Monday 12th June 2006
Well a little respite today from the hot weather of the last few days which has taken temperatures up to close to 30 degrees…very hot for a normally cool Lancashire. Still it has been so wonderfully liberating to shed a few clothing layers and roam the wooded hillside weaving in and out of the branches that hang low to the ground. Some sad news this evening as Nick’s cat “Blackie” (who is 18 by the way) has broken a leg and had to be rushed to the vet. Hopefully he’ll be well and good again soon. For me I had dinner in the garden bathed in a wonderful sunshine and Poulenc’s Organ concerto. How many of you (if any) reading this have heard a pipe organ in full flow combined with an orchestra? The power in the music and majesty of the organ is brought to life today and it sounds so wonderful playing gently amongst the faltering evening sunshine and dimming birdsong. How music raises the soul and triggers perceptions that normally inhabit the periphery of our senses. It tears the soul apart and flings the fragments into the heavens and then reassembles them all into a new configuration that is softer, gentler and bursting with wonder. I heard this piece of music first at the Ferenc Liszt music school in Budapest. I think it changed everything I thought I knew about myself and my musical enjoyment. Budapest and the people of Hungary are very special.
Well a little respite today from the hot weather of the last few days which has taken temperatures up to close to 30 degrees…very hot for a normally cool Lancashire. Still it has been so wonderfully liberating to shed a few clothing layers and roam the wooded hillside weaving in and out of the branches that hang low to the ground. Some sad news this evening as Nick’s cat “Blackie” (who is 18 by the way) has broken a leg and had to be rushed to the vet. Hopefully he’ll be well and good again soon. For me I had dinner in the garden bathed in a wonderful sunshine and Poulenc’s Organ concerto. How many of you (if any) reading this have heard a pipe organ in full flow combined with an orchestra? The power in the music and majesty of the organ is brought to life today and it sounds so wonderful playing gently amongst the faltering evening sunshine and dimming birdsong. How music raises the soul and triggers perceptions that normally inhabit the periphery of our senses. It tears the soul apart and flings the fragments into the heavens and then reassembles them all into a new configuration that is softer, gentler and bursting with wonder. I heard this piece of music first at the Ferenc Liszt music school in Budapest. I think it changed everything I thought I knew about myself and my musical enjoyment. Budapest and the people of Hungary are very special.
The morning has begun cloudy with small wreaths of mist that hug closely to the uneven contours of the ground. The weather has yet to run its course and shall rally for few more days before descending into a rainy chaos once more. I can see the clouds thinning and the first glimmers of blue breaking through. Almost as though some immense celestial ship were furrowing the heavens and we were looking up through its wake. Maybe it is unrelated but the birds are subdued this morning so perhaps they too feel the air heavy with change and wait a little while longer than normal. How wonderful it would be to share the morning with you by my side.