Good-Bye To A Genius

If you like reading good books, If you like biography or autobiography of amazing people, and if you haven't yet read the one by Christopher Nolan 'Under the eye of the clock', do read it. Both the book and the author are absolutely outstanding. It's so very sad that Christopher Nolan, only 43 years old, had passed away about 4 years ago in Dublin. He was amongst the group of people who defy life's cruellest snares and shine through with their creativity and outstanding achievements. When he was born, in 1965, in Mullingan, 80 kilometres east of the capital of Ireland, due to lack of oxygen in the brain, he was mute and therapeutic. The parents, Bernadette and Joseph, soon realized that had great intelligence and to stimulate his brain reading him works of James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and D. H. Lawrence. Not all is literature though. Bernadette put alphabet letters in colour in the kitchen while talking to him incessantly, and his sister, 2 years older, sang him songs and played out characters of theatres or films. When his family moved to Dublin, he was in college with Bono, the singer of U2, who dedicated him the song 'Miracle Drug'. In fact, those were the years that Nolan reflected in his autobiography 'Under the eye of the clock' (1988), which won the prestigious Whitbread Prize. He wrote it thanks to a new drug, which stopped his continuous nervous spasms, and to the support of his mother who held his head steady while he typed, one by one, the letter keys of an electric typewriter, with a stick/pole stuck on is forehead like an unicorn. "I felt loved, truly loved, at home and in the college equitably, treated with absolute normality." he said earlier that same year to the newspaper 'Christian Science Monitor'. In the song of U2, Bono imagined Bernadette talking to her son: "I want to travel inside your head/ spend the day there/ listen to the things you have not said/ see what you might have seen/ the songs are in your eyes/ I see when you smiles". His way of writing, which is also shown in his first book, Dam-durst of dreams (1981), together with his poems and stories. His first novel 'The banyan tree' (1999) revealed a deep influence of Joyce, especially for the invention of new vocabulary. Also of other great voices of Irish literature, with the use of poetic prose. It took 10 years to complete the first novel, the story of a rural family through the eyes of the grandmother. "I was inspired by an old woman who lifted up her skirt to jump over a groove in a field.". His 2nd novel is not yet completed at his death. Some slanderers said that the Whitbread Prize was given to him for his disability, but one of the judges, professor of contemporary history, Ben Pimlott, assured: "All I can say is it's an extraordinary book." cited 'The Independent'. Tags:Nolan,therapeutic

Current Mood: Creative

Humour & Common Sense

• We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love.


• There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread, but there are many more dying for a little love.


• There is only one pretty child in the world and every mother has it.


• A hundred men may make an encampment, but it takes a woman to make a home.


• The greatest conqueror is he who overcomes the enemy without a blow.


• Middle age is youth without levity, and age without decay.


• Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love. Love is, above all else, the gift of oneself.


• The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of.


• He who laughs last didn't get it.


• When in doubt, tell the truth.


• Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds.


• Many a man has fallen in love with a girl in a light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it.


• The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't.


• An archeologist is the best husband any woman can have; the older she gets, the more interested he is in her.

Tags:commensense,humour

Current Mood: Artistic

The Queen Of Crime

Sherlock Holmes has his museum, Agatha Christie couldn't be any less; being a real person for a start not a fictional character. If the unconditional fans of the immortal detective of the pipe can send letters of appreciation to number 221B of Barker Street, London, the followers of Hercules Poirot and Mrs, Marple can now do so, sending theirs to Greenway, the country mansion in Devon where Agatha Christie based some of her mystery dramas.

The elegant 3 storied residence in the style of Georgian era, acquired by Christie in 1938, where she passed all her summers till her death in 1976, was donated by the grandson of the authoress to the National Trust - an non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of historical buildings. It has opened it's door to the public S few years agd as a memorial museum, after a renovation that had cost near 3 million Euro.

For the visitors, it's a trip running through the literary life of the novelist, whose work being the most read in the whole history of time, together with that of Shakespeare. All had been translated into every foreign language imaginable. I remember the first ever novel I read in Spanish was one of hers. It was calculated that she had sold close to 4,000 million copies, and this total figure keeps increasing each year by 5 million. Apparently only the Bible and the Koran have more readers than her mysteries.

In this museum are her notes in meticulous elaboration of the plots, the key to her success, together with the simple and easy to understand writing, also easy to translate to any language. There are family photos, first editions and manuscripts that haven't been published, many with settings in this dream like corner of the country landscape of Devon, in the estuary of the River Darn, almost ethereal part of the countryside like that of a story book of fairy tales, that served as background for many of her stories. In this part, she was known as Mrs Mallowan, the surname of her 2nd husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan.

The mansion she used more for summer vacations, where only 3 of her 127 books were written, plus 15 theatre plays, amongst them 'The Mouse Trap' first premièred in London in 1952, followed by 23,000 performances in a historically long span of more than 30 years.

However, the Queen of Crime was not considered by critics as literary, but something like Abba in the pop world; very pleasant to read but lacking profundity, and without special don of making magic with word or writing style. This criticism seemed never meant the slightest importance to her millions of international fans, devoted and unconditional, many new and young, as the ever increasing sales of her novels having proven, even now 33 years after her death.

 

Tags:Holmes,Christy,museum

Current Mood: Cheerful

The Mad, Mad, Mad Violinists

Music and comedy have coexisted for a long time and in many varied ways, in entertainment especially, even in operas. Imagine a film of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton without the piano! It wouldn't be the same. Pagagnini continues to unite music and humour within the cultural embarkation of Madrid and Barcelona. Four acclaimed musicians with acting talent represent different characters one finds in an orchestra, with their differences between themselves and wit the director. Maniacs and clowns in a very serious and enjoyable concert of classical music, but they can't come to any agreement as each tries to impose the way he wants to present the music. So they just start to play and see what comes out, while trying to come together in some sort of harmony. All that is the plot, no doubt with every gag, every detailed comic gesture and rearrangement of music well thought out, planned and rehearsed. With hilarious but very pleasing and harmonious results. The quartet are all famous classical music virtuosos and maestros, their added talent as comedians make the concert a very unique enjoyment that has nothing or little to do with a traditional concert, but only on the visual part, without altering the great discipline of the music composition. The idea and unusual format came from Ara Malikian, the histrionic violinist, director of the Teatro Real, has a facet of an accomplished actor that surprised and delighted many. He had to convince the string quartet who are more used to performing in the opera house or the famous Palau de la Musica concert hall, to agree to play in the great theatre Romea instead. To attract the younger audience to the classical music, and to appeal to the general public who find the traditional classical concert too serious and daunting. The concert, apart from the well respected repertory of known classical pieces of Mozart, Pagagnini and some Spanish greats, represented are also that of Serg Gainsbourg; even with a theme of U2's 'With or without you'. "I don't think Von Karajan would like it, but Bernstein, for sure." said Malikian. Tags:ClassicConcert,MadViolinists

Current Mood: Artistic