Today I has mostly been....

[vinteuil]

Emotions are obviously important, it should go without saying really

... emotions? Can't be doing with them, really

.

[eighthobstruction]

....I've always had a foot in many camps....a footfall somewhat shaped like an asterisk....and it makes for a busy eclectic day

[Serial_Apologist]

... emotions? Can't be doing with them, really

.

Well, there's emotions, and emotions. Without the good sort the world would be a pretty bleak place - and a sense of bleakness is an emotional response, wouldn't one say? Bleakness - Thomas Hardy's response to Egdon Heath, Holst's to Hardy's - is not a condition but a response to a condition - even at one remove.

[french frank]

... emotions? Can't be doing with them, really

.

Not sure if I'm saying the same as Serial or not But an emotion having surged up within oneself, one asks, "What is that supposed to achieve? What good can come of it?" And then you push the emotion to one side and focus on what is to be achieved.

Yesterday, I created a birthday card for my niece who plays the piano and sings in a choir (usually): a Fazioli piano with the lid lifted and a small choir with song sheets poking out of it singing, "Happy birthday, dear Lizzy." Took ages but …

[Serial_Apologist]

By way of an illustration this little article conveniently popped up on my computer, one which links up with a current interest in "psychic geography". Jeffrey Jellicoe the landscape designer spoke of "genius loci" - the genius of a place, more commonly referred to as its spirit. There is an infinitude of examples out there to draw on.

http://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-are-victorian-houses-haunted?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

[Dave2002]

... a Fazioli piano with the lid lifted and a small choir with song sheets poking out of it singing, "Happy birthday, dear Lizzy.

... sounds like a very expensive and heavy birthday card ...

[Serial_Apologist]

Not sure if I'm saying the same as Serial or not But an emotion having surged up within oneself, one asks, "What is that supposed to achieve? What good can come of it?" And then you push the emotion to one side and focus on what is to be achieved.

Well for me, while on the one hand simple negative or positive emotions per se don't automatically elicit judgment, but rather a need for strategies for understanding and dealing with them when they arise "inappropriately", there are whole realms of tropes deliberately used to serve vested interests in order to trigger what really amount to reductive responses harmful enough to demand critical examination - and the theoretical means for that are to hand by recourse to inter-disciplinary fields of research making up a contemporary historicism, such as sociology, linguistics and semiology, anthropology and psychology. A Higgs-Boson unifying theoretical equivalent to this end would be helpful but, as in the case of the specialising scientist who takes into account his or her own actions in isolating the object of study from its natural context in a laboratory, the endemic inherent limitations of classification have to be taken into consideration.

[french frank]

... sounds like a very expensive and heavy birthday card ...

Yes, and making the piano play 'Happy Birthday' wasn't easy either

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes, and making the piano play 'Happy Birthday' wasn't easy either

I remember buying a birthday card for my father's 92nd which sang just the phrase "Happy Birthday" in the style of a black Soul singer. Several years later I remembered having stored it away among family memorabilia, and, since the battery was still working, ended up offering it to the improvising musician Steve Beresford. Steve has recourse to a whole miscellany of "found sound objects" in his improvising, and he was most grateful to add it, mentioning that the sampled voice used was that of Stevie Wonder!

[cloughie]

I was too old for the Sex Pistols...

Me too, thought they were dreadful!

[Serial_Apologist]

Me too, thought they were dreadful!

I would have only been 31 - but 31 was considered already old, or at any rate, a middle-aged backwoodsman in terms of changing fashions, back in the 1970s!

[Nick Armstrong]

Fortunately for me, I don't do boredom and the days simply whizz by.

I couldn’t agree more, that’s my experience too since retirement.

One blessing I count every day is that I at last got my act together and had some serious renovations done here, completed in November 2019. (Thank heavens I didn’t put them off for another year....). Redone bedrooms, outside area, shower room; re-vamped water system and all-new central heating system throughout. The pleasure I get from the heated shower room floor is almost sinful... Lockdown has given an opportunity to enjoy the results of all the work, and I do on a daily basis.

Compared with others (vinteuil especially!), I suspect my daily routine is idiosyncratic. For various reasons, practical plus (not least) my own circadian rhythm, my days seem to correspond with US east coast time more than GMT. I rarely wake/get up before noon, or go to bed/sleep before 3am... It just suits me. The only annoyance can be if something practical absolutely has to be done in the morning, but that’s very rare: I can structure any meetings, appointments to take place in the afternoon.

I breakfast when others are having lunch, accompanied by correspondence - emails / WhatsApp etc - with friends & family. Then ablutions; then from 2pm will be the daily outing on the bike if weather permits, either around the Park or elsewhere in the City, or for shopping. Of course the ‘window’ for this is widening as the days lengthen.

I only have one other meal usually around 9 or 10pm, with a cup of tea and a sweet treat of some sort (current favourite: M&S egg custard tarts) around 6pm often with part of a classic b&w movie from Talking Pictures. There follows a siesta listening to an episode of something from Radio 4 extra (Wimsey, Reardon, Wooster, Cadfael et al.) before evening meal and some serious series watching: Spiral and others. Often friends are online for conversations - including on the other side of the Atlantic in the early hours here.

The peppering of exchanges on WhatsApp etc through the day is a great counterpoint to other activities, thank heavens for technology.

The only downside (which I’ve focused on this week) is that my piano playing has dwindled - my main free hours come when others in the building are asleep. I’m going to try and fit more playing into daylight hours this year.

But as Petrushka says, the days fly by and I’m thankful that the whole covid scenario has affected me so much less than very many people. Yes, I’m looking forward to jumping in the car more and travelling here and abroad... But for now, ça va

[eighthobstruction]

"What is that supposed to achieve? What good can come of it?" And then you push the emotion to one side and focus on what is to be achieved.
:

....to be contrary....my thinking is "what's the point of this achievement....is it worth achieving"...."lets have some more of that emotion, it is delicious"....we [I'm co-opting my family] say "it's only an emotion -good or painful"....spending years collecting Dinky Toys until you have them all does not seem like an achievement....searching after a cure for cancer Higgs Boson is something else. But does the search for emotion or the avoidance of emotion just come down to Time Management - using up time, consuming both time and consumer materialistic gee gaws..

[Serial_Apologist]

....to be contrary....my thinking is "what's the point of this achievement....is it worth achieving"...."lets have some more of that emotion, it is delicious"....we [I'm co-opting my family] say "it's only an emotion -good or painful"....spending years collecting Dinky Toys until you have them all does not seem like an achievement....searching after a cure for cancer Higgs Boson is something else. But does the search for emotion or the avoidance of emotion just come down to Time Management - using up time, consuming both time and consumer materialistic gee gaws..

Well I have to say in my case a feeling of "been there, seen that, done this", which seems to have come with, erm, advancing years, means that it is the emotions that come unawares, unexpectedly, triggered from an unforseen event or connection, that nowadays evoke the greatest joys... or indeed despair, as I succumb to disillusionment at being let down by another. And that can be a case of another letting himself or herself down.

[french frank]

....to be contrary....my thinking is "what's the point of this achievement....is it worth achieving"...."lets have some more of that emotion, it is delicious"....

I was thinking more of Serial's inequality and injustice &c, rather than Dinky toys