The Letter T

[rhythmaning]

Comment on this entry and I will give you a letter if you want. Write ten words beginning with that letter in your journal, including an explanation of what the word means to you and why, and then pass out letters to those who want to play along.

It has taken a while to get back to this, but here it is…

T, courtesy of itchyfidget…

• Talisker: more or less my favourite whisky (my precise favourite changes with my mood, or the coffee or the food), Talisker is also a place on Skye – a wonderful part of Scotland. The distillery is near but not actually in Talisker – the Talisker burn being on the west of a small peninsular, whilst the distillery is actually in Carbost, on the east coast of Loch Harport. But close enough. (I’ve been to Carbost – I have stayed just opposite the distillery – but I haven’t walked through the glen to Talisker Bay.)
  
  It is a very fine whisky, both mellow and burning, a touch of smoke and peat. And it always makes me think of Skye.
  
  
• Technology: it has its uses – and I use it the whole time – but it can also be a real pain. So: a useful tool, a way of getting things done; not an end in itself.
  
  So I don’t go for new technology, not until I know what I want from it, what it will do for me. I am definitely not “an early adopter”: I want everyone else to make the mistakes first, and I can just get the patched up v2.1 which will do exactly what it says it will.
  
  It never does, though.
  
  What would I do without it? Well, you wouldn’t be sitting there reading this, would you? I wouldn’t be reading (Guttenberg’s moveable type being a major technological advance, natch), I wouldn’t be listening, and let’s face it, a large proportion of us probably wouldn’t be eating (farming being another advance…), or even being at all, since we’d all have died in childhood.
  
  But technology can sometimes be just a bit too pervasive. And I am really bad at teaching people how to use it – it is one of the very few things my wife and I argue about – because it is all too obvious to me, and she doesn’t get it…
  
  …which leads me to…
  
  
• Telephones: I have a funny relationship with the telephone. I think it is incredibly useful – an amazing tool – just think of it – I could pick the thing up just now and talk to my friends in New York, just like that. And it fits in my pocket! But it can also be a real pain. Being contactable whenever anyone else wants; feeling chained to the ringing tones. So me, I switch the bloody thing off, and I really don’t understand why everyone else doesn’t do the same. (Obviously, I pick up my messages. Sometimes.)
  
  And on to…
  
  
• Television: there was a song sometime ago, I think by Bruce Springsteen (perhaps) which had the line “fifty two channels and nothing on.” Ain’t that right.
  
  Give me music anytime. (After I have finished watching ER, Lost, Desperate Housewives, all of Buffy and Angel and maybe even Dr Who.)
  
  
• Thelonious Monk: a wonderful, angular pianist and composer of classic tunes – he has had a huge influence on modern music. He really only had one or two tunes – like Chuck Berry (who had a fast tune and a slow tune), Monk had hot and cool; or maybe bop and ballads.
  
  And a great name; and the consummate goatee; and a love of fur hats.
  
  But brilliant, vibrant tunes. Most of the best were on his first two albums – modestly entitled Genius of Modern Music, volume 1 and 2 - In Walked Bud, I Mean You, Misterioso, Straight No Chaser (and my, the omission of the comma annoys me), and of course, ’Round Midnight, his pinnacle of a slow Monk tune.
  
  With Monk, the space between the notes becomes important: there may be dissonance, but it is resolved, maybe even if the notes aren’t played.
  
  He also taught Miles Davis everything Miles chose to forget. There was a classic recording where Miles and Monk were not talking to each other, teacher and pupil having fallen out by this point; their relationship was at such a low ebb that, although they had been hired to play on the same date, they refused to play together. On Bag’s Groove from that recording, the whole thing is held together by Milt Jackson – the eponymous “Bags”. Monk only starts playing when Miles has finished, and stops when Miles picks up the melody again. But the tension in the studio builds on the record, a brilliant, minimal solo from Monk – repetitive, empty, but building to a crescendo – probably my favourite bit of Monk’s playing.
  
  He wasn’t a happy man – he had mental problems later in life – but genius? I think so.
  
  
• The The: and now a rock band. Bloody brilliant.
  
  
• Trains: I love trains; I think they are just about the best means of transport. This may be because of holidays – trains in exotic places like Italy (exotic? huh, I think I need to get around more) and India; but also because trains give you space and time to think: you can look out of the window, watching the world go by (and as f4f3 recently pointed out, the east coast route between Edinburgh and London – which I have used a lot – has some wonderful scenery, particularly as it careers along the Northumberland coastline).
  
  If you don’t want to look out of the window, you can listen to music (I first got addicted to using a walkman on the east coast route as a student, making movies in my head to the soundtrack of New Order) and read; you can even talk to people, if you feel like it.
  
  And then the train may stop, and you sit there watching the sunset outside of Rome, a train not really going anywhere – it would have been faster walking – but the sunset on the tracks was so beautiful, the red sky glinting off the tracks.
  
  I love trains.
  
  
• Travel: they say it broadens the mind, and whilst I am not too sure about that, I do enjoy travelling. I like to think I am well-travelled, and it has generally been fun getting to where I have got to. I like seeing new things, exploring new towns, looking at new buildings; I like sitting in bars and restaurants, experimenting; I like staying still and I like moving.
  
  It is also fun staying at home (but this is T, not H.
  
  
• Trees: trees and travel kind of go together – the tropics makes big trees. EJH Corner said something like “botany needs the tropics… big trees inspire big thoughts” (it is more than twenty five years since I read that, so I probably got it wrong!), and the tropics certainly provides big trees.
  
  Walking in tropical rainforest is the closest I have got to a religious experience (and from a card-carrying atheist, that is saying a lot) – walking through stands of trees fifty metres tall is a humbling experience – and those trees had probably been there for five hundred years.
  
  But trees don’t need to be in the tropics; yesterday I looked at the unfurling leaves of a beech tree, a gentle bronze-flushing as they opened out.
  
  They were beautiful.
  
  Going to the far north, the trees retreat, hiding in small gullies to get out of the wind – and it is the absence of trees that brings the feeling of “otherness” to the north of Scotland.
  
  
• Trumpets: from Miles to – well, Miles. And trumpets. Well, maybe brass generally, but the trumpet can soar higher than most instruments, from a low growl to an ear piercing screech (listen to Cat Anderson on the 1956 live recording of Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue - allegedly the highest note hit on a trumpet). And it is a glorious, rich sound; full of beauty and blood.

Comments

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

This was great, thanks. Thoughts, off the top of my head: Mmm, Talisker :) Television: you might enjoy The West Wing (not the stuff that's on TV right now - the early stuff). I'm not sure about Springsteen (Dylan, maybe?), but Pink Floyd had "64 channels of shit on the TV to choose from".

I want there to be a band called Melodious Funk. I thought you might appreciate that.

The only The The track I recall, I can't quite put a name to. At least, I think it was them.

I do love the quote about big trees inspiring big thoughts, thank you.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I loved West Wing. We watched all the terrestrial series, and I couldn't believe it when they went digital only. So I have no idea how they rescued Zoe. When we got digital, I still thought Channel Four were going to screen it, so we never even watched it when we could!

I am sure they'll repeat it sometime; or else I'll have to borrow your DVDs to add to the pile of unwatched movies...

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

Don't watch it past that point! It nosedives - all the delightful subtlety and light, clever wordplay is just GONE :( We've stopped buying at Season 4, or I'd loan you them (not that you'd thank me ;)

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but did they rescue Zoe?!

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

Yes. It played like the last 5 minutes of any given Star Trek episode, where everything wraps up suddenly and neatly, The End. Pish.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I am afraid I can quote The The at great length - I thought it wouldn't be a great idea in a post... They balance the bleak emotion of love with a tinge of adolesence, together with witty words.

And thabk you for T, by the way. Took much longer to reply than I had intended!

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

That's OK ... I think I still owe you a letter! Will get there ... eventually.

[deililly.livejournal.com]

I know exactly what you mean about trains. I think it is one of the few modes of transport where it can really be about enjoying the journey and the windowviews (I actually have a few of those on my Flickr!) rather than just trying to get from A to B.