Dining With the Power Elite
I was asleep by midnight last night and slept through until 08.00, so that’s OK. No snow overnight, but the air is frigid and crystalline and a joy to breathe.
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A couple of weeks ago I subscribed to Patti Smith’s Substack newsletter just to see what it was like (the free, trial option). For better or for worse, it reads exactly how you’d expect it to read: honest and intense, but also somewhat over-written in a New-York-intellectual kind of way. I don’t know if I’ll continue with it for much longer–it is so close to what I expected that it verges on the self-parodic.
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I fell into a Phish wormhole this morning. Phish are an American band, huge over there, cult following elsewhere, who sell out arena tours with no publicity except a message on their website. They’re excellent musicians and, like all jam bands, are fab when they hit their sweet spot, less so when they aim and miss. Also, like many jam bands (the Allman Brothers excepted), vocals are their weak spot. On the whole I’m inclined to like them, though, because of those sweet spots.
On tour in late 1998, they played 2 nights in LA then moved on to Denver, with a show in Salt Lake City, Utah in between. Most of their travelling fanbase decided to miss out Utah and head straight for Denver, meaning the Utah show sold only (!) 3500 tickets. The band decided to do something special for the fans who went to the Utah gig. They learned the whole of Dark Side of the Moon in an hour and a half and dropped it into their second set. Just for fun. It’s a bit ragged around the edges, but it’s a wonder they did it at all at an hour and a half’s notice.
One of the consequences is that since then they’ve never had an undersold gig anywhere, as the hardcore fans go to every show, just in case. And, ragged or not, I listened to their DSOTM twice (omitting Great Gig In The Sky, which is even worse than the original, and described as fluctuating between impressive and hard to listen to). For anyone so inclined (few, if any of you, I dare say), an audience recording of the show is on YouTube.
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I first became aware of Sarah Hughes when she wrote the weekly episode recaps of Game of Thrones in The Guardian. I didn’t know her; she wasn’t a friend, just a passing social media acquaintance who I got into a couple of chats with, both btl in the Graun and on Twitter, where she was witty and generous in the way that many aren’t. She died yesterday aged 48.
This is something she wrote last November, something to remind one, if reminder is needed, that sometimes people are dealing with grace and humour with situations much worse than any in one’s own life.
‘Find a part of each day to relish’: coping with cancer and Covid Sarah Hughes in The Observer
I offer the only piece of advice I can honestly give: even in these depressing times try to find some part of the day that is worth relishing whether it is a moment of beauty half-glimpsed outside, the joy found in escaping into a different world on page or screen, or the pleasure of dressing up for yourself and no one else because it makes you feel fine.
A long read that I appreciated this morning also dealt with the subject of death, this time of the writer’s parents. There were frustrations along the way with the medical authorities, but the outcome is moving and, in its own way, positive.
Letting go: my battle to help my parents die a good death Kate Clanchy in The Guardian
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Music : randomly following hyperlinks like Alfred Watkins sighting tumuli in the landscape, I ended up at this song, that I liked from the moment I heard it years ago, but had also entirely forgotten about. Paul Simon : René and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War
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