5/5 Going for Gold

Being traditionally British, success is a difficult concept for me.  I've been bought up to believe that taking part is the most important thing and that actually lifting the gold cup is actually a bit excessive, a bit immodest, a bit OTT.  We are programmed to say "Well, it's nothing really" and downplay success.  It's no coincidence that Ali's "I am the greatest!" came from supple American lips, not stiff British ones.

So please accept how tricky this blog post is to write.

I have been tremendously successful recently.  Even when I've not been.

Let's start with the easy stuff.  Already this last week I have written about;

• My birthday and how well it went - no family rows, no trauma, no thrown birthday cake (only one dropped one, and that didn't do it much harm) and no unwanted socks.  Instead I got everything I wanted and more.  We all enjoyed the day in an easy and comfortable way.  And I did not suffer any anxiety about entering my third decade.

• Although I didn't enjoy the film ever so much, I was able to see the theatre production of War Horse.  Although this might not seem like a tremendous achievement, it did mean travelling into London and surviving the theatre production and trip back home.  It was a big day and I suffered for it.  But the memories, as you could probably tell, live on in a very positive way.

• I am engaged.  Enough said.

• I photographed an outdoor theatre production in the dark with a 300mm zoom lens.  Not many people do that kind of thing and I believe that I do it very well indeed.  I can get into the rhythm of Shakespeare and use that to help guide when I press the shutter.  I hope that my photos make some of the cast smile, especially given how much they make me smile.

• I am most of the way through a book which I am not enjoying, but which I can not enjoy in an educated and enlightened way because of the work I've put into my education along with a natural skill with literature and narrative.

And on a similar vein;

• I have completed a degree in Classics and made it into London (again!  And I don't even like the capital!) to graduate.  Because of this I feel I have a set of knowledge I can use to rubbish incredibly successful novels.  And also to enlighten and inform anyone who wishes it.

• I have two photos ready to go into an exhibition in a couple of weeks time.

• I am learning Latin and ukulele and loving both.

• I am producing art in various forms.

• I am helping people in many ways, including practical things (I helped with a Holiday Club for children by sorting out IT issues) and more airy fairy emotional stuff.

Of course, life cannot be all success.  But when things go wrong, increasingly I feel that this just becomes another possibility for success.

I recently found out that my blood pressure and cholesterol were both raised.  Given that, due to my health, I cannot exercise, this means that my chance of heart attack or stroke are quite significantly raised.  Obviously this is a pretty bad thing, but since then I've been working hard on both diet and stress.  I have cut my salt intake (which was hard, because I didn't ever overload on salt) and reduced the amount of saturated fats I'm eating.  I've not had a single rasher of bacon in over three weeks now.

And the interesting thing is that success in this is not measured by the reduction in BP or cholesterol (my BP has reduced somewhat...although whether enough or not, I'll let my GP decide) but in how well I've made the change in diet.  I'm not doing anything with my diet that is hurtful or upsetting.  I'm still really enjoying the food we eat.  That's very important to me - food is a huge element of my sensual enjoyment of life.

Likewise, I've been trying my best to relax.  This one is harder and perhaps less of a success.  But I've found new images to use in an attempt to meditate and reduce BP, heart rate and such.

And even when health gets in the way of something like my planned blog a day for a week, it actually allowed me to include something more.  And my blogging has just extended into the weekend which is no problem at all.  And this morning when I've been awake early with pain, I've been able to concentrate on writing this.

So I really do feel that I am succeeding in life.  I don't believe that I am the greatest, but I'm beginning to feel that I'm getting close to being the best I could possibly be, and what's more, I'm accepting of the things that limit how much I can achieve.

Of course, I'm not always this enlightened.  I still get frustrated and angry.  I still sometimes forget my successes and dwell on the things that I wish I were doing.  But on the whole I feel...comfortable.

And the good thing about seeing all this success is how excited that makes me feel about the future.  Because if I'm succeeding now, then there's no reason why that shouldn't continue into the future.

The future's bright - the future's gold.

4/5 - Moan of Achilles

Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller - Review

I'm part of a book group on facebook, although honestly I'm rather behind; in part because I've been doing other things (not to mention reading other things) and in part because...well...we'll get to that in a minute.

The group decided to read Song of Achilles mainly, I think, because of its recent win of the Orange Prize for Fiction.  I was very pleased with the choice because of the subject matter - an interpretation of the relationship of Achilles and Patroclus: heroes of the Trojan War.  And when the book arrived, I was even more excited - in the extensive list of recommendations and panegyrics were ones from both Donna Tartt and Bettany Hughes *swoon*.

Now I must make it clear that I'm yet to finish the book.  We're about a hundred pages from the end.  But those hundred pages are beginning to look like the last twenty meters of a particularly long and hot walk over burning coals.

We are not enjoying the book.  Well, that's not entirely true - we've enjoyed laughing at a few bits.  But thus far there are some major problems.

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, the editing doesn't seem right.  There is a lot of repetition.  At first I thought this might be a stylistic thing - attempting to mirror the repetition you get in traditional oral storytelling (of which the Iliad is a major example).  However, in the first couple of chapters there were three separate references to Patroclus' thumbs.  I half wondered if I'd forgotten something important about this particular body part, but it just seems to be some little fetishistic detail that got left in.  Again, it makes sense that Achilles' feet are referred to on multiple occasions; he is, after all, swift footed Achilles.  But does there have to be so many?  And why do we have to read at least twice each chapter what he smells like?

And the smells, in general, are a bit funny.  It's like someone told the author that the key to writing is to describe what you see, hear and smell and if you do that you can't go wrong.  But, well, firstly that's not true.  And secondly, there's something odd about the smells.  It's like they live in a Greece that's at least two thirds Boots perfume counter.  Nothing ever smells bad, but it does often smell exactly the same over and over.

From my perspective, however, the most upsetting thing is the damage done to the story.  From the reviews I've read, people have been very impressed and moved by the story.  But the story is not hers.  And she really has hurt it in key ways.

Firstly, and most scarily, Patroclus is made as un-manly as possible.  Soldiering?  Not for our Patroclus - he can't fight.  Apart from in the last few pages where he's suddenly survived years and years of hand to hand combat without a scratch.  Being part of a homosexual couple, it would seem that Patroclus isn't allowed to be 'masculine'.  Achilles, meanwhile, becomes a serene photo of a character.  He's a poster on a teenager's bedroom wall, with much the same level of animation and spirit.  Diomedes is unrecognisable.  Odysseus is perhaps the most correct in translation, but the way that his story-telling dialogue is written is completely obtuse to anyone without knowledge of the myths and just not correct.

Not that any of the dialogue is correct.  Honestly, it is entirely flat.  And reading it out loud to each other (as we have been) really proves that point.

The result is a story that, thus far, has read like poor slash fan-fic.  The Iliad has been ravished and the characters rewritten to suit the fantasies of the author.  She inhabits Patroclus, allowing her to fondle Achilles who remains as 2D as the paper he's printed on.  And the worst part of the slash fan-fic style is that it ruins the *proper* relationship.  Ancient sexuality is not modern sexuality.  The early scenes in the palace are absolutely devoid of other homosexual relationships even though it's a veritable den of heterosexual iniquity.  It's as if Achilles and Patroclus are, not only 'the only gays in the village', but also the only gays in Greece.

This is pretty inexcusable.  It changes the relationships as much as the truly disturbing Troy solution - "Woah, we can't have two men kissing in an action film.  So how are we going to make sure that doesn't happen?  I know!  Let's make them cousins!"

It also makes the elements of heterosexual sex feel extremely weird.  And it would seem that there's more of that to come.

There are other modern moralities that really mess with the meaning of the story.  Patroclus and Achilles 'saving' women from a life of rape and slavery is a prime example.  I can understand why you'd do that...but it's an ancient story.  Your main character is a sulky brute who brings about the doom of his comrades because he's upset about a slave girl being taken because that reflects badly on his status not because of some kind of humanitarianism.  He's not compatible with the modern idea of hero.  But either you need to accept that and move on, or at least rewrite him properly.

The Iliad is a story about the universality of war and the experience of death.  It is also, in the wise words of Dr Nick Lowe, a book that tells you all you need to know about men.  All of this is gone.  The fighting is, thus far, the most competently written part of the book.  But it is neither interesting nor meaningful.  The motives of the characters are lost.  How can Achilles be sulky about a wound to his pride when, presumably, he'll be upset because a woman who is treated as free and meaningful is stolen?  How can his great decision (fame or life) be understood as the foundation of his entire existence when it's replaced with some third rate romantic obligation?

Why on earth did it win the Orange Prize?  Deb feels that it's down to the Classical themes combined with a study of a homosexual relationship.  I don't know.  I'm just horrified.  I just hope that people go on from The Song of Achilles to actually read the Iliad and realise what the true meaning of war and love is.

Olympic Interval - Bouncing Back (Including a review of As You Like It by Abbey Shakespeare)

This is written in part to honour the wonderful athletes who we've just been watching during the Women's Trampoline.  Great stuff.

As has happened to so many Olympians, my efforts, though driven and deliberate, floundered.  I'd hoped to post on my blog once a day for a week.  But really that was rather silly given what a week it's been.  On the plus side, I now get to write an additional post explaining my absense, and then I'll follow on with my planned subjects.

So, Wednesday.  Each year I take photos for the Abbey Shakespeare play at St Dogmaels Abbey.  I'd hoped in the morning to get on and write Thursday's post, but alas I just didn't have the time.  Instead, I was trying my best to look after Deborah who was very poorly.  I wasn't feeling too good myself - a muscle in my leg was spasming for 14 hours straight.

So in the end Deb had to stay back in the van (with her cold weather gear consisting of Russian-style hat, tights, leggings, fleece jacket and sleeping bag) and I went off to the play.  This year was As You Like It, a rather distinct change of mood from last year's King Lear.  And excitingly the play was the directorial debut of one of the long term cast.  He did a great job and I hope he's really proud of the result.

I tried a new tactic this year with photos - raising both the shutter speed and ISO.  I'm still getting used to how well the 7D deals with ISO noise so it took a great deal of trust.  Also new this year was my fantastic monopod.  I've used monopods in the past, but only the very cheapest ebay sells.  This year I treated myself to a Manfrotto 680B with a 494RC2 ball head and the beast was more solid than any tripod I've ever had, let alone a monopod.  I'd read some reviews which mentioned people using it as a walking stick at the same time as a camera support and that seemed entirely appropriate for my needs.  It might make taking photos around the garden a bit more straight forward.

As for the play: it really was superb.  There was such a lot of humour packed in.  The rather eclectic modern setting was perfect and little touches (use of mobile phones and modern american wrestling) really raised it.  There were times it was hard to keep the camera steady from laughing.  The wrestling bout itself was very brave.

Photo of one man in one in mid air kicking another man in blue tights, lime pants and a blue hood in the face. And who wouldn't?  The colour clash deserves nothing less.

There were some great comedy performances from the supporting characters.

A woman in a light blue skirt suit with a replica shotgun, flowery bag and glasses pinched from the receptionist in Ghostbusters.

Not to mention the puppets.

Two deer who are obviously deeply in love.

The leading actors were absolutely faultless.  And, of course, highly photogenic.

Rosalind played by Mary Glynn - a blonde woman with flowers in her hair being a great actor.

And who can object to a happy ending?

A happy ending - what more can you say?  Smiles, hugs and cherubs.  No, seriously, there are cherubs.

It took a day to edit the images and another day to get them all uploaded.  It has also taken a few days to get over the pain.  Hence the lack of blog posts.  But it was very much worth it.  I do hope that the rest of the run went well for the cast and crew.  The rain kept off for the entire evening on the Wednesday, but I'm not sure if that will have been the case for all the nights.  I also hope that they're pleased with the photos.  I would think as an actor, your memories of the performance might be strong but limited to your parts (not to mention your perspective).  Hopefully my perspective will make their memories stronger and more complete.

So now on with the next blog post...

3/5 - Olympic Rings

Yesterday I was writing mainly about something that happened two years ago.  Today I'll write about something that happened two weeks ago.

You wouldn't believe it given the soaking we've had this morning, but for the last few weeks the Welsh skies have been relatively free of rain clouds.  The ground, though, has retained the consistency of slightly thickened ocean, having been pelted for the last few months.  But this also means that the surroundings are green and lush and full of life.

A demonstration of the lush green life around these parts.

We drove down the coast road for fish and chips.  The particular chip shop has recently been visited by royalty, and so they should - the food they produce is absolutely outstanding.  It's always a really special occassion eating their food, particularly as we tend to wolf it down whilst looking out over the sea.  There's a circular unity of smells and tastes.  It is perfect and infinite.  And that's just the portion sizing.

This time was a little different though, as I had with me a ring.

Deb loves silver and her favourite colours tend to be on the blue spectrum.  So I'd chosen a ring inspired by the Welsh coast line.  Set in it (because we don't much like the ethics surrounding diamonds...not that other precious stones are necessarily that ethical, but you know what I mean...) was a deep blue sapphire.  It was, of course, too big and will need to be resized.  But she accepted it nonetheless.  She then gave me a silver band into which the skeleton of a leaf has been pressed.  It was, of course, the perfect size and I'm wearing it as I type.

So we got engaged overlooking the pewter sea.

It's a funny feeling, really.  It's not a massive change, but it was a massive emotional event and that was quite challenging.  I was rather poorly for a few days...in fact, I'm not that sure I've entirely recovered.  And there is also the added pressure of planning a wedding.

However, and I wonder to myself if, in fact, all couples think this way, but even so I reckon that we might be right - I think we will have the best wedding ever.  We are limited by our health, but already we've got the bare bones of a day planned out that will be calm, relaxed, joyful and easy.  There will be no pressure for perfection.  It will not be expensive and we've decided one of the fun bits of the process will be making our own rings.

The day will be, I hope, about the equality and universality of love.  It will be small and wonderful.

When I studied Classics I was particularly interested in narrative.  One of the traditional ways of telling stories is to mirror the structure of the beginning in the end.  This, appropriately enough, is called Ring Composition.  And so, in my attempt to be traditional, I should point out that I'm already gunning for a wedding dinner of fish and chips.

My fiancee.

2/5 - Equestrian (War Horse - Stage vs Screen)

Today's blog post honours the Equestrian stages of the Olympics.  My mother's been glued to the telly since yesterday morning...

Two years before my thirtieth birthday I had decided that I wanted to see a theatre production in London called War Horse.  There had been an article on the national news and a documentary.  I was very interested even without the publicity, but seeing the images of massive, life-sized horse puppets on stage really caught my imagination.

I'm not a horsey person.  The few times as a child I was taken on a donkey ride, I always felt for the poor beast carrying me.  But I do adore to see horses moving on their own.  They are something wild and free, if you like the cliche.  The ancient poetry I love equates horses with dangerous sexuality.  Of course, this makes perfect sense if you feel a wife needs to be broken in the same way you might a horse.  But I think it's more than that.  Horses are other.  They are alien in the same way that, say, a dolphin is.  But in an accessible way that almost allows you a glimpse of another kind of life.

So, although not horsey, I do have a great love for the equine form.  Puppetry, also, is something I admire.  I feel much the same about animation.  Creating a world with a set of tools which otherwise would be inanimate and cold.  It's magic, and so it makes sense that people would try to catagorise it as something for children.  Because the world can be cruel and stupid some times.

Finally, like many people my age going through the UK education system, I've been fed a steady diet of WWI since I was little.  The first assembly I remember in secondary school was taken by Mr Wilson, who banged a wooden blackboard rubber on a desk next to the microphone every second for a minute and then said 'That's a little like what it was like being in a bombardment.'  Good old Mr Wilson.

By the time I was fourteen I had a WWI poetry book complete with a photo of a dead (American I believe, but I can't remember the uniform off hand) soldier who, lying in the trench, had had any exposed flesh removed  by rats.  So a nice plump corpse with a completely skeletal head.  I read Birdsong (how I hate that book), the Regeneration trilogy (*so* much better) and as much poetry as I possibly could and the result was top marks in those sections in both GCSE and A-Level.

So while many people feel a great distance between their life and the Great Wars of history, I feel closer to them than I do, say, the Beatles.

So then, War Horse is a play about the plight of horses (and a particular horse and his boy) during the First World War.  Puppetry is used to bring both nature and the horror of human creation onto the stage.  The stage itself is circular and set up so that it can rotate.  Surrounding the stage are slashes of white like huge torn strips of paper.  The backgrounds (pencil drawings making them look like pages from a sketchbook) are projected onto these.  The main horse puppets (there are more than one) are handled by a team of puppeteers.  They wear black and, through some kind of psychological magic of the brain, they dissapear into the background.  No, that takes away from their work - it is their magic.  They mirror the movements of the horse, provide the horse's voice, they become the anima of the horse...its aura...its soul.

The film is a live action piece using real horses (and not such a little CGI) to tell roughly the same story.  However, there are some interesting alterations and additions to the narrative which were shocking to someone so wedded to the theatre production.  However, familiarity and love are not souly to blame for my distaste.  I believe they damage the story.

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, the film has no blood or torn limbs.  There are no Saving Private Ryan flashes of gore.  The skeletal face forever associated in my soul with WWI never stares, eyeless, into the audience.  Of course, the theatre production never shows blood and gore either.  That'd be pretty difficult.  But using puppets they were able to provide us with horror by the bucket load.  So for example, there is a kindly captain who rides our horsey hero.  In the film his presumed death happens in cut away.  It's an interesting shot, but because we have no solid evidence for his demise, it feels somewhat lacking emotionally.  His death on stage, however, happens in slow motion agony, caught by a puppet shell.  Now the puppet shell I wasn't 100% convinced by.  But even so, it was better to see the men torn from their horses in the charge.  We felt their death.

One of the most upsetting things I have ever seen was the horses pulling artilery on the stage.  There was no way this could be done with real horses, or even CGI ones.  The horrific, ghost grey skeletal wrecks pulling the gun carriage and dying on stage were so important to the story.  You needed to see the real fate of these once fine beasts in order to understand the message of the narrative.

The eventual fate of both boy and horse are also both reduced and "enhanced".  So, if I've convinced you to watch the stage version, or you care about watching the film, you must stop reading now.

The mad flight of Joey the horse through the WWI battlefield is a CGI flop.  It loses a true sense of physics, and his eventual barbed-wire fate is far too over the top (to excuse the WWI pun).  The stage version is relatively slow and confined and so the wrapping of wire around the puppet and the noise...oh the noise.  The sheer truth.  And a boy blinded by gas...well, that's nothing to do with puppetry.  I was angry by how they handled that in the film.  It diminished the suffering of soldiers.  The reunion of horse and boy is a thing of blood, snot, tears and choking.  Anything less destroys the ending.

Speaking of which, the weird extension to the ending didn't make the film any better.  I felt they thought it needed that to show that everything would now be well.  Other examples of defference to an audience who might want easy answers - the elevation of the father from town drunk to 'gimpy' (oh the horror of that script) war veteran was very annoying.  It is an example of film narrative which cannot abide having less than positive people who aren't out and out villains.  On the stage, he does the wrong thing, people pay for that and they move on.  Such is life.

I think the horrors of war were pushed on the audience with the new (from the stage version - I should admit that I've not yet read the book) section involving the AWOL German children and their execution.  This felt like an invented section to allow us to feel hatred for the German soldiers.  Of course, we feel, the Brits would never do such a thing.  I mean, we even saw them stopping a child from signing up to war, when the Germans let any old (or not so old) child join up.  I really liked the inclusion in the stage play of the older German soldier who handles the horses.  His section really felt equal to the rest of the narrative.  It spoke of universals.  In the film, he's a bumbler who is very quickly dragged away, never to be seen again.

Also, what was up with the 'I'm so ill but with absolutely no physical sign of it and might die at any time' girl?  And the horse jumping over the tank??  Ugh, I should stop now.  But I probably won't.

So, there were problems with the narrative and with the use of live action horses.  What should they have done, presuming that they not just film the stage production (which I'd love to see, but which I'm also sure would lose a little something, with the audience not feeling the pounding of the horses on stage)?  I believe that animation would have given them options.  The story needs the use of abstract imagery in order to properly tell it.  You need to be able to see people thrown from horses and dying without necessarily seeing them splintered and bloody.  You need to be able to see horses mangled and dying.  You need to limit the sheer scope of the front so that you can take in even a fraction of the true horror.

Also, you need the humour which was almost completely removed (I say almost - I really liked the conversation about a hat).  Humour is life.  No matter how awful a situation, people still find things to laugh at.  Even if it's just my grammar.

And there's one more very important point.  I know that the soundtrack of the film was praised, but I felt that the work John Tams put into the stage soundtrack was immense.  The folk songs (and war songs) bought life to the people and the situation.

The stage production managed all the elements of the story and the truth about war in such a way that it was entirely accessible to everyone.  Humour, music, horror, beauty, truth and hope.  All the things that make up life perfectly balanced.  A child could see it, the Queen did see it, anyone can understand and empathise and grow.  The only ways I felt the film tried to make itself universal was to manage the blood and cursing.  That feels at best inauthentic and, at worst, manipulative entirely for the ultimate return of box-office gains.

I really will stop now.  The film's not necessarily a bad thing.  People spoke about the tears they shed feeling forced.  I didn't cry, but the times when I felt close were not because of the film, but because of the memories of the theatre production which, two years on, are still fresh and bright and living.  And I suspect they always will be.

Blog 1/5 - Turning Thirty

It was my thirtieth birthday in May.  The day fell on a Sunday, so food wise it was an easy decision - roast lunch!  But aside from that, it was a very quiet occasion.  My parents had just come back from Wales, we were aware that very soon my uncle would be going into hospital (which turned into a real nightmare) and I don't think that any of us really felt up to making much of a song or dance about it.

But anyone who knows me knows that musical-type behavior doesn't really suit me, so we had a great time!

Deb made the cake.  I dropped it.  It didn't make much of a difference, really.

The surface of an ice-cream cake, looking a bit like that scene from The Thing right at the end.

My camera kit had been expanded with a 50mm f1.4 lens.  Hence lots of lovely shallow depth to the photos.

A pretty, pretty photo of my birthday cake, candles lit and light reflecting on glasses.

I didn't feel much fear about turning thirty.  I know it's quite traditional to start fretting about the state of your life in general and your internal organs in particular.  But on the whole (not withstanding a little glum thoughts about wasted time...but only for a minute or two) it was very happy and felt much like, well, not quite a start, but definitely a strong footfall in a recently begun sprint.  I almost wrote 'sprint to the finish', but that sounds rather fatalistic.  Perhaps it should be an early footfall in a long and interesting ramble.

Most importantly for this mind-set, of course, was that I got to spend the day with Deborah.  How could I be worried about the future when it has her in it?

The usual suspects - an amazingly attactive woman in a particularly pretty dress, light streaming onto her skin and hair, casting a golden aura around her, reflecting her inner glory.  And me staring at the camera like a psycho.

So really, that's it.  I can't write much more, which seems a shame when this is the start of my Olympian five post week.  But it was really that simple.  And that happy.

Olympic Effort - five posts in one week

Life, as always, has a habit of getting in the way of things.  Such has it been with my blog.  It's been a hectic few months.  I have a lot to write about.  And so, risking legal action from the LOGOC, I decided to write an Olympian five blog posts over the next few days.  I'm definitely going for gold.  I will certainly break boundaries.  Legacy is everything.

My first blog post will take us back to May and my thirtieth birthday.  For a good few years I've tried to mark the passing of each birthday with something or other, and it seems strange that on my thirtieth it get so overlooked.

The second will focus on an analysis of War Horse - Film vs Theatre.  We recently had the chance to catch the DVD and, being such a huge fan of the theatre production, I was bound to have a strong response.

Third will tackle some big news.

Fourth will be another review of sorts - a partial review (as we've not yet finished reading it) of Song of Achilles, winner of the Orange Book Prize.

Fifth will round things up with the theme of "success" (or, in some cases, the lack thereof).

I'll have great fun writing them all.  I hope you enjoy reading them!