications. Yes, I am a pacifist, so I am never going to encourage the use of damaging physical force, but even from a purely civil point of view, I think the issue is that I do not believe that any kind of relationship makes it acceptable to inflict upon another person anything that would be unacceptable to do to someone of “equal” status to you that you met in the street.

If that all got a bit heavy, try this article on ancient zombies. Seriously. No, really, go and read it.

And, just for fun, here are the new photos of the current leads in Spring Awakening (Broadway) from Playbill.

And a recent interview with current Wendla, Alexandra Socha. I've seen her; she rocks.

The unbelievably fantastic and adorable touring cast of SA are keeping a wonderful travelogue on their YouTube channel, updating just about every day. Visit them at TotallyTrucked.

Meanwhile, some new-cast-y videos are popping up. Exciting times.

I also look forward to the SA writing team’s Nero, publicly workshopped this summer.

The brilliant bare is going up in San Francisco (I thoroughly recommend the recording with Matt Doyle, among others)

Yes, Playbill and the Guardian are all I seem to have time to read these days.

Although: finally, a Neil Gaiman story, Goliath. His take on the Matrix concept.

Interblogging... a.k.a. content, none of it mine.

2008-09-21T15:02:00.004+01:00

I love Nick Hornby's post here for its non-judgemental yet unapologetic tone.

And Mariam, as if by way of revenge for the eulogy I wrote her some time ago, did her own sort of eulogy for me here.

I will be posting a video roundup of the Last Night of the Proms soon.

Speaking of Anarchy in the UK...

2008-09-18T09:44:00.002+01:00

I finally get a clear day and I spend it inside waiting for a parcel from BT? Quelle unfair. But cheering me up is this compilation of Rob Brydon's appearances on the wonderful radio programme I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue (TV recorded episode available here until Saturday), in the game called "One Song to the Tune of Another". You may or probably won't remember my post last year about his version of Anarchy in the UK and how hilarious is was, but I promise I did.

And now, finally, someone has posted a compilation including this one on YouTube. Do listen!

Global Judgement

2008-09-12T11:16:00.003+01:00

See this article by Jonathan Freedman from the Guardian. Excerpt:

But what of the rest of the world? This is the reaction I fear most. For Obama has stirred an excitement around the globe unmatched by any American politician in living memory. Polling in Germany, France, Britain and Russia shows that Obama would win by whopping majorities, with the pattern repeated in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. If November 4 were a global ballot, Obama would win it handsomely. If the free world could choose its leader, it would be Barack Obama.
The crowd of 200,000 that rallied to hear him in Berlin in July did so not only because of his charisma, but also because they know he, like the majority of the world's population, opposed the Iraq war. McCain supported it, peddling the lie that Saddam was linked to 9/11. Non-Americans sense that Obama will not ride roughshod over the international system but will treat alliances and global institutions seriously: McCain wants to bypass the United Nations in favour of a US-friendly League of Democracies. McCain might talk a good game on climate change, but a repeated floor chant at the Republican convention was "Drill, baby, drill!", as if the solution to global warming were not a radical rethink of the US's entire energy system but more offshore oil rigs.
If Americans choose McCain, they will be turning their back on the rest of the world, choosing to show us four more years of the Bush-Cheney finger. And I predict a deeply unpleasant shift.
Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and much misunderstood: outside a leftist hardcore, it has mostly been anti-Bushism, opposition to this specific administration. But if McCain wins in November, that might well change. Suddenly Europeans and others will conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling clique, but Americans themselves. For it will have been the American people, not the politicians, who will have passed up a once-in-a-generation chance for a fresh start - a fresh start the world is yearning for...
...For America to make a decision as grave as this one - while the planet boils and with the US fighting two wars - on the trivial basis that a hockey mom is likable and seems down to earth, would be to convey a lack of seriousness, a fleeing from reality, that does indeed suggest a nation in, to quote Weisberg, "historical decline". Let's not forget, McCain's campaign manager boasts that this election is "not about the issues."
Of course I know that even to mention Obama's support around the world is to hurt him. Incredibly, that large Berlin crowd damaged Obama at home, branding him the "candidate of Europe" and making him seem less of a patriotic American. But what does that say about today's America, that the world's esteem is now unwanted? If Americans reject Obama, they will be sending the clearest possible message to the rest of us - and, make no mistake, we shall hear it.

I'm about as enamoured with Palin as he appears to be. I may be too much of an optimist, but I don't think race is going to be the defining issue on this one. Nor am I sure that conjecture about the reaction of blue America is necessary or accurate. However, I think he's dead on about anti-Bush vs. anti-American sentiment.

The thing that bothers me, having watched the conventions of both parties, is the level of rhetoric that casts America in the role of "leader of the free world", etc. Given that this is supposedly based on the USA as a beacon of democracy and freedom, it seems a bit rich that the rest of us are lumped into the metaphor as subjects. If any superpower wants to assume the role of world leader, give the rest of us a vote, I say. This type of rhetoric may work at home, but in the age of global, 24-hour media, I think it's not doing the US any favours, especially when the state is so at odds with the rest of the "free world". This type of grandstanding is at odds with protests from those who see foreign comment as irrelevant or irritating.

Ahhh, BBC Radio 4

2008-09-08T23:42:00.003+01:00

I love radio.

I love the warm, carpeted sound of the BBC radio channels. I love that it's the last refuge of the eccentric, with the idiosyncratic monologues and the dippy advertising which represents the best of British culture.

Most of all I love the weird segues and wonderfully nutty announcers, such as this gem from the introduction to Stephen Fry's English delight, a programme on language:

"This programme contains... language. Some of it strong. Naughty Stephen."

How could I emigrate?

Actually blogged

2008-09-08T14:42:00.002+01:00

I just took a lunch hour and, as I used to do, spent it blogging. That leaves just two posts to finish for Paris (sniff) to make 28 in total, and means I can shortly crack open my gold journal and get June typed up and posted. I think it has been better dealing with one at a time, but I'm keen to get the American trip blogged.

Here's Paris blog post number 26.

Video blogging, but musically

2008-09-07T22:14:00.003+01:00

Yes, I love Spring Awakening. Shall we get on? I've been on YouTube again.

The US touring cast of SA sing the Mama Who Bore Me reprise

Kyle Riabko (current touring Melchior and the one I saw on Broadway in June) singing his own version of "Left Behind" (the funeral song in the show)

Without Precedent

2008-09-07T13:16:00.005+01:00

Wow - I never thought this would happen, but I actually agree with David Cameron. See this article on the BBC.

Okay, so I only agree with him on the "back him or sack him" comment to the Labour Party, and I still don't want to see him as Prime Minister ever in a million years under any circumstances, but it's something. I much preferred the sensible William Hague, and I don't even like the Tories. But I would feel reasonably safe with him in charge of the nuclear button. (This brings me to another question: is our "nuclear deterrent" actually aimed at anybody?)

Ed Balls seems to be talking sense, and let's not take that for granted in the present political climate. Is it me, or have politicians (David Cameron aside) been extremely quiet lately, while the media get on with villifying and ridiculing Gordon Brown, a task which only makes them look ridiculous?

Talking of ridiculous media, this is a prime example of what I'm talking about when I lament that the press, especially on the internet, just write whatever they want regardless of its basis in fact, a trend that may sound like it's being going on for some time but I maintain exploded in recent months. The culprit is ITN, who start their article, "Scots singer KT Tunstall has tied the knot on a remote Scottish island." The remote Scottish island? The Isle of Skye. The least remote island of all the non-remote Scottish islands, of which there are many, mere steps away from the west coast rail line and connected to the mainland by a disappointingly short and unimpressive bridge.

Though, on reflection, perhaps "remote" is now defined as "I can't see it from my desk."

Told you I was becoming old and grumpy.

A Funny Thing Happened on My Way through the Internet

2008-09-06T22:55:00.003+01:00

Artistic things are happening!

Whitney's in Florida and getting rave reviews in Forum: see here.

I'm - gulp - workshopping something I can't talk about with people who are much, much better than me. Very soon. I have to go and learn "Paint it Black." Don't ask.

I wrote English lyrics to three songs by an as-yet-unsigned French singer-songwriter while in Paris, and last night one was performed at a gig. That's miniscule royalties but an ego boost for me, and my apologies to the people of Paris. My lyric starts, "Well, I'm still standing here by this hole in the ground..."

I'm still working at a crawl pace on the Paris blog, and added the third last day's second part this evening. Here.

My august presence

2008-08-27T11:07:00.004+01:00

So many little things have been happening that confirm any niggling worries about being misrepresented, misread and unsupported. Any concerns about the culture of selfishness and the difficulty of finding oneself on the wrong side of same are thrice confirmed. The increasingly tabloid culture of all our media is driving me potty. The psoriasis is bad, but this time it's in the joints and not the skin, and yet again I have to reflect on how our society treats people who have the audacity not to be exactly like everyone else. I've spent three months trying to get my status at this university sorted out, and I think I have hit the point where I become disillusioned. I don't like it!

I'm grumpy all the time, and my usual fear of being disappointed with people, given good reason, has sprung into life as disbelief, genuine anger and cynicism. And not in my usual, fun way. There are some fun things still going on, but so far the red mist has failed to lift and I don't like carrying my disillusionment around with me. In some ways, given the three months of work that have been completely disrupted by problems such as my lack of library access, anger is the natural and healthy response. But when I've been left stuck in a system that doesn't give me any outlet and no one takes ownership, it makes it my problem, not theirs.

I now have a wide-ranging and ever-lengthening list of things for which there is clearly no excuse, including dog fouling, the state of Olympic tennis, un-Christian behaviour equated with liberalism, un-Christian behaviour justified as liberalism, the Biedermeyer era, newspapers failing to protect their journalists online, this university's administration, Lucius Aelius Sejanus, the past subjunctive in French, call centres, and the Conservative party.

Where's Thomas Aquinas when you need him?

Last Choir Standing: drawn in

2008-08-17T23:09:00.002+01:00

In an unusual departure from my fence-sitting and fickle reality-TV persona, this choir have been my favourite from the start, ACM Gospel. I love their sound and their overwhelmingly positive and energetic MD. The only thing I don't like about them is how much they make me miss being in a gospel choir.

Paris: Week Four

2008-08-16T12:14:00.003+01:00

More blogging! If you've been reading the other one, these may not be news to you, but just in case. Week 4 included the university talent show, so it's less intense, blog-wise.

19. Montmartre (again), St Denis and hardened criminals (again)
20. Canal St-Martin
21. Galeries Lafayette
22. Commuter rage and Montmartre (again again)
23. Catacombs and coffee shops

Insensitivity...

2008-08-15T12:44:00.002+01:00

As if the Olympics weren't marred by the appalling treatment of a little girl by the Chinese authorities - who still seem to have no idea what they did wrong - the tense and politically charged beach volleyball match between Russia and Georgia was accompanied by some inappropriate-in-wartime music. From Laurence Donegan's Guardian article:

That the cheerleaders and the brainless chatter of the MC are an insult to both women and the intelligence of those who bought tickets goes without saying. But what was to be made of the music choices blared out during the many pauses in this morning's play: Blitzkrieg Bop, by the Ramones? Burning Down The House, by Talking Heads? Sex Bomb, by Tom Jones? If there is a gold medal for crass insensitivity this week, then the rest of the field might as well pack their bags and go home.

Paris: Week three

2008-08-01T08:33:00.005+01:00

Now home and getting the blog uploaded! Grateful to have a working internet connection...

14: Bastille Day:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

15: Petit Palais
16: Père-Lachaise
17: Musée Carnavalet
18: Versailles

Last Week a.k.a. Paris Prison Blues

2008-07-25T09:30:00.001+01:00

A summary of the non-travel-bloggable. The rest has been travel blogged, but posting delayed due to dodginess of internet access.

Have I mentioned that I love my French class here? It’s a really nice group of people from all over the world, Vietnam, USA, South Korea, Japan, Poland, Sweden, Brazil, Mexico, Taiwan… and we have a fantastic and fun teacher.

One of his projects was the Spectacle, appropriately named, or la fête internationale. Students from different countries performed songs of varying national relevance, and while my friends seemed to be forming the “get Kathleen to sing in public” lobby, I resisted – and yet Scotland was most adequately represented. Our class was charged with the tremendous responsibility of performing a song called “Ce Georges”, all about the mysterious magnetism of George Clooney. Everyone I told thought I was kidding. I wasn’t. By the time we’d abandoned the tricky verses at lightning speed, to which we did not know the tune, and replaced them with dramatic readings punctuated by an a capella rendition of the chorus, our piece came across as a very French piece of experimental theatre. Tina took a video of one part. Ahem.

One of the things I’ll miss most is going to be getting to sit and stare at the Opera from the bus every morning. I will miss seeing so many iconic Parisian sights from my bus. Here are some videos to give you an impression.

I will miss hanging around in the courtyard and spending time around the school.

Talking of dodgy, I will not miss Parisian men. More particularly, I will not miss the Parisian men who hang around the main intersections to hassle (in the “come for a drink, come for a drink,” category) anyone minus a Y-chromosome. There are no “get lost” signals clear enough, and they don’t give up. They try several languages, and even if you speak French (they’re not usually native speakers), they will pretend they do not understand your French to try to rattle you. Quite what they hope this will achieve none of us girls has put a finger on, but it’s annoying at least. Most irritatingly, they know exactly what they can get away with up to the point that any action you can take that would be effective in getting rid of them would probably get you arrested for assault. Seriously, they have tested my pacifism, and I admit that when they start getting into my personal space, I’m not above treading on toes.

So when I was followed at 8pm tonight at Porte St-Ouen, I thought it was the typical street-corner follower type. And he was in many ways, but he followed me a long way, despite me completely ignoring him. The first problem was that my bus stop was blocked off by roadworks, unhelpfully missing from the transport info site (thanks a lot, RATP). When he got in front of me so I had to acknowledge him, I took the advice of a helpful Frenchman and walked round him, saying I was in a hurry. He kept following me and trying different languages, none of which I responded to. I was grateful to note a couple of men already at my bus stop, as I really didn’t want to hang around there alone. At this point Monsieur Obnoxious decided that it would be a really good idea to grab me around the shoulders. It was not. That ended my “ignoring” phase, and I used just about all the imperative verbs I know in the region of, “go, leave, don’t touch me, get lost” etc. Naturally he pretended not to know what I was saying, but eventually he backed off – it’s hard to keep up the pretence when your victim resorts to “Allez!” with emphatic hand gestures. He followed me to the bus stop, however, and kept at it almost until the bus arrived, and I must admit I was very disappointed that no one offered any help. I’m not impressed. I had visions of my travel journal being finished from prison – possibly the Conciergerie – scratched into the prison linen with a pipe cleaner in invisible ink. I would list my many achievements and trials in Paris, which would tragically all end with, “But I killed a man at Porte St-Ouen.”*

I really hope I can come back next year, as it’s been so worthwhile, language-wise and I know that it has helped me greatly to get out of St Andrews and into a proper city for a month; it got me away from the registry, away from my desk (or the looming threat of my desk), I’m so motivated to get back into my thesis, and it’s nice that my entire month has been about talking to people.

And one thing I’m looking forward to about returning home? The country! Next Thursday all I want to do is drive off into the hills and see fresh things!

*Just to watch him die.

[Mais je reste bloqué à Paris,

Comme une petite cobaye – thus ends my original and not remotely derivative song]

Finally - week 2

2008-07-16T22:24:00.002+01:00

Week two is up in text - somewhat questionably laid out, but all there and in good order. Pictures still to come - sadly my connection isn't up to that just yet.

7. Lundi church-hopping
8. On the Rive Gauche
9. Madeleine and the ballet
10. Les Arts Decoratifs
11. La Defense and the Louvre (a.k.a. hardened criminals)
12. Montmartre
13. At home with Victor Hugo

Vive la France!

2008-07-16T21:21:00.002+01:00

Still here, still alive, still with a temperamental internet connection. But I am very much up-to-date with the journalling and am just itching to get over to the girls' and upload it all with photos and videos and everything. Bastille Day was exciting - chaotic and tiring, but worth being here for! More soon. Postcards are on their way.

Paris!

2008-07-08T20:33:00.002+01:00

The travel blogging so far happened in a spurt all in one evening when I had a brief internet connection on my laptop. Yet nobody noticed. Sniff...

So here is the link to each post so far:

1: Arrival in France
2: Île de la Cité and first classes
3: Paris... when it drizzles
4: Jardin du Luxembourg and the Pantheon
5: A pied in the 7th arondissement
6: Free Museum Day!

I'm not going to link forward on every post like last summer, as I put that together once I had already done the diary and was breaking it up into chunks based on this. This is a work in progress so you'll just have to cope... every post is backdated to the date it describes, so there should be no chronology problem.

Bonjour!

2008-07-03T18:51:00.002+01:00

I'm in a great French class with a great teacher and despite taking two days to buy sun lotion I am but a light pink. France is my language lab. Le Champion is my supermarket. Paris in the rain smells of parchment and powdered sugar.

Oh, yeah, and while I am journaling, I have a sporadic wireless connection and my writing is on my laptop (this is the flat PC, with a very challenging French keyboard - AZERTY - what's that about?) - so I will post in chunks from elsewhere.

A bientôt!

Alive and Well and Living in Paris

2008-06-30T22:38:00.004+01:00

Well, I made it.

It wasn’t an uneventful day, but it has ended well, and now I sit in my Paris apartment, darkness (sadly) outside, waiting for Kenny, my flatmate, to arrive from Manchester. Or rather, to arrive from the Gare du Nord, where he was when he last texted.

Oral test tomorrow, so must get ready for bed, but here are two pictures from my new place, just to make you jealous.

Here’s the plan. I will put all the day-to-day, rubbishy posts here, and on my Paris blog, W hen It Sizzles.

Anything worth travel-blogging – i.e. the sights, interesting anecdotes – I will post on the Paris blog and my travel blog, The Great Affair, and link to it from here. Likewise, anything that’s troublesome to post multiple times.

If all that sounds complicated, just keep reading this blog, follow links where things don’t appear here in full, and be aware that should you, at any point, want it, all my Paris musings will be collected somewhere.

It's not an obsession if it's really good...

2008-06-28T01:34:00.001+01:00

What?

A St Andrews Poem for an Overcast Day

2008-06-25T10:52:00.002+01:00

Not mine, alas; this comes from the pen of Robert Fuller Murray, a St Andrews man of the nineteenth century.

A COLLEGE CAREER

I

When one is young and eager,
  A bejant and a boy,
Though his moustache be meagre,
  That cannot mar his joy
When at the Competition
He takes a fair position,
And feels he has a mission,
  A talent to employ.

With pride he goes each morning
  Clad in a scarlet gown,
A cap his head adorning
  (Both bought of Mr. Brown);
He hears the harsh bell jangle,
And enters the quadrangle,
The classic tongues to mangle
  And make the ancients frown.

He goes not forth at even,
  He burns the midnight oil,
He feels that all his heaven
  Depends on ceaseless toil;
Across his exercises
A dream of many prizes
Before his spirit rises,
  And makes his raw blood boil.

II

Though he be green as grass is,
  And fresh as new-mown hay
Before the first year passes
  His verdure fades away.
His hopes now faintly glimmer,
Grow dim and ever dimmer,
And with a parting shimmer
  Melt into 'common day.'

He cares no more for Liddell
  Or Scott; and Smith, and White,
And Lewis, Short, and Riddle
  Are 'emptied of delight.'
Todhunter and Colenso
(Alas, that friendships end so!)
He curses in extenso
  Through morning, noon, and night.

No more with patient labour
  The midnight oil he burns,
But unto some near neighbour
  His fair young face he turns,
To share the harmless tattle
Which bejants love to prattle,
As wise as infant's rattle
  Or talk of coots and herns.

At midnight round the city
  He carols wild and free
Some sweet unmeaning ditty
  In many a changing key;
And each succeeding verse is
Commingled with the curses
Of those whose sleep disperses
  Like sal volatile.

He shaves and takes his toddy
  Like any fourth year man,
And clothes his growing body
  After another plan
Than that which once delighted
When, in the days benighted,
Like some wild thing excited
  About the fields he ran.

III

A sweet life and an idle
  He lives from year to year,
Unknowing bit or bridle
  (There are no proctors here),
Free as the flying swallow
Which Ida's Prince would follow
If but his bones were hollow,
  Until the end draws near.

Then comes a Dies Irae,
  When full of misery
And torments worse than fiery
  He crams for his degree;
And hitherto unvexed books,
Dry lectures, abstracts, text-books,
Perplexing and perplexed books,
  Make life seem vanity.

IV

Before admiring sister
  And mother, see, he stands,
Made Artium Magister
  With laying on of hands.
He gives his books to others
(Perchance his younger brothers),
And free from all such bothers
  Goes out into all lands.

A precursor to the travel blogging

2008-06-22T01:07:00.006+01:00

Oh yes, I kept a diary. And will begin typing soon (possibly while in Paris). But for now, and as I'm intrigued by the number of emails I hear are flying around about my blog - don't you want to know how I know? - I thought I'd post some of my photo albums. They're as many photos as I think will ever end up published on the web, but there's not a lot of commentary as I still have the main journal to come. In the meantime, here is the opportunity to see for yourself.

Here are the pictures from the wedding of the year:

Wandering New York:

Dying in the heat in Philadelphia:

Colorado album 1:

Colorado album 2:

That's the whole travelly pictorial bit. More later!

I'm back!

2008-06-19T04:25:00.005+01:00

Thought I'd post some Spring Awakening stuff since I'm up too early and watching it on YouTube. Seriously, this is one of the best things I've ever seen on stage and uses all sorts of techniques and influences from world theatre and contemporary dance, not to mention being a really good and faithful adaptation of the controversial play (about the disastrous consequences on a group of teenagers as a result of mishandling by the adults in their lives) with fabulous Duncan Sheik music that uses a colour palette full of open fourths and fifths. One thing it does really well is using its ensemble cast almost all the way through, with everyone on stage the whole time and harmonies as part of the orchestration. They also use the unique voices of everyone well including catering to the different ranges and -wonder of wonders - actually being able to showcase the male voice well. Here's a rare chance to hear a whole song without the dialogue that usually goes on top of it (even on the CD).

I can't stop listening to Skylar Astin's voice... but I need to look up more videos for that sort of thing,.. (on the first video he's the fifth soloist with the really mellow, pleasant voice who does all the extemporising).

Here's the performance at the Tony Awards

Hiatus... again

2008-06-03T14:44:00.000+01:00

The one just passed and the one to come.

I've had quite a stressful few weeks, building up to this trip. Money was a headache to start with, then I ended up having to re-juggle all my travel arrangements, and had to have my parents pay to reroute my flights for this month.

Immediately after this the electricity company decided to tell me that as my meter-reader-bloke had taken two readings instead of three, they had not bothered to tell me that they had been estimating my bills as a result. They then sent a £680 bill for immediate payment. Negotiations happened.

Then there was the graduate endowment. See below...

Finally, and concurrently, I was worried about my transfer to PhD, which should have happened some time ago. The facts are these. I matriculated in Sept 2006 as a second year MPhil student, skipping the taught year. The plan was to submit the GRO whenever was appropriate and transfer to the PhD, skipping the MPhil too (this whole plan, with the skipping of a couple of years' study, made me nervous, but my supervisor was encouraging and it has gone okay). Normally the MPhil would be two academic years in length, but as second years lost the half-time commitment to the dissertation in the second semester of the first year, the end date for second year entry was the end of September. Not the end of August as with the taught courses. However, this lined up subsequent matriculation with the undergraduates, which should have avoided crisis. I matriculated into a six-month extension beginning in Sept 2007 to allow me to complete a proper methodological survey and write the GRO based on this, which left my end date as March 2008. However, my supervisor proposed that two months of spring be deleted retroactively as he had been busy and away, so I had a retroactive leave of absence. This meant that I was no longer into my six-month extension as my new end date was the end of November 2007. With the six-month extension, already granted, my final end date for the extension was Saturday, 31st May 2008.

There should have been no reason for me to finish the extension period, as I submitted and passed the GRO in January. Of course, nothing ever runs that smoothly here. I was told that everything was in process. As time wore on, I became concerned that I not miss anything I should be doing, so repeatedly chased it up and was told every time that my matriculation forms were being processed as they didn't have them yet. I, being stupid, believed this.

With my end date nearing, I was concerned, but also was distracted by a council letter threatening to take me to court over unpaid council tax (for which I'm not liable), calling it a second warning (I didn't receive a first) and in contradiction with the bill for £0 that I received in March. Phoning the council, they told me that the university had never updated them on my end date after the retroactive deletion. I got them to dispatch a form for the university to fill in, and set forth all the way across North St to the registry. This is where the fun began.

They couldn't do the form as my end date on their computers was last Saturday. I explained the whole situation and after very involved phone calls and so forth they established that according to their records my PhD matric forms had been printed ten days before, and were at St Mary's. When I arrived there, though, I found that they had just arrived. Nevertheless, I was pleased to have things in process.

Or would have been, had they actually been in process. By the next morning I had established that they were in fact six-month extension forms for the extension I was currently on. This confused everybody, including the ladies in the registry (with whom I am now great friends). They phoned the postgrad office and, in the end, just handed me the phone. The voice on the other end told me that they didn;t even know I was trying to become a PhD student and they still had my registration "pending" as they had de-registered me for the extension after my deletion, and never noticed I needed new forms. Then I got the worst news - my approval had to be through a committee that wouldn't meet till this Wednesday, and the only chance of having it considered before autumn was to get my request in with paperwork the next morning.

Of course, when I got to St Mary's it turned out that my request might only have been considered ten days before (not in January) and the paperwork might be at home with someone who wouldn't be in till the next afternoon. Arrgh!

I emailed my temporary supervisor with an update, mostly though to ask if I could get my matric form (for the next two days) signed, and resumed my panicking. Within an hour, though, he had tracked down the relevant people and a request had gone to the registry. Fantastic!

So I did get my form signed, my request in and got to see my supervisor before leaving! But the down side was that I'm still not a student for four days, had to take all 40 books back to the library, and the council tax issue is still unresolved with me leaving the country tomorrow.

So I've been busy, and now I'm trying to get a draft of something to my supervisor before I leave! Arrrgh! (Again)

But tomorrow I go to New York, and am looking forward to it. Not the flight, but the other bits. I'm looking forward to seeing Allison, and all the things she has planned for me! Favourite instruction? "Bring something you can wear under a wetsuit"

So I won't be around for a couple of weeks!

The Graduate Endowment

2008-06-03T14:38:00.002+01:00

I was in the Glasgow Herald last week, taking on the government - see here. And don't read comments, or don't tell me what they say this time.

Here's what I wrote when I posted the link on Facebook last week:

This may be as famous as I ever get! Of course, I expect yesterday's debacle to continue and to be villified in the comments, but I'm not going to read them. I'm not! Here's my story.
Government enters into agreement with student to defer payment of £2200, interest free, until the completion of all PG work (meh, still have to pay, but when have money - good). Government, April 2007, decides to scrap graduation endowment for subsequent graduates (too late for me, but very very good). Government decides to renege on deal with current PGs and demand instant payment of £2200 - without warning, one year later (very bad). Student challenges breach of contract (good). Government demands money at deadline for loan application (bad, bad, bad). Student applies for loan (also bad, as am now being charged interest in breach of original arrangement). Government decides said interest should be charged retroactively from April 2007 (extremely bad, to the tune of £100, and obviously not right)...

Herald Education correspondant gets a hold of the story (good - at last!). Mother of student writes an email to thank him for taking up the case (good). Correspondant asks if letter can be published (good, with general upward trend). Mother removes details of student from letter (good, though leading to badness in a moment). Reporter asks for more details about case of student (good). Reporter does audible double-take at report of interest owed (appropriate reaction). Reporter asks for permission to take up case of student with Student Loan Company (very good indeed). Student gets apologetic call from SLC (good, but confusing given tone of previous contact).

Meanwhile mother's letter published and people mean about student in the comments (bad). Student gets upset and cries and phones daddy (bad, as does nothing to tackle the issues). Student reflects on ignorance and misconception of those commenting, gets less upset and would prefer to knock spots off them (good). Student decides not to do this and to ignore comments (also probably good). Reporter's intervention has saved all 3000 PGs the erroneously charged year's interest (fantabulous). Article published today making student famous (sort of good). Student resolves not to read the comments today (excellent).

In the non-Chris Rea sense, On the Beach

2008-05-26T21:57:00.008+01:00

I'm having something of an identity crisis, having been working quite steadily in isolation and in the library and spending free time sorting out a lot of stuff. I realised that for some months I have had no hobbies! I'm barely writing, even academically, I'm having a dry-spell in terms of reading, I'm listening to French language tapes more than music, I haven't touched a piano in weeks, it's months since I had a musical idea and I've sort of lost grip on my personality in the absence of these fundamental modes of expression.

Clearly, cracking up is not in my work schedule. So I find it necessary to ensure the reintroduction of these pastimes to my natural habitat. As step one, I started reading the Hunchback of Notre Dame (oh, that'll cheer me up - actually, no, I love Victor Hugo) and went for a wander along to the beach, which is not five minutes' walk from my house, and to which (in line with my current theme) I have not wandered for too long. Nor have I updated my "Around St Andrews" photo albums in the last seven months. Summer has been slow in arriving, but just this past week the brilliant May light finally put in an appearance. I'll be away from next Wednesday for a fortnight, at Shawna and Jeremiah's wedding and with Allison, so I'll miss the run up to the solstice, which is sadly the period of most stable weather, though I'll get some of the lightest nights from the other side when I return. Nevertheless, with the cold weather up till now (and I'm still sitting here with my heater on), I feel that the late, light evenings have crept up on us.

So it seemed entirely appropriate to grab a camera, head down to the beach and to make the most of the light while I can.

Down on the Old Course.

Classic St Andrews; the Swilken Bridge.

St Andrews from the West Sands

On the East Coast's most embarrassingly picturesque beach:

Have a look at my updated Around St Andrews: 3 album for the full experience!

At Home

2008-05-18T23:47:00.013+01:00

Forgive me if I haven’t been in touch lately. I’ve been run-down, health-wise, yes, with the psoriatic arthritis development but I haven’t entirely recovered from that bronchitis over the new year, either. Also, I’ve been busy, work-wise, travel-wise and personally, so creativity is at a low ebb, which usually leads to misery – currently, though, I’m just looking forward to a bit of a break for the wedding trip. Part of my trouble with updating people I haven’t seen in a long time is knowing where to start! So here’s a random update.

I’m spending an evening at home, having waved my parents off after their first proper visit this year, and realised that it’s just about exactly one year since I actually started sleeping here – it was this weekend last year that everything was moved into my flat, furniture-wise, and I use the passive voice deliberately, if self-consciously. Yes, last year I was gallivanting around the Trossachs, laughing at unintentionally hilarious selections from the Glasgow Gospel, with no inkling that I was about to be suspected of being a drug-dealer (Thursday, Danny… I’m still thinking about keeping you on that list). And last year my parents, Jim, Jenny and Louise were lugging my furniture into my new flat, quietly wondering where I was and grumbling about same… I will say we’ve all learned to communicate before making commitments. Sometimes.

Well, now that we can all laugh about it, my bed can support a mattress on both sides and the legs on my sofa bed are no longer on backwards, I thought I’d update you (people were asking, honest!) on how my flat looks after a year of living there. Or, rather, after a year of living there, several months of complaining that I have more stuff that I can store here and the past couple of days of total overhaul with an additional bookcase courtesy of my parents. Here’s the original bookcase, looking less swamped!

One totally unrecorded development was the photo wall, added last September after inspiration from Alissa (who suggested various ways that I could display my number-higher-than-a-photo-frame-can-handle photos, even if none of them actually involved a £2 garden trellis from Poundstretcher). See if you can spot yourself.

Second, I’m almost certain that there was very little in my bedroom last time I posted any pictures. This is my alternate bed linen, Ikea’s finest (read: cheapest), as usually I have the brownish one on. Generally it looks a bit more lived in.

This hulking great chest of drawers I love, and was bought for me by Allison at the auction for £1. I took the mirror down to hang some other pictures – well, I instructed Danny and Jeremiah, two of my key and tallest minions – and I still don’t know where to put it, though I know I need it handy. Hmm. I still have to hang a tropical sunset and – of course – a duck.

My Vatican map of Sicily finally made it into a frame and onto a wall!

I loves me sitting room.

My added bookcase, which we filled today. All those books, and some that replaced the DVDs you can see, were on piles on my floor for the past few weeks and were causing no small amount of inconvenience. Now I don’t have to worry about coming home to them in June! Also, note my Venetian original oil pastels.

And, oh yeah, the standard lamp that Allison bought me for £1. Noting a pattern? I kept saying, “Ooh, I like that, but I have no way to transport it and I really shouldn’t.” She gamely ignored my protests and bid on the items that no one else seemed to want. Thankfully, friends just round the corner bought a piano the same day so they had mine delivered with theirs!

Above my piano, my beloved Klimt! I brought these back from the Secession in Vienna; they are panels from the Beethoven Frieze. See that installment of my travel diary for more details!

Now, these are a few of my favourite things.

You can see my spice picture, my proudest bargain buy in my £3 spice rack (seriously, I was looking for one in this style for months!), my Wok and Spice calendar (last year, but I can no longer stretch my arm enough to change), my palm cross from Palm Sunday (like a good little Episcopalian!), my toastie maker, my pretty but totally useless scales, my French café-style clock of the loud ticking that drives everyone but me completely potty, and my heart-shaped ramekin that seemed like a good idea at the time but that I have never yet found a use for.

Finally, here’s the full-ish moon from last night, that so pleasingly hovered in my bit of sky for a while.

Karen Matheson at the Tollbooth!

2008-05-03T22:44:00.002+01:00

Just back from a Karen Matheson concert, which gives me a reason to blog and say I enjoyed it immensely though that's as much as you get at the moment, since I'm speeding my way through a French revision course this weekend.

A couple of selections from YouTube that I included on my folk music blog this winter:

Puirt a beul (mouth music)

And my favourite, Crucán Na bPáiste

A public service announcement

2008-04-30T19:20:00.002+01:00

You could be forgiven for thinking that I have vanished off the face of the earth. That includes those in the same town as me. Apart from the knee thing, I've been trying to organise a flathunting expedition for anything from two to four people and harmonise budgets. I've been trying to make sure that I had enough money and trying to exhaust all funding possibilities. I've been running back and forth doing stuff for other people while my car got hit by person or persons unknown and needed serious repair in Stirling. I've been trying to determine why I'm being charged serious library fines on books I returned some time ago. I've been trying to keep on top of my housework (complicated by the piles of stuff, mostly books, for which I have no storage) while struggling to manoeuvre around my own house, physically speaking. I've been trying to just keep up with the tons of emails arriving daily that require responses. I've been trying to get through a significant amount of work before I disappear to New York at the start of June.

Despite my best efforts, not a lot of this is currently under control.

So, here's a list of things I am henceforth unavailable for, until further notice:
- non-social social events (large parties, cinema, basically anything that minimises quality time spent with people while taking entire evenings)
- car-requiring services, airport runs, or any kind of spontaneous expeditions (invoked during potential petrol crisis and continuing until further notice)
- daytime social events, except for the occasional happy hour with people I would not see otherwise
- hosting anything, at all, or doing anything which involves me cooking (sorry, pot-luck-people)
- major, not-previously-scheduled events, unless they're at a weekend
- Googletalk, with a Whitney-exception, or any kind of other chatting thing
- Facebook applications, unless they are not time-consuming in any way

Don't lose touch people - I'm just trying to stay sane, not become a hermit.

Headline of the week

2008-04-11T09:30:00.002+01:00

Silly one - not actually that silly a story, but definitely a silly headline:

Seven or more eggs a week raises risk of death

Sorry to be pedantic, but isn't risk of death 100%?

Voting Videos

2008-04-08T16:36:00.002+01:00

My keyboard is having some issues. I've been avoiding blogging recentLY BECAUSE I KEEP HAVING To hit AND REHIT the caps lock key when I'm writIng my thesis stuff and I didn;t REALLY FEEL LIKE HAVING To do the same thing when writING ON HERE. SO YOU GET STUCK WITH THE FUNNY CAPITALISATion.

Here's a video I can identify witH tODAY:

aND ANOTHER, JUST 'CAUSE IT'S BRADLEY WHITford and he tENDS TO SOUND SENSIBLE. yOU KNOW, FOR AN ACTOR (WHITNey attENTION CHECK COMPLETED):

i BOOKED SOME FLIGHTs yesterday which mean I am now definitELY AND OFFICIALLY GOING To get tO DO That Trip involving Allison and Whitney. A wedding is tHe excuse. And if it HAPPENS To involve a detour tHROUGH nEW yORK, The tESTING OF THE NEW dELTa flight tO jfk FROM EDINBURGH AND SOME THEATRE, WELL, i'T'S JUST one of tHOSE CROSSES I HAVE TO BEAR.

bURT OUT.

Reasons to love Ianto

2008-03-27T18:41:00.003Z

If you're into Torchwood, that is. (possible spoilers if you're not up-to-date on BBC2)

sublime and ridiculous, all at once

2008-03-27T13:58:00.002Z

WENN, that reliable source of news, has a rather wonderful brianstorm today. Emphasis mine.

Comedian Robin Williams is heading for a divorce - his wife Marsha has filed papers in a California court to end their marriage. Producer Marsha Garces Williams, who had been married to the actor for 19 years, filed the petition in San Francisco last Friday citing irreconcilable differences for the split. The pair first met while Williams was still married to his first wife Valerie and Marsha was working as the couple's nanny. They married in 1989, just months after the breakdown of his first union. Robin and Marsha often worked together - she produced his films Mrs. Doubtfire and Patch Adams - and they founded Blue Wolf Productions and the organization Doctors Without Borders. They have two children together: daughter Zelda, 18, and 17-year-old son Cody.

Here's the claim, quoted in full, on imdb. (it'll be gone by tomorrow)

Doctors without Borders, as the linguists will deduce, is what Americans call the organisation the rest of us know as Medecins sans Frontieres. They're seriously claiming he started it?

To clarify, what they did do was set up a charitable foundation, which, among other causes, has given money to the organisation.

Kathleen, according to Google

2008-03-25T23:10:00.002Z

Kathleen Burt is a successful author and expert in the field of astrology. Her book, "Archetypes of the Zodiac" is a bestseller. Her father was a 5' 6" teenage basketball player for 'Moscow Magic', but grew into a renowned expert in osteopathy, while playing guitar in his spare time and building up a reputation on MySpace. Her mother, born in Dunfermline in 1699, spent some time as an award-winning juvenile justice attorney in New York, and is a keen bowler, winning the Ladies' President competition in Camelon and narrowly missing out on a second victory in the pairs' competition. she is the author of several novels, including the highly praised, 'Emotional Roulette.' Her grandfather hails from Maryland and still regularly competes in endurance athletic events at the grand old age of 44.

Kathleen has lived with a championship rider, who has a promising career in eventing to look forward to, and a British lawyer and part-time photographer, who commuted to his newsreading job in Brisbane. Also a rodeo-ing aspiring Christian pop star, but her use of the English language was abominable and they didn't get on too well.

Among her friends she can count a bus-driving Australian popstar, a female bodybuilding harpist, and a counter-enlightenment-paper-presenting, poetry-writing lacrosse champion. Oh, wait, that really is him.

Given an evening to relax and the freedom of the internet, this is what happens.

I've Got a Theory

2008-03-25T09:57:00.000Z

A truly helpful Culturegraph flowchart, for those who need the Buffy musical for daily guidance.

Disaster Builders

2008-03-24T16:28:00.004Z

For those of you who have found me a wee bit unbalanced lately, here's the noise I've been putting up with from 8am (or earlier) until 4 or 5pm. Every day. This is the noise INSIDE my flat. Turn the volume up to fully appreciate my current headache. Turns out they don't even have planning permission, which is a Big Deal in this town as we're living in a conservation area. No one has even spoken to those of us who live in the building. They're about to get in a lot of trouble, but till they do they're determined to make our lives miserable.
It's not easy to escape, with my knee as it is.

Highlights from worlds

2008-03-24T12:32:00.003Z

Free dance programme.

Note: if you only watch one of these videos, make it the Canadians.

I find myself quite the fan of this French couple, who are overshadowed by their more successful compatriots. This is more like the ice dance I love - actual dancing, which is barely marred by the recent rule changes insisting on measureable but artistically crushing lifts and so on. Very nice. The French seem to be churning out good ice dancers - a relief as ice dancing has been a bit disappointing in the past decade. Apart from the French! I think Pechalat and Bourzat are my favourite in this competition, for fun reasons.

The current purple-clad Americans I like (the better ones, technically, are great skaters but they seem to enjoy the new rules, do unspeakable things they wouldn't have got away with in the old days, and I just can't bring myself to share their joy). It's a bit hit and miss with me as to whether I like American skating - an inevitable problem given the size of the skating pool and the micro-climate it creates. Davis and white are elegant and technical, however. Just watch their step sequences! (After the first one, that is.)

Now, the Russians. I love (love love love) their Free Dance, though in the final they had some problems with the second step sequence (but this is their performance from the Europeans), and while I have mixed feelings about the type of tricks they have to do now, and the fact that they tend to be more gymnastic that dance-tastic, they are as good on the ice as flailing about artistically. And their speed is astonishing...

Delobel and schoenfelder, the leading French couple, had the most elegant performance, and I loved theirs. Not perfect, but when they get the sequences synchronised... It didn't quite capture me completely, but undeniably sophisticated and dignified.

The Canadians, well, I would have loved them to win on the strength of their free dance. They are so beautiful and exhilarating that I don't care about all the required elements! They;re the only people at the moment, who are able to weave in all the requirements without it seeming patchy or unevenly paced. watch this:

Favourite costume? Best twizzles? Try the Italians. I don't think the music was a good choice, though I like Yentl, but look at their second set of twizzles.

This has been an outburst of unashamed geekery. Normal service will resume shortly.

Christ is Risen!

2008-03-23T13:24:00.000Z

He is risen indeed.

That I may fight befriended

2008-03-22T20:30:00.000Z

This Easter, I pray through John's Passion narrative.

John 18

1. When he had finished praying, Jesus left with his disciples and crossed the Kidron Valley. On the other side there was an olive grove, and he and his disciples went into it.

Now Judas, who betrayed him, knew the place, because Jesus had often met there with his disciples. So Judas came to the grove, guiding a detachment of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and Pharisees. They were carrying torches, lanterns and weapons.

Lord, forgive us when we use our knowledge against people. Forgive us our betrayal of others, and help us to forgive those who betray us. Protect us when we are vulnerable, and help us to respect the vulnerability of others.

Lord, in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.

4. Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, "Who is it you want?"

"Jesus of Nazareth," they replied.

"I am he," Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.) When Jesus said, "I am he," they drew back and fell to the ground.

Again he asked them, "Who is it you want?"
And they said, "Jesus of Nazareth."

"I told you that I am he," Jesus answered. "If you are looking for me, then let these men go." This happened so that the words he had spoken would be fulfilled: "I have not lost one of those you gave me."

Lord, when we are tried, help us to remember that we are in your protection. Help us to treat all whom you created with respect and care, regardless of their faith or dealings with us. May we never reject another person, and comfort us when others reject us.
Lord, in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.

10. Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the high priest's servant, cutting off his right ear. (The servant's name was Malchus.)

Jesus commanded Peter, "Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?"

Lord, we can so easily react with anger and a desire for vengeance. Teach us to listen and consider. Train us in stillness and peace. Grant us understanding and humility about what we do not understand.

Lord, in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.

Jesus Taken to Annas

12. Then the detachment of soldiers with its commander and the Jewish officials arrested Jesus. They bound him and brought him first to Annas, who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest that year. Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jews that it would be good if one man died for the people.

Lord, may we never be intimidated by shows of strength or those with power. May we never be guilty of such posturing or intimidation. Be with those who are persecuted and rejected by their own people.
Lord, in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.

Peter's First Denial

15. Simon Peter and another disciple were following Jesus. Because this disciple was known to the high priest, he went with Jesus into the high priest's courtyard, but Peter had to wait outside at the door. The other disciple, who was known to the high priest, came back, spoke to the girl on duty there and brought Peter in.

"You are not one of his disciples, are you?" the girl at the door asked Peter.
He replied, "I am not."

Lord, forgive us our betrayals. Let us never disown our family in faith. Comfort those who have been denied, ostracised and hurt by your church.

Lord, in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.

18. It was cold, and the servants and officials stood around a fire they had made to keep warm. Peter also was standing with them, warming himself.

The High Priest Questions Jesus

Meanwhile, the high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching.

"I have spoken openly to the world," Jesus replied. "I always taught in synagogues or at the temple, where all the Jews come together. I said nothing in secret. Why question me? Ask those who heard me. Surely they know what I said."

When Jesus said this, one of the officials nearby struck him in the face. "Is this the way you answer the high priest?" he demanded.

"If I said something wrong," Jesus replied, "testify as to what is wrong. But if I spoke the truth, why did you strike me?" Then Annas sent him, still bound, to Caiaphas the high priest.

Lord, let us never use our authority to attack others. Let us not be threatened by questions and difference. May we not be cowed by authority, and may we speak your word and do your will even when opposed. Comfort those who find no vindication at hand, and convict their oppressors of the truth.

Lord, in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.

Peter's Second and Third Denials

25. As Simon Peter stood warming himself, he was asked, "You are not one of his disciples, are you?"
He denied it, saying, "I am not."

One of the high priest's servants, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, challenged him, "Didn't I see you with him in the olive grove?" Again Peter denied it, and at that moment a rooster began to crow.

Jesus Before Pilate

Then the Jews led Jesus from Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor. By now it was early morning, and to avoid ceremonial uncleanness the Jews did not enter the palace; they wanted to be able to eat the Passover. So Pilate came out to them and asked, "What charges are you bringing against this man?"

"If he were not a criminal," they replied, "we would not have handed him over to you."

Pilate said, "Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law."

"But we have no right to execute anyone," the Jews objected. This happened so that the words Jesus had spoken indicating the kind of death he was going to die would be fulfilled.

Lord, be with those who find themselves at the mercy of corrupt or abused systems. Protect them from gossip and slander, and may we never be guilty of discrediting others. Let us not use your word as a weapon. Regardless of our power, help us to resist the temptation to exploit injustice to our own advantage. May we never walk away from the victims of such exploitation. Forgive our neglect.

Lord, in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.

33. Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?"

"Is that your own idea," Jesus asked, "or did others talk to you about me?"

"Am I a Jew?" Pilate replied. "It was your people and your chief priests who handed you over to me. What is it you have done?"

Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place."

"You are a king, then!" said Pilate.
Jesus answered, "You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me."

"What is truth?" Pilate asked. With this he went out again to the Jews and said, "I find no basis for a charge against him. But it is your custom for me to release to you one prisoner at the time of the Passover. Do you want me to release 'the king of the Jews'?"

They shouted back, "No, not him! Give us Barabbas!" Now Barabbas had taken part in a rebellion.

Lord, help us not to listen to rumour and accusation, but to love the truth, however uncomfortable. Let us never use our knowledge or skills to shirk our duty to one another.

Lord, in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.

John 19

Jesus Sentenced to be Crucified

1. Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and again, saying, "Hail, king of the Jews!" And they struck him in the face.

Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews, "Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him." When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, "Here is the man!"

As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, "Crucify! Crucify!"
But Pilate answered, "You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him."

The Jews insisted, "We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God."

Lord, may we delight in doing good and never become corrupted by our own position and privilege. Let us never delight in or exacerbate humiliation. Free us from the harshness of legalism and mob mentality, and keep us from hurting others. Be with those who are hurt by harshness among your people, and help us to forgive the hurt caused to us by others.

Lord, in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.

8. When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, and he went back inside the palace. "Where do you come from?" he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer. "Do you refuse to speak to me?" Pilate said. "Don't you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?"

Jesus answered, "You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin."

From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jews kept shouting, "If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar."

Lord, forgive our twisting of your word for our own purposes. Help us to acknowledge that all power lies in you and to conduct our relationships with a right sense of humility and generosity. Protect those who find themselves on the receiving end of hurtful accusations.

Lord, in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.

13. When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge's seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha). It was the day of Preparation of Passover Week, about the sixth hour.
"Here is your king," Pilate said to the Jews.

But they shouted, "Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!"
"Shall I crucify your king?" Pilate asked.
"We have no king but Caesar," the chief priests answered.

Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified.

Lord, may we have the courage to stand up for those who are persecuted within your church, and may we never be complicit in their suffering. May victims of persecution and bullying be blessed with friends who are willing to suffer with them and stand up for them.

Lord, in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.

The Crucifixion

So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). Here they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.

Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS. Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, "Do not write 'The King of the Jews,' but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews."

Pilate answered, "What I have written, I have written."

When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.

"Let's not tear it," they said to one another. "Let's decide by lot who will get it."
This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled which said,
"They divided my garments among them
and cast lots for my clothing." So this is what the soldiers did.

Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, "Dear woman, here is your son," and to the disciple, "Here is your mother." From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.

The Death of Jesus

Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, "I am thirsty." A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jews did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe. These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled: "Not one of his bones will be broken," and, as another scripture says, "They will look on the one they have pierced."

The Burial of Jesus

Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews. With Pilate's permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. 40Taking Jesus' body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

Lord, may we never be victims of or participants in bullying or persecution. Keep your suffering in our minds and help us to understand the suffering of others. May we provide genuine support and comfort in times of difficulty, and never be guilty of adding to trouble. Help us to work for the vindication of the persecuted in this life and to care for those hurt and damaged by insensitivity, ignorance or lack of care among your church. Let us reflect on the fellowship of the suffering this Easter, and pray that they may find joy resurrected through our actions and encouragement. Be with those who hurt, and comfort those in pain.

Lord, in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.