Friday 28 March 2014

Today in the news



Investigating a strange smell in an old folks home in the Austrian province of Styria staff found the body of an elderly female resident who had passed away two weeks ago:

a couple of weeks 
and mother is still in bed 
the janitor looks in 


Thursday 27 March 2014

Fairy Tale of Hope


Once Upon a Time . . . 


babies 
and children 
in many parts of the World 
kept
in their hearts 
 the Truth  
of a common message, they understood 
the miracle 
of transformation,
how it is 
that a blundering bullfrog 
becomes 
a charming prince
and 
why it is 
that an ugly duckling 
grows up 
to be 
an elegant swan 




We can, if we want to, make the World a better place for the next generation, provided we pull together instead of constantly pulling apart. Elected and unelected leaders appear to take delight in squabbling and insulting our intelligence, all too often parading their folly in the public eye, and all too often forcing  us all, and that includes children and babies, into conflicts and wars. Leaders, you are parents and grandparents too. Please set a decent example. It's time to kiss and make up, and wear some new clothes. 

THE END



Tuesday 25 March 2014

Wozzeck




How would the tailor earn his living if God had not installed in man a sense of shame? 

That is one of the questions raised in Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck. And I guess the thought is applicable to t-shirt manufacturers too. 

Man is the incarnation of the individual's drive for freedom. Otherwise we'd be content, like rabbits in sand dunes, to fornicate and nibble grass for all eternity. 

Man's drive for freedom is a red gleam in the west. Man dreams of what can be beyond the far horizon. The world is no longer a tiny corner and a piece of a mirror. Man strives to understand. He reaches out towards the forbidden fruit. 




A gypsy boy takes the dreaming child by the hand. A dream may show the way. Growing up we drink our beer. Or grog, or absinthe. Or even apple juice. And we party. And then we begin to tread the forbidden path. We all may go, as the saying is, off the rails for a while. 




We dream, we muse, we create, and we destroy what is dear to us. In satisfying our insatiable appetite for knowledge we make what we think are mistakes; but they are in reality our lessons misunderstood. 

In Alban Berg's opera a boy makes his mother happy with his bastard smile.

To the simple minded Wozzeck the world  is a bad place. Finally in his bloodstained clothing and shame he walks slowly into the lake until the water is over his head. The boy's mother is later found with her throat cut. 

Calling hop, hop, hop the boy disappears from the stage on his broomstick horse. The curtain falls. 

"God forbid I should get annoyed with my fellow humans." 

_______________
Wozzeck
Vienna State Opera
27, 30, March 2014


Sunday 23 March 2014

Spring has arrived . . .




and 
with spring 
spring's bugs 
invisible 
things on the wing
that sing in my ears 
in the night 

and drill through my skin

they drink of my blood
and hide in my bed 
and mess 
with my head

until I strike
back 
and splat them
quite flat
_


Friday 21 March 2014

Refugee. A poem for UN World Poetry Day 2014





Refugee

tensions 
established 
old outlooks arise


old 
viewpoints firm 
anchored 
hold 
sway 
in the mind
-set
for  this  time 
of being


how strangely 
far distant 
that region of torment 


  one
loosened his tie 
left the place to its fate



Wednesday 19 March 2014

On Conducting



assume no audience part
-icipation
 dialogue's 

not required for leg
-acy
 and fumbled notes 

will bow 
to firm direct
-ion

 allegro tempo 

the strings 
are play
-ing 

the other room 



Saturday 15 March 2014

Of time and form




movement in sp ace



here as      an abs tract   trans itional   process 



time and form



largely re cycling 



the man in the rock ingchair 



synthesis 



of move ment 



the naked man ascending 


or de 
-scending the stairs  



some body  lifting a cloth and turning 



we see 


what they see 

what we see 




Words inspired after visiting the Urteil exhibition Zeit und Form (Time and Form) at Vienna's 21er Haus

*the man in the rocking chair is Samuel Beckett's Murphy, the other characters are creations of Urteil.


Friday 14 March 2014

Psalm XXIII


My photograph needs some words. Psalm 23 springs to mind. 



The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness
for his name's sake. 

Even though I walk 
through the valley of the 
shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my
enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and love will 
follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of 
the Lord 
for ever. 


(text from the Holy Bible: New International Version)


Wednesday 12 March 2014

MAGAZINE / Special pre-War Issue



Inside: 

Going to War for a Cause by Ann Greeman 

Georgette and the Dragon by Ace Arger 

Clouds. What do they mean? by Ian A Fogg

World War III  by Luke O'Head 

Tales You Win - our weekly contest for readers!

It's not a Wall it's a Fence - award winning short story

And much, much, more. 


- Delivered FREE OF CHARGE to your home - 



Irony and Mystery at the Burgtheater



Austria itself is the theatre - Thomas Bernhard


Only yesterday there came the extraordinary news that Vienna's Burgtheater director Matthias Hartmann, who recently had his contract extended, has been sacked. 

Some of my friends are in shock. Such a drama, the director ordered to clear out his desk; it has never happened before in the long history of the Burgtheater they tell me. 

Hartmann received his marching orders from Austria's new Kulturminister Josef Ostermayer.

This evening, curtain-up at 6pm,  a premier of Hans Henny Jahnn's play Die Krönung Richards III (The Coronation of Richard III), described as a piece of modernist eroticism, is scheduled to get underway at the theater without a director.

The Burg, was established in 1741 by the Austrian ruler, the Empress Maria Theresa. Her son Joseph II referred to the Burg, as it became known in Viennese shorthand,  as the German national theatre.

In 1888 the theatre, which had originally been housed next to the royal palace, moved to its present home. There is still a wing with a red carpeted staircase awaiting the reigning monarch, should one dare to arise in today's 2nd Republic.

Only 4 hours to go and on the Burgtheater website 400 unsold tickets remain on offer.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were several more dramatic scenes, and many unexpected twists and turns in this unfolding story.


Tonight's performers include veteran actor Ignaz Kirchner 

Tuesday 11 March 2014

an hour is gone


the heel 

strikes 

the dryness of stick

in the wood 

down the slope to the brook

where it cracks like a shot 

 with an echoed report 

 an hour is gone 

and now there is strength 

in the run


Sunday 9 March 2014

Sanctuary from the Trenches





Dunham Massey Hall is a National Trust Property near Altrincham, England. The hall is open as the Stamford Military Hospital from 1st March - 11th November this year. Many soldiers of the Great War recovering from their injuries mental and physical  wrote poetry. I like this one. 

During the war there were more than 3,000 such hospitals set up in Britain. One young man, my grandfather to be, received shrapnel wounds in the Battle of the Somme. 

Between the scraping of the bone operations which he had to endure he was allowed to sit in the gardens of such an establishment when the weather was fine and expose his gangrenous bone-thin leg to the sunlight, which he believed to have a beneficial effect.  And it worked. It saved his leg from the "certain amputation" of the final diagnosis. 

He lived on into his eighties. Kept allotments. Grew vegetables and flowers. Roses. Like Private Edwards he was a man of few words; but to me they were the few words that mattered. 


Thursday 6 March 2014

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