Now Could I Drink Hot Milk

It's 11:30 and I'm all tucked up in bed, with a cup of tea beside me, wearing the  black and 

white dress I bought from Next yesterday.  The dress is a bit iffy, as it's got short sleeves and a scoop neck, but I teamed it with a black ballet cardigan, and it looks quite good (of course, since I'm in bed I shouldn't be wearing either dress or cardigan, but they were so comfy that I couldn't be fussed).

Speaking of ballet, I took my first class for four months on Thursday.  It took place in a room that has a cement floor, overlaid with wood parquet, and when you add no classes for four months to jumping on cement floor, you have extreme calf pain. The class was okay.  I've since found one run by the University Ballet Society, so I'm going to try that next week, also, and see which one I prefer.  Well, I'm going to do that if my calves will

allow me to.

This past week was a busy week.  I went to my first Cambridge talk - funnily enough, given by a man who's an acadend of mine, but about whose talk I knew nothing until I was informed by someone I was having lunch with.  In fact, the lunch itself was an event, as it was with someone I'd only met in passing, a really, really lovely woman who invited me to lunch as soon as I e-mailed her (and the lunch was great).  I went to the talk despite the fact that I'd heard it before, and in a way it's a good thing I did go, as it was about Byron and thus allowed me to make a few comments without looking clueless.  Afterward, I went out with the people who were going out for dinner, and we had one of my favourite kinds of dinners:  the kind where everybody has just enough to drink to be relaxed and rather more intimate than they'd usually be at first dinner, but doesn't drink enough to be scary or embarrassing drunk.  I had a great time; I hope it repeats itself at some point.

There are two more talks this week, and who knows what delights await me there?  One of them even involves the London Monster, a subject about which I read a book last Thanksgiving, I think, (although it may have been New Year's), and which, although it can't quite achieve "interesting" manages "pretty interesting."  The talk won't be about the Monster; actually, it'll be about satirical prints, with the Monster as lead-in.  Oooo!

This week was also a big week because it was the week that I was...interviewed by the Chronicle of Higher Education!  That's right, academic journalism fans, I was questioned over international telephone, er, signals about the authorship of Frankenstein and why it matters.  I believe I acquitted myself reasonably well.  At least, I didn't say anything embarrassing, or anything obviously controversial, and I don't think I said anything that will result in my never getting a job again.  I did say a couple of things off the record (as we academic celebrities in training say), but when I think of what I said on the record I'm not ashamed.  And the reporter was also interviewing Charles Robinson and Susan Wolfson, so at the very least my jejune remarks will gain some lustre from the company they keep.  The article will be out near Hallowe'en, and I'm sure I'll provide a link.  I only got interviewed, incidentally, because I posted a feisty message on the Romanticism listserv when the complete fool who believes Percy Shelley wrote Frankenstein, John Lauritsen, wrote in for about the eighth time in four years to remind us all that Percy Shelley wrote Frankenstein, and I just couldn't take it any more.  I did keep telling the reporter that I was by no means an expert on the book.

And finally, the week was also a big week because I bought a book I'd been admiring in Waterstone's for the past two weeks.  This little gem is called Pop Charts, and it is, in fact, a collection of pop charts - but not the kind of pop charts you think.  Here are two, for example:

And the whole book is like that.  As is always the way with these kinds of things, a few are duds. But, as is almost never the way with these kinds of things, most are very funny indeed. 

And now, suddenly, I'm exhausted.  So I'm off to bed.  Tomorrow I catsit for my nanny (sort out the grammar on that one!).

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Cockneys of London, Muscadins of Paris...

...listen to me:  if you are involved in a relationship with one of your students, you are involved in a bad relationship.  If you are involved with one of your undergraduate students, or with one of your former undergraduate students who remains an undergraduate, or with an undergraduate student who was not yours but is still an undergraduate, and you yourself are a member of the professoriate, you are involved in a relationship that is really bad news.  If you are the possessor of a Ph.D. and the person you are seeing is at your college or university and is not yet the possessor of a B.A., you need to take a serious, long look at that relationship, consider its relative inequalities and power structure (however immaterial those may seem to you), and ask yourself if it is right or fair or would seem psychologically sensible if the person involved were not you.  Because, I assure you, the answer to those questions will be no.

Ew.

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Settling In

So yesterday was the first day of term.  It was also the day of the first meeting arranged by the Visitors and Newcomers Group.  I am, obviously, a Visitor and Newcomer, so despite the fact that I had grave misgivings (I've never been a visitor and newcomer who hangs around with other visitors and newcomers.  That seems to me to defeat the purpose of being a visitor, and it leaves one permanently a newcomer), I went; after all, if you're trying to make friends and settle, you should go everywhere where you might make friends.

So who was there?  Me and...many Asians!  And a goodly number of women with babies (plus two men with babies.  You rock, sirs!).  Plus the whole thing was run by women in late middle age to early old age.  The thing is, though, on my way there I pretty much figured the chance of this meeting's throwing me into a depression was about 90%,  so I was prepared when it threw me into a depression.

First of all, as my friend L. will tell you, I'm not a fan of groups, and I particularly don't like groups of women.  I was excluded by a lot of groups as a child, so now groups always seem to me to be a vehicle for exclusion.  Plus, looking at all these women organisers I thought what I always think when I see single women of that age these days:  Oh, God, is that how I'm going to end up?  Because what you see in these situations is women whose husbands have died or who are divorced.  Women who join things and get involved in a community with zest and good will. And so the impression one is left with, which is to some extent an accurate impression, is that all women are either divorced or left behind, and then you have to throw yourself into community activity to give you something to do.  But I don't give a shit about the community in that way - I don't want to help out visitors or lead tours of interesting things near where I live or give potlucks or lead a book group (can you see that?  "Now, let's take a look at The Eve of St. Agnes.  Is hiding in a closet and watching someone undress sexually acceptable, or is it just pervy?").  I don't want to be a doughty dowager whose husband died, or a woman who wears those weird Eileen-Fisheresque clothes and really enjoys her baking group:  I want to be a woman whose elderly and somewhat cantakerous husband is alive, or a woman who, frankly, gets fucked and has an intimate conversation with someone she loves on a regular basis.  But you go to these sorts of things and the impression you get is that in about five years that chance will be gone for me.

And I love babies, but I don't have one, nor do I want one.  

Plus, on a less emotional note, as is always true when I come to stay in England, I'm not really a visitor or newcomer.  I know what the weather is like; by this stage I know everywhere to get a cake in Cambridge; I know who David Tennant is and have been to the Hamlet.  I don't mean I know everything there is to know, but I'm on a weird cusp where I know too much to be a smooth fit with the visitors, but not enough to be a smooth fit with the residents.

So all in all the V&N thing was a downer.  I've decided to give them one more chance, because the next meeting involves a presentation on Cambridge gowns, something I'm interested in all on my own.  This suggests that it might be a better bet.

Fortunately, however, the day got better.  After the meeting I went over to the library to do some photocopying, and also to have lunch.  In the tea room, which is also the lunch room, I encountered a mature student named Nicola, who was reading a Spenser article.  I introduced myself and asked if I could join her (I'm getting quite good at this, although I loathe doing it), and we had a very nice conversation.  When we left, she introduced me to her tutor, who was sitting across the room.  Upon hearing the name of my college, this woman asked me if I knew the English fellow, which I do not, and said he might ask me to teach!  She said this off her own whack!  Of course, I'd love to do some teaching, so I shall lie in wait for this man.  And just meeting this woman, who was jolly and open, made me feel better.  As did meeting the mature student.  Oh, and although the lunch wasn't that great, dessert was a jam and sponge pudding with custard that was absolutely sublime.  I don't know whether the sponge was deliciously buttery or the custard was deliciously creamy, but something in there gave it all a rich taste of warming fat.

I then spent the afternoon wandering about, buttoning and unbuttoning. Around about 3 I was filled with a burning need to have a vanilla slice (a Napoleon, my American friends). I love many things about Cambridge, but I'd say its major drawback is that vanilla slices are thin on the ground. As far as I know, only one place does them, and it closes at 3 (but then, I am a visitor and newcomer, so there could be more places, ones I don't yet know about).  I had to be content with a piece of chocolate chunk cake from the infamous Caffe Nero.  It has real chocolate chunks in its frosting, which is a plus, but even that couldn't really make up for the absence of a vanilla slice.

In the evening was the introductory reception for new fellows at my college, followed by my first formal dinner.  I put on my semi-formal dress, which was fractionally too small in the

hips (despite a week's dieting before the jam sponge eating), and a very attractive pair of bright red shoes I purchased from Marks and Spencer earlier this year.  The reception was very pleasant.  I knew a person there (a woman, incidentally), so I hung out with her and her friend and asked whispered questions.  One of those whispered questions was, "Why is everyone so old?"  Because everyone really was. With five to ten notable exceptions in a room filled with perhaps 75 people, everyone was well into his or her 60s. The answer is, because in order to be a fellow, unless you're a visiting one, you have to have done something very impressive or important, and usually people who've got to that stage are old.  Fair enough. And the little vegetarian dumplings were delicious.

After the reception (where, by the way, some man who was not old, but I would guess was somewhere between 47 and 55, kept staring at me but didn't come over) came the dinner.  The dinner was ALSO filled with old people.  (Please don't get me wrong:  I have no problem with elderly people.  It's just that since I've arrived in Cambridge almost everywhere I go seems to offer the same participatory group:  me and a bunch of pensioners.  Going to the cinema?  Me and a bunch of pensioners.  Going shopping?  Me and a bunch of pensioners.  Actually, writing it down I can see that this might be because Cambridge is quite a nice place to which to retire, and also because pensioners tend to be out and about on weekdays.)  Overall, however, it cheered me up from the morning.  For one thing, there were many married women there, and they were with their husbands.  And those husbands seemed to love them.  Good.  For another thing, the women were interesting, and they knew how to make something more than very small small talk.  At the V&N meeting, everyone was there for a purpose - to offer you information, to welcome you to Cambridge, to meet other V&N's - but here people were there for the purpose of having dinner and chatting, so the chat was, while still small, much more interesting.  I would say it reached the level of medium talk.

The dinner itself works in three parts.  The first part is the starter, the main course, and what  I would call the dessert but what my college calls the sweet (alas, prune and Armagnac tart.  Very dry.  Quite disappointing, as dessert [sweet, whatever] is my favourite course, and most eagerly anticipated, so when it's not good it's sort of a double blow).  Then everyone decamps to another room to stand up and have tea or coffee.  Then those who remain go back to the first room to have fruit and port (which is called dessert - at first I thought it would include cheese, so I was very excited.  But it did not.  There were grapes, though, and I do like a good grape).  By the time we got to dessert, everyone who appeared to be what my friend S.M. would call, "at the same position I am on my life timeline" was gone, and the only real young person was a man down the other end of the table. Up at my end were a bunch of elderly gentlemen.  Now, it is one of the mysteries of my life that elderly gentlemen love me.  And these elderly gentlemen were no exception.  Nicely, across the table from me were a couple of people close to my age, although they seemed to be proper grown-ups, so I was able to talk to some people more like me, as well as to the elderly gentleman.

I feel that there must be people in their late thirties and early forties lurking somewhere around here.  I'm not exactly sure why I feel this, since evidence shows me that there in fact no people in their late thirties and early forties lurking around here, and that there are no single people in this age range anywhere in Cambridge (I never see any.  Unless they look freakishly young or freakishly old, and thus I'm mistaking them for much younger or much older people). There's a tea for new fellows next Saturday, arranged so we can meet the senior members, so perhaps more people in this age range will show up then - or perhaps I'll see the proper grown-ups again.  Oh, and hopefully my neighbours will be there, and although my neighbours are elderly they're very nice, and very lively, and I like them very much.

Tomorrow night I'm off to a literature event, a lecture by an eminent theorist.  I've contacted the person who runs the Romanticism lecture series and arranged to say hello to him there. I wouldn't say I have high hopes for this event as a friend-making venue - I've learnt not to have high hopes of this at any venue anymore - but it does seem like the sort of place where I could conceivably encounter at least a couple of likeable people who are interested in what I'm interested in. And I finally had some cards made! So I can actually just hand over a card, instead of scrabbling around for a pen and a bit of paper.  AND I know what I'm going to wear.  So things are looking good.

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Terminal

Term starts here tomorrow, which means the streets are crowded with students.  What do they look like?  Well, I'd have to say they look...privileged.  Perhaps this is because it's Cambridge, so the people who come here are the best and brightest, or perhaps because it's England, and thus cool, so they've already put on their fall clothes, and people tend to look a little better-dressed in fall clothes.  Or perhaps it's because none of the loathesome habits of American student dressing seems to have permeated here:  no one wears tracksuit bottoms, or thongs, or baseball caps, or any of those things that make even the smartest look dumb.  And the women wear far less make-up.  Actually, that's quite interesting in its way.  By the time they get to about 30, English women just don't look as good as American women; it's really true.  But at this age they are much more naturally pretty, or perhaps just much more willing to trust to their natural prettiness.  So they wear much less make-up, and thus look fresher, younger, and prettier.

Anyway, the past few days have been rather slow.  I've stopped academic work for a bit, and I've been revising my novel.  This is hard work.  Uck.  On the other hand, it means I do a lot more writing.  In fact, thinking about this yesterday and today I calculated that between writing e-mail, writing letters, working on either the novel or the book, and writing this, I must write about 15,000 words a week.  Sometimes I sit in my room here and realise that although I've communicated with many people that day, I've actually only spoken to two.  It's weird.  Not bad, but weird.

Anyway, over the past week or so my days have involved a lot of travelling into and out of Cambridge to do little things -- what Byron would have called "buttoning and unbuttoning."  I got some business cards, but I didn't like the finished product, so the place re-did them.  I tried to buy a skirt, and a short sweater dress.  I tried to buy a hat.  I had to do some grocery shopping.  I needed to check and see if some books I'd ordered had come in.  I needed to buy some postcard stock to draw on and send to a friend:  buttoning and unbuttoning.  As a result, I've been following the same route into and out of Cambridge centre for the past seven days, and I've noticed one striking item.  I'd noticed it before, but only after seeing it every day for a chunk of time did I really notice it in all its vileness.  I would say it is perhaps the ugliest thing I've seen in my life.  Here it is:

Yeah, baby!  This is the Corpus Christi clock.  It's a new clock that's been placed in a glass case fronting the street outside Corpus Christi college.  They're proud of it!  They put it up where everyone can see it!  And see it they do.  People stop and stand in a little group -- there's always one out there -- silent.  They are stunned by its horribleness, and the reason I know this is because when I have said to them, "Isn't it hideous?"  they all say, "Oh, yeah."

This clock (which is huge -- probably six feet tall) was designed, paid for, and donated by a man who also gave the college money for a library.   He is a graduate of the college.  That thing on the top is a grasshopper (or as I like to call it, a grasshopper-fish-beast, although it is in fact a mixture of grasshopper, lizard, and stag beetle, named by its designer a "chronophage," or time eater).  As the clock pendulum swings back and forth, the blue lights you can see flash and flutter and settle, indicating the minute and the passing minutes, and the grasshopper's legs move back and forth, so it looks like he's galloping.  His jaw opens and closes.  In fact, the whole clock is a celebration of the grasshopper escapement, invented by John Harrison, the "humble Yorkshire carpenter" (so says Wikipedia) who also codified longitude.  The grasshopper escapement is a tiny hinge device that allows clock gears to turn without lubrication or adjustment, and thus its invention made possible both the watch and more accurate time-keeping.  Huzzah!  John Harrison.  But not so to the clock.  This is one of those items that is so ugly, and so useless, that it dazzles.  Did I mention that its only right once every five minutes? 

It makes me think of that moment in When Harry Met Sally when Carrie Fisher says to Bruno Kirby about his wagon-wheel coffee table, "It's so awful there's no way to even explain to you how awful it is."  That's exactly how awful it is.  It's speechlessly awful.

In any case, the one part of it that is not awful is the inscription underneath, which the picture doesn't show and which no one ever mentions.  It is, "Mundus transit, et concupiscentia eius," which comes from 1 John and roughly translates, "The world passes, and also its desire."  In its strictest sense "concupiscentia" means "greed," but as the English word concupiscence (lust or lascivious sexual desire) suggests, it more elastically means "fleshly desire."  I think I'd translate this passage, "The world passes away, and so do its earthly desires."  Until I finally looked the phrase up on the internet the "Eius" threw me:  I thought it referred to the grasshopper.  But now it makes sense, and even without religion the sentiment seems interesting.  And compared to the clock that surmounts it, it's veritable pearl of Latin beauty.

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Books

Thing I love about Cambridge No. 5,766:

The Cambridge University Library is what you might call a unique building.  That means you look at it and think, Why would anyone who wasn't Albert Speer design that 

building, and why would anyone build it?  It's very wackiness, however, gives it a curious charm.

  

This has nothing, though, on the charm of what is housed within.  For Cambridge has what is definitely a unique book cataloguing system.  The books are arranged by year.  That's right: although given subject areas are separated (so that science is not with English), after that the books are filed according to year of publication.  And by size:  all the small books go in one area; all the regular books in another; all the oversized in another.  And they're not filed by title, or sub-topic, or author's name, after that.  To be honest, I can't quite figure out how they're filed after that.  My theory is that it's by month of publication, but I don't think that can be it, because when you get up to the new century (i.e., now) books from 2006 will often be next to books from 2003.  So at some stage the month theory stops working, and apparently the year system breaks down, too.  

Even this system, though, pales in the face of the cataloguing for the English faculty library (which is a kind of sub-library, located in the faculty building, filled with books only about English and American literature).  There, the books are arranged first alphabetically by area, and then by period, with the alphabet line and the timeline rising from the basement to the top floor.  So all the books on American literature are in the basement (because they are A), and all the books on British literature (which includes all literature that isn't American) are on the first floor and above, with books on contemporary literature located in the heavens on the top floor.

I love both these cataloguing systems.  Each of them has its own logic.  Divide it into American and British, then divide it by period, then subdivide within each period by author.  That makes sense. Divide by year.  That way, if you can't remember what a book is called, or who its author is, but you can remember its year, or vaguely its year (and I do frequently remember this), you can just go to the year bay and look till you find it.  Sure - why not?  (although my theory about the year system is that it was started back when 25 books were published per year and that seemed an astronomical amount - no one could conceive that it would ever rise to 2,000, and by the time it did the cataloguing system was "the way we do it.")

And I think I may also like these systems because they force me just to open my heart to them. Apparently one of the last people my university sent on a fellowship to Cambridge was quite snotty and horrible because she thought the way things were done was often foolish - and, more importantly, was irritated by the supposed foolishness.  But my feeling is rather that if you're able to work with it, just accept it. You want to catalogue your books by year?  Well, that's just as plausible as by author name, I guess.  More importantly, once I know they're catalogued by year, I can work with it.  Sure, why not?

So I am enchanted by the Cambridge book cataloguing system.

I'd have to say there are two things that my Sure, why not?-ness doesn't work with, though.  The first is bicycle helmets.  Almost no one here wears a helmet, so I spend all my time thinking, "Put on a helmet!"  I want to hand them all copies of the awful, awful court transcript my dad sent me of the "testimony" of a man brain-damaged after falling off his bike without a helmet, which convinced me to wear one.  And in a university town!  Of course, I feel that way in America, too, so perhaps that doesn't count.  That leaves me with one thing:  popcorn.  The cinemas do salty popcorn (as well as sweet, which I think is gross, so I don't eat it), but there's none of the warm grease Americans know as popcorn butter. Let me tell ya, people, popcorn unclothed is dryyyy. So I do wish they would bring over the buttered-popcorn concept.

Having said that, I'll also say that this week I did some rare-book-buying.  The town seems to have two rare book stores, but I've only been into one so far.  That one has good stuff in the window, which is mostly why I go in.  Anyway, last week they had in the window what is now in my room:  a tiny 1847 Book of Common Prayer, and its accompanying book of lessons.  I would estimate them at about 3.5 inches by 2 inches (roughly quadragesimo-octavo, for my textual studies-loving friends).  Here is a picture of them next to my mouse:

Is it me, or are those books mighty cute?

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In Which I Giggle

Yesterday I went up to Manchester.  It's England's second city, fact fans!  I didn't go there for 

that, though; I went to visit a friend. Nonetheless, let me take a moment to say that Manchester has some stupendous Victorian buildings.  Of which you can see one there on the left.

Anyhoo, I went up to see my friend.  And we got into a conversation, as you do, about the general state of our lives.  I said to him that I'm

 pretty happy, "except for being single.  I didn't envision myself being single at this point in my life."  And he said, "Yes, but that's remediable. You can fix that.  It's not like you're missing a leg."  Which struck me as extremely funny.  On the train home, laughing over it made me think of something M. said to me in Paris, when I told him how sad and worried I was about losing the person with whom I've just had a definitive break.  He interrupted me and said (imagine this in a French accent),  "No offence, Emily, but this guy doesn't sound like so much.  He's tense; he's tired all the time; he doesn't have a good job; he's always worried:  if you asked me, did I want to meet this guy? I'd say no." This also made me laugh.  And they both made me laugh for the same reason.  When you're in something, or when you have friends who have watched you go through it, that something always seems so important, so heavy.  Both these remarks took such a practical view, and such a correct one, that the situation suddenly looked completely different.  I had my eyes opened. After all, it's not like I'm missing a leg, and what I am missing doesn't really sound so great, after all.

Incidentally, isn't it sad about Paul Newman?  Now there was a through-and-through Stand-Up Guy.  The world is emptier for the loss of him.

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In Which I Go to Paris, Visit Friends, See the Sublime Divine Comedy, and Learn a Delightful New Phrase, So the Entry is a Long One (oh, matron!)

For the last four days I've been in Paris, whence I returned yesterday.  I was originally going to see The Divine Comedy, but then the show sold out.  I wanted to see my friend M. and his family, though, so I decided to go anyway, then queue for a ticket to the band.

First of all, let me say that the Parisians definitely know how to design a public space.  This is the front of Gare du Nord train station, where I arrived and from where I left:

To me that station says, "Travel is a serious and special undertaking."  There's none of that tired smallness you sometimes encounter in American train stations, or even the relative austerity that you get.  As you walk around Paris you realise that the French government and French church never designed a public space that they didn't then cover with elaborate decoration.  Travel, government, church-going, culture:  all these are occasions of importance and grandeur, and reasons for celebrating, to the French.  And I concur.  Here is the Paris Opera, which M. loves, but which even I think is a bit much:  to me, it looks like an overdecorated cake:

And, in the tradition of my fascination with the tops of English buildings, on the right is an apartment building edifice that one could only find in France.  Whereas on the left is one, from maybe 50 yards away, that you could just as easily find in New York.

Anyway, because I was somewhat in a tizzy from leaving for Paris relatively soon after arriving in Cambridge, and returning two days before I go to Manchester for the day, which is itself two days before I change rooms, I forgot certain items, chief among them my guidebook and my map. This meant that my activities in Paris were somewhat limited, as I refused to buy a new guidebook (the one I have is an Eyewitness Guide, and - heads up:  product placement - absolutely fabulous, but rather pricey) and kept forgetting to buy a map.  So I went to the Louvre.  Fortunately, it happens that my very favourite Paris sight is at the Louvre:

I love that pyramid!  In this case, I really don't know why.  

Inside the Louvre, too, I found some things to enjoy.  This painting, which I love because of the absolute clarity of its representation, as well as the extraordinary eerie light in the back (also, those are some dead people in the foreground, and I always find dead people interesting):

This monument, which has been one of my favourite pieces of art since I saw it the last time I was in Paris:

And this painting of the three Graces.  Being rather overly gifted in the bottom department myself, I am always heartened to see paintings that seem to appreciate the ample female posterior.  This one makes no bones about that preference (as it were), and rightly so, say I:

But let us not kid ourselves.  Paintings are pleasant; architecture can make the mind and heart soar; but it's The Divine Comedy that's the meat of this entry...

Having no ticket, I queued up outside the venue at 5:30.  In front of me there was a first small and then large knot of Divine Comedy obsessives.  They had come over from England to see the band, and they seemed to follow him for every concert.  Wow, it's like people who follow the Dead, except they follow the Comedy (which is better, I suppose).  Now, I've never understood this.  I frankly admit that I'm an obsessive person, and I frankly admit that I like repetition. But it seems to me that this kind of obsessive repetitive viewing of one band in concert would destroy, rather than enhance, the experience.  Surely part of what makes a concert exciting is the sense of delight that you're seeing this band, this band the seeing of which is a special event. On any given tour the set list doesn't change that much, and to some degree the banter is honed as the tour progresses.  Each show will be different, and there will be spontaneity, of course, but it doesn't seem to me that the difference and the spontaneity would be sufficient to outweigh the repetition of other elements.  It seems to me that you would move pretty quickly from, "Oh, there's The Cure!" to "Oh, there's The Cure...," and to me that destroys something. But perhaps that's what followers like.  You become blasé, you become knowing, and so you become in the know, one of the elite.

In any case, there they all were.  But they already had tickets.  I and the 25 or so people behind me did not. It was tense, I confess.  It turns out, though, that in France venues are required to keep a certain percentage of tickets back, precisely to sell on the day to those who show up hoping.  Huzzah!  for socialism and egalité!  I got in to see The Divine Comedy!

Now, I need to explain at this stage that I've actually already seen them once.  In 2001, which I think might have been the last time the DC were a band proper, they recorded an album

called Regeneration.  This is an anomalous album. Apparently, the rest of the band got tired of the suits and the arch lyrics (doesn't he look arch even just in that photo there?), and in an attempt to stretch and to appease them Neil Hannon...what?...agreed to (?) a very different sort of cd, one that was much more earnest and down-to-earth.  This is probably my least favourite DC cd, although it does include the song "Eye of the Needle," in which Hannon waits in church for God to speak to him 

(They say that you'll hear him

If you're really listening 

And pray for that feeling of Grace.

Well, that's what I'm doing; 

Why doesn't he answer?

I've prayed 'til I'm blue in the face)

and observes his fellow worshippers in a wonderful quatrain: 

The cars in the churchyard are shiny and German,

Completely at odds with the theme of the sermon;

And all through communion I stare at the people,

Squeezing themselves through the eye of the needle.

In any case, in support of this cd Neil Hannon did a "one man and his guitar" tour (I believe the band had disbanded at this stage). In the States, where I saw him, he came as support to Ben Folds.  No one gave one tiny damn who he was; they were there to see Ben Folds.  I, however, gave many large damns who he was, stood at the very front, and stored the whole experience up, because I thought it would be my only time.  And I think it was because I thought it would be my only time, and because it was such a distinctive experience for me, that I expected this gig to be the same:  somehow I got it into my head that it would be Neil Hannon and his guitar, t-shirt and jeans and longish hair.

It was nothing like that.  First of all, Neil Hannon dressed nothing like that.  Indeed, he dressed in a manner so absolutely bizarre that I don't believe I could have imagined it.  I don't mean he dressed like David Bowie in Ziggy Stardust; rather, he dressed exactly like your fourth grade teacher, if your fourth grade teacher had dressed like a geek.  He wore:  a pink shirt and a tie with black and silver horizontal stripes.  Over that he wore a navy blue cardigan - just let me repeat that: a cardigan.  Over that he wore a corduroy sport jacket.  Yes, a shirt and tie, a cardigan, and a sport coat.  He wore chino-cut trousers in what appeared to be some sort of rayon or polyester mix (because they were soft rather than stiff), and leather-soled dress shoes. Oh, and sunglasses.  I'm willing to believe that this outfit was some kind of ironic statement, but I'm mostly willing to believe it because I cannot imagine any pop singer who would wear that outfit onstage unironically (and because of the sunglasses, which were quite cool).  Still, most outfits of this type that are ironic include drainpipe trousers or drainpipe jeans, not what I and my friend Terrence Tucker would have to call slacks.  But perhaps it was that kind of irony that's so cutting edge that it's deadly serious to those who don't know it's ironic.  And to be fair, when he came on stage he said, "Ah, C&A," and it did look exactly like the sort of outfit you'd buy at C&A.  And Paris does have one of the last few C&A's, so maybe he bought it there for nostalgia value.  Still, my mind was boggled. And yours will be, too!

Compare these photos to the one above.  Neil, do you want a job teaching English literature at the university level fifty years ago?  

(I have a suspicion about the sunglasses.  About five years ago I experienced a sudden problem with glare; I started finding certain light glaring that I never had before.  I think this might be one of the first permutations of eye-aging.  I thought perhaps he was starting to experience the same problem - he's two years younger than I - and with stage lights it would be particularly blinding.  So perhaps... )

Also, he was short.  He was so small that I briefly thought he was the same size as me, but because I just can't believe that any man my age who hasn't been deprived of nutrition would be 5'2" (157 cm, my European friends), I finally decided that he must be somewhere between 5'4" and 5'6".  But he looked so small.  For me, at least, it's very rare to see an adult about whom I think, That person is short.  Like, really, properly, short.  But Neil Hannon looked like that. Not that I cared.  He could have been 4'11" and I would have adored him, because his size became an utter irrelevancy in the presence of his completely delightful selfhood (which we'll get to).

Okay, so how else was it different?  Well, there was a band.  Of course, I knew there would be a band, but I didn't realise, somehow, the difference a band would make.  The sound was much louder, and fuller, and thus the presence of the experience was much more immediate and much stronger.  I had been there when it was Neil Hannon and his guitar, but this time I was there.  Ah! I thought when he came on stage and they started playing, Here he is!  (And for just a minute I understood what propels those people to follow the Comedy:  it's the moment when he comes on stage and you think, That's what he looks like.  But for me that moment would cease to appear after I'd seen him four or five times in quick succession.) And again and again as they played, when they did a song I knew and loved, I would think, This is it!  This is it! In all its fullness and completion, as vivid and present as it is on the cd. (of course I didn't think that last sentence, but that's what the feeling was, translated into words.)

And not only was there a band that supplied this feeling, but it was a band the male members of which seemed to have been selected solely for my viewing pleasure.  All of them were pale men with dark or dark and greying hair, with those long narrow noses that delight me (being as they are second only to the slightly too long, vaguely hooked ones.  Such a one as Neil Hannon has himself, in fact).  Cheers, Neil!

Guitarist

Small but distinct version of pianist

And, after all that - or with all that - he was a delight.  First of all, he tried to speak in French the whole time. Indeed, he spoke in French most of the time.  But he spoke French with the accent and intonation of someone who has learned phrases from a book, or perhaps by imitating someone else four or five times.  This is to say, he spoke. Like.....................this, and as if the French words were English words (so that, for example, "d'accord," which should be pronounced with the final d silent and the final r fading into the back of the throat, he pronounced "dacore").  I by no means have a French accent, or much vocabulary, but having spent a day and a half in France, listening to French people, it was very very funny to hear this Anglo-Irish pronunciation.  Particularly once I began to suspect that he had it all written out in the looseleaf binder on the music stand in front of him, to which he referred devotedly, and particularly because when he messed up he would screw up his face and go, "Oh, [under his breath] fuck!"

So what did he play?  Well, he played many French songs.  One of these was the French Eurovision entry for 1965, "Poupee de cire, Poupee de son," which won that year, and which was written by Serge Gainsbourg.  He also performed another Serge Gainsbourg song (in this clip you can hear his terrible accent), a Francoise Hardy song, "Joe Le Taxi,

" by Vanessa Paradis (this is the version from the second night, which displays his charm better, and has a nice surprise at the end),  "Les Playboys," by Jacques Dutronc, and a Georges Brassens song, "Les copains d'abord."

Your science teacher rocks out to 

un chanson

Yes, yes, I hear you say, but what did he play of his own? Ah, well...He played an unexpected one, "If," but that was quite late in the performance.  He played "National Express" (my least favourite DC song), but that was the encore.  He played "The Summerhouse," an early one, but not as early as "When the Lights Go out All Over Europe," from Promenade, which he also played.  From his more recent songs, he chose "A Lady of a Certain Age," which I think is one of his saddest.  It's about an elderly woman who's had a life that should have been wonderful and fulfilling but instead, the tone makes clear, was empty and disappointing.  She now lives in the South of France, and each verse ends with the lines, 

And if a nice young man would buy you a drink, 

You'd say with a conspiratorial wink, 

"You would think that I was ----three," 

And he'd say, "No, you couldn't be" 

but in each verse the age is ten years younger (first 70 [which makes the rhyme], then 63, then 53), and the intonation of the young man's utterance changes, so that the first time he say, "No!  You couldn't be!"  and the last time, "No.  You couldn't be."  It's a sobering descent.

He also sang "Becoming More Like Alfie," which is the first DC song I ever fell in love with.  I was introduced to The Divine Comedy in the best way possible:  by a person I loved.  I read an article about Promenade, bought the cd, didn't like it, and years later my then-boyfriend bought Casanova (a lyrically richer album), and when I said, "I don't like the Divine Comedy," he put it on, and I was silenced.  "Something for the Weekend" (which, alas, was not played in Paris) was the very first song, and it was funny, and clever, and had a surprise ending.  It also has a wonderful beginning, with two girls giggling, and a wonderful middle, with Neil Hannon saying in a louche purr, "Oh, come on!  You know you want to..."  You wouldn't think it could get better than that, but "Becoming More Like Alfie" is even better, beginning as it does with a sample of Michael Caine, and including one of the weirdest lyrics ever penned:  "Everybody know that no means 

yes, / Just like glasses come free on the NHS." ???? I've loved the song ever since I first heard it, and this summer I suddenly loved it much more, because listening to it one day I had one of those strange moments where you really hear a lyric for the first time, after having heard it a thousand thousand times before.  In this case, what I heard was:

Once there was a time when a kind word could be enough,

And once there was a time when I could blindfold myself with love;

But now, now I'm resigned to the kind of life I'd reserved

For other guys, less smart than I:

You know, the kind who will always end up with the girls...

I had just been disappointed in love for apparently arbitrary reasons myself, and listening to those lines I suddenly realised concretely for the first time that men, too, have the experience of watching someone inferior walk away with the sexual prize, of raging over why the less deserving nonetheless get the brass ring.  It was also the first time I noticed that the lyric was an admission that Hannon, at least, had been willing to accept crumbs off a table and to hang on in one-sided desire.  Both of these were experiences I had associated solely with women, and more specifically with myself, so it was illuminating and humbling to find them connected to men.

He also sang, "Our Mutual Friend."  Perhaps best of all, he finished as he always finishes, with "Tonight We Fly" (sorry about the Spanish subtitles in this clip, but I love the sweet smile he gives in the beginning, and I do think this is the best performance on youtube). This is a song of such grace and loveliness that I do believe it's my favourite Divine Comedy song.  Perhaps I like it because, I suspect without knowing it, it contains a reference to Le Diable Boiteux, an eighteenth-century French novel in which a devil leads a man on a night flight over Paris, lifting the roofs off the houses to show the sin within - this novel, and the character, mentioned in a Byron letter in reference to himself.  Perhaps I love it because of its soaringly beautiful melody. I think I do love it for the latter reason, but mostly I think I love it because it contains a very hard to master list of all the different people "we" see (and I love lists, and things that are hard to master [oh, matron!]), and because of its lovely, poignant lyrics,

Tonight we fly 

Over the chimney-tops, skylights, and slates,

Looking into all your lives 

And wondering why

Happiness is so hard to find.

I know it's silly, I know it is, but I've been so unhappy lately that I couldn't help feeling those lines deeply, thinking to myself, It is, it is so hard to find.  Why?  You would think it would be a simple matter.  

Even more than those lines, however, I love the final ones:

And when we die

Will we be that disappointed or sad

If heaven doesn't exist?

What will we have missed?

This life is the best we ever had.

First of all I like them because, although Hannon is often pointed to as an atheist, this suggests that he is rather an agnostic, a position I find much more intellectually admirable, admitting as it does that one just can't know (the opening lines of "Eye of the Needle," above, suggest this too).  But that's not really why I like them.  I really like them because always at the end of the final line I think to myself, Yes.  That's true.  Life is wonderful, and there could be none better. God love you, Neil Hannon, you make me an optimist!

And yet despite all these transports and delights and wonders (which they truly were), the best moment of the evening was not musical at all.  It came when he forgot which song he was supposed to perform next and, turning away from the microphone, he said (apparently to his pianist):  "I'm all of a fluster."  I suspect he did mean this to be heard, so I also suspect that this is not an expression Neil Hannon uses in everyday life, but, God, I hope it is! It's so self-parodic that it cannot but be charming.  I laughed and laughed over it, and am laughing over it still.  I have decided to use it all the time.

So there you are.  The Divine Comedy made my trip to Paris.  It was, as Neil Hannon himself would say, a joy.  

And wait!  Who is this standing in front of the Louvre pyramid...?

A Brief Paean to Music Itself

Sometimes I think about how lucky I am.  When I think about that, I think about my career, my skin, the fact that lots of people like me, the fact that I have thick hair... I never think about music.  But sometimes when I listen to music, I think, I am so lucky to love music this much.   What a gift I have in music like The Divine Comedy's, like New Order's, like The KLF's!  I occasionally play that game, If You Could Only Take Books or Music to a Desert Island, Which Would You Take?  and the answer is always:  music.  Literature is good; it's interesting, and sometimes it transports and amazes.  But very very good music always does that, and instantly.  It grabs you by the stomach or the air in your lungs and pulls you up and out, putting in your mouth nameless marvels that just defy the ability of utterance.  It makes you promises that it keeps, but that you can't explain to anyone else.  How lucky am I to have that?

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