American Fez

Prestissimo (Ritardando)

Listening to the music of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, I'm always terrified that ordinary household objects might suddenly burst into life and start dancing around the living room in a frenzy of bacchic furniture; a crazed table and chair leg version of the can-can and a conga line combined. No doubt this has more to do with the somewhat sprightly sounding quality of his name and the similarly exuberant titles of his compositions than with the tempo of the actual music. Likewise, listening to the music of Alban Berg, fortunately a rare occurrence in the circumstances, makes me think all my plants are going to immediately wither and die.

Four Quartets

T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets are read by actor Jeremy Irons:

BBC iPlayer Four Quartets

Despite their shared quadrilateral structure, I've never grasped the much commented-upon connection between Eliot's four poems and Beethoven's "late" string quartet, opus 131; but then I suppose I'm just an ignoramus. Mind you, nobody, at least as far as I know, has ever explained this link with words of actual substance. Critics just drone on about it as though its existence is evident without requiring explanation, much in the manner that little girls mumble about fairies and unicorns and other forms of cute ephemera.

Nonsense present and nonsense past are both apparently present in nonsense future, especially when forced to listen to interminable lectures by professors of English literature.

Meanwhile, also available at the BBC's website, actress Shirley Henderson reads Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market quite superbly.

BBC Poetry

2014: the Prospect Before Us

Despite all these media stories about smug nerds instantaneously fabricating stereolithographic dinosaurs in their 3D printers, most of us still encounter technical failures printing single sheets of paper with writing on them.

Electronics salesmen encourage me to 'invest' in an enormous 3D or 4K television, despite the fact that TV networks never even mastered the art of broadcasting standard definition 2D video properly.

Meanwhile, one of the largest companies in the world wants me to wear their WiFi spectacles on my nose even though I can boast, at least for the present, perfect vision. Offer me Google Pince-nez and matching Microsoft smoking jacket for use at home instead and I might be interested. 

But then, like all the tech gurus and other professional futurists with their wild-eyed, breathless prognostications for 2014, I'm already getting ahead of myself.

Happy New Year: keep it simple, stupid.