Instead of watching something on the goggle box, an evening of music for a change, well, an evening of Scriabin to be exact. Poem of Ecstasy which is obviously his most well known piece as it seems to appear on recording after recording, followed by his Symphony No.2. What a wonderful work of lush lush orchestration, particularly the final movement with sections almost martial or like a National Anthem. One can easily imagine putting words to it. Finally the Piano Concerto, romantic, lyrical with piano rippling over legato strings. Beautiful. Very like the Rachmaninoff concertos in a way. Scriabin is a composer who certainly believes in big big endings. The music evoked all sorts of images while listening to it and if there is one thing I regret in life (one shouldn’t have regrets but I do have this one) it is that I neglected my music and piano lessons as a kid. I wish so much now that I had kept them up but I was a lazy little sod who had other things to worry about.
Finished writing The Cinelli Vases yesterday, the fourth in the Thornton King series and most probably the last. I hadn’t really expected to finish it until almost Christmas time but somehow the second half of the book simply ran away with me and seemed to write itself. I was saying to Chris at dinner last night what a strange phenomenon it is that the subconscious can take over like that and invent stuff you had no idea you would be using: that characters you invent at the start of a book reappear at the end with some significance you never anticipated, even in dreams which is most amazing. For example, amongst others, I dreamt last night that I sang a complete comic song, and I mean complete, with verses that made sense, with rhymes, and with full piano accompaniment. Now how on earth does the brain in sleep conjure up something as intricate as that? The only problem to begin with was that I was finishing two bars ahead of the pianist and that was something we had to sort out which eventually we did. Although of course I don’t remember a single word of the song the dream itself is still vivid in my mind.
In mentioning the fruit in my last Blog I neglected to say anything about the lemon trees. From the three we have, all still quite young we have enough lemons to last a year or more. And when I think of the price of lemons in England I wonder where the con is. Also I meant to mention another healthy crop of walnuts – more than we can ever use. I think there are still a couple sacks in the pantry from previous years. The olive trees are now five years old but remain small. However two of them do give fruit and Merrill has taken to picking off the lower branches. But if you have ever tasted a raw olive you will know why she then spits them out!