Monday 29 January 2018

Musical Harmony

I am impressed by the original ideas people keep coming up with for TV singing competitions. It's a shame that at the core they're all as shallow and staged as each other, and but for spotting someone i know on the judging panel (one of the '100') on the BBC's latest offering - the cheesily named, 'All together now' - i probably would have switched it off. However, putting aside the disappointing production, i do like the concept of this show.
     There is a certain amount of music that is meant to be listened to, and appreciated, but there are equally as many songs that are meant to be sung corporately, or are just fun to join in with. So a show that encourages the singer to try and get the judges joining in seems like a nice idea. Of course the best song choices are going to be upbeat classics, but i would like to see someone brave attempt a real choral song, where the 100 might not know the words but will put their own vocal talents to the test by simply making backing music.
     If this has been deliberately timed to be shown after the release of The Greatest Showman then that's a good move, if not it was just fortunate, but hopefully their combined effect will keep Britain singing together, in unity, something that music has more power than possibly anything else, to do.

Tuesday 23 January 2018

No Greater Spectacular

If tonight is anything to go by there is one thing that hasn't changed in a hundred years and that is the audiences. I was at the cinema for a midweek showing of a film that has been out for four weeks and the place wasn't far from packed out, and this, I believe, was not necessarily because it was the greatest film, but more because it was the greatest show!
     As La La Land revealed last year, this film was a proof that cinema is far from dead when a true display of all that is great in mankind comes to the screen. When soaring music, song and dance, acrobatics, magic, energy and passion, colour and light and joy combine it lifts the heart like little else. The musical too can hardly be called a entertainment medium of the last century. Clearly here in England at least (although I believe probably everywhere) people will flock to witness the talents of great performers, to see smiles and tears and to applaud them for who they are as much as for what they can do.
     The Greatest Showman is a new musical of the life of Barnum, for a new century, and may it carry on the baton of bringing life and joy and love through great performances in the way the circus did so many years ago, connecting people in a shared passion for people.

Sunday 21 January 2018

To the end of the garden

Leaving behind the comfort of the house, my cosy chair, the soft lights and the warm radiator; putting down my mobile phone, my laptop and with them the internet, that great web of connectivity that traps us and keeps us bound within its sticky strands; I escape to the garden. To the rain washed stones and crumpled grass. The grey skies and the brown earth and the cold.
               I follow the path past freshly worked flower beds and the tree chopped down last year. I spot a lost clothes peg, an ancient tennis ball and a plastic lizard that looks so realistic it makes me jump. I duck under the low branches of a pine tree, maybe as old as me, and as the path fades to nothing I have to crouch to the ground to climb past a bush and down a hidden corridor of ivy and evergreen branches until I reach the end of the garden.
               Here, in what some might consider a secret wasteland, there are broken bricks and crisp packets, piles of unwanted branches and rotten fence posts, and quiet. A sacred silence, a breathing space, an intimate moment. And it’s here that I find what I’m looking for. The pilgrimage is complete. This is no rubbish pile, it is the fuel source. Life is often found in unusual places.
               I gather up the old wood, the twigs, the branches and the fractured trellising and I return to the garden. In a small pit I arrange my fuel, my power source and then I set it alight. Flames dance. Heat and light spill out into the evening air. The damp wood hisses, while pops and cracks echo off the walls of the house. Embers shoot upwards and sideways, energy has been released. Pine wood scents the smoke rising to a clearing sky and a crescent moon.