furthermore....

having published that, i just noticed Duffy's little chivvying note. Great minds think alike and so do we, obviously

Term is over

finally and I can get back to the serious business of blogging. Sadly, there's not all that much to report, being as I am alone in my flat and poor, watching movies has been my main diversion, and a few days ago IO was lucky enough to see Double Indemnity on 35mm. Also on a filmic note, Edinburgh University Film Society, of which I am president, won Best Student Film Society Award a week or so back at an award ceremony in London held by the British Federation of Film Societies, so it meant that my secretary went down and got to meet Anthony Minghella.
Aside from that though things have been quiet here, most of my friends have gone home and the missus is in Wales.
reading that back it all seems frightfully maudlin, good things have been happening too, i'm just about all set for a year at Tuebingen Universitaet, which will fingers crossed be good, filling in the forms now

If music be the food of love...

On thursday night I and my flatmate Sam dj-ed at our first proper club night up at the Art College, it was fun and we had a modest turn out, but one which covered costs and gave us a small profit.
50 pence of which I spent on an album, the cover of which I shall attempt of which here to post, but don't hold your breath....

fingers crossed that works

in case it doesn't and to clarify, it's a 1964 jazz album by Cleo Laine and John Dankworth, in a late 80s repressing. A quick Amazon search reveals it not currently available on cd. What I've got here is a selection of Shakespearian sonnets, songs and dialogue set to music.

Dankworth apparently did this to commemorate the bard's birthday, quoth the sleevenotes but then they also acclaim it as a Highpoint in British Jazz, which sadly, it ain't.

That's not to take anything away from Dankworth and Laine however, who are both in fine form. The music is top rate and the words are top rate, but together they are rather less than the sum of their parts. Jazz, it is true, generally has a more flexible rhythm on the whole than other disciplines, but it is not conducive to singing in iambic pentameter. Another failling is that the snippets chosen to be sung are so well-known, to the chattering masses as well as the literature classes, and while they do not fall into the trap of declaiming Lear's final speech over some jaunty clarinet, there is still something odd about being warned that Ms Laine was from the womb untimely ripp'd (I'm sure someone will correct me if I've got that wrong from memory) and the closing song, entitled 'the compleat works', is a frankly bizarre, consisting as it does of the titles of the aforementioned 'compleat' works one after the other, over a jazzy backing.

The overenthusiastic sleevenotes tell us that it was played in schools to encourage the kids, to make Bill Waggledagger hip. If this was its intention then it was most likely doomed from the start. It put me in mind of Austria's recent attempts, 'Mozart Cool zu machen' by holding a big festival heavy on the textile art and selling die Ringtonen over das Internet. Mozart, Jazz and modern German pop are very different, and those differences are important, trying to pretend that they're not, with Mozart Virtual DJs und ein crazy kids party, is a mistake.

Rusty prose

Forgive it, I shall improve.

Duffy's recent post and my own wangling to switch my degree to involve Classics have got me wondering what University is actually for. It's more than a little depressing that having a passion for your subject is a rarity, when I've long considered it essential. Perhaps I'm just spoilt.
But then, I know there's no money in academia, but scrabbling around dusty libraries for a pittance is much more appealing than something in a boardroom, for instance. This is easy for me to say, when my parents pay my rent and the Scottish Executive pay my fees, but is it selfish? And if it is, is that inherantly a bad thing? Myself, my father and my Stoic principals have been having a barney about this recently, and I suppose time will tell, after all, it usually does. My desire to do classics has also meant that I have to spend a lot of time in Germany learning Latin. In German. Most of the time I'm confident, and it should work out fine.
QED

From mightly acorns tiny oak trees grow

Here it is then, a reactivation of my old blogger account. The last one came to naught, admittedly but perhaps this will hold my interest for some time, or at least provide some distraction over the coming exam period.
Ah yes, exams. The bright side of them is twofold. not only will they be done soon, but the SAAS in their infinite wisdom are awarding me several hundred pounds of loan for approximately two weeks' worth of study. Not that I'm complaining mind, as it means I can either spin it out over the summer as of last time, when i did the festival on the remains of this lucre, or I can blow it all on books, records and obsolete technology. After all, I'll need something to project in that 16mm projector sitting in the corner. It was offered to me for nothing, how could I refuse?

Much has been made recently of the University lecturers' strike action last Tuesday and their refusal to mark work henceforth. As of yet, I've not noticed any difference - essays are handed back at the whim of individual departments, or, in the case of the German department, dumped in pigeonholes on the ninth floor of the DHT where we have to find them. on a related note, according to this week's Student, 'Boycott threatens graduation.' Why he can't stick to moaning about the England cricket team is beyond this humble scribe