Sunday 29th July
Tower Hill, Winter 2007
Saturday 28th July
I have only a brief news item from QX to go on, which I don't have it in front of me as I write, so my sources are suspect at best, but apparently a recent new software installation at Gaydar briefly resulted in all those self-identifying as 'active' suddenly finding themselves billed as 'passive' - and vice versa.
One can only imagine the chaos that presumably ensued - whilst all the 'versatile' gentlemen sat laughing on the fence...
Friday 27th July
Tower Hill, Winter 2007
Thursday 26th July
In his review of my edition of A.E. Housman's letters, Frank Kermode makes one implicit criticism of the editing when he wishes for 'the omission of many plainly unnecessary notes explaining that when Housman wrote "don't" he meant "don't"'.
That first 'don't' should be 'dont', and the reason my notes correct such (surprisingly frequent) slips is, as I explain, to show Housman as less rigorous when writing informally than his scholarly reputation might suggest.
I also state that 'it is a consideration too that unrecorded inaccuracies can be mistaken for misprints or the editor's errors.'
Thus, when Kermode himself records that Housman's edition of Juvenal was published '"for the use of editors"', 'editorum in usum dedidit', 'dedidit' should be 'edidit', and I am left wondering whose error that is.
- Archie Burnett, Boston University in a letter to this fortnight's London Review of Books
Wednesday 25th July
Tower Hill, Winter 2007
Tuesday 24th July
So His Holiness goes to bed at 7:30? That's not the Holiness I used to know. You know I'm saying? He had a whole other look going...
So speaks the ever-irreverent Tom Waits, headlining at Healing the Divide waving no less than the Dalai Lama off stage to an early bath following his opening address at the Lincoln Centre "concert for peace and reconciliation" in September 2003.
There then follows an ultimate dream collaboration, for this listener at least, as Waits launches into 'Diamond in Your Mind' supported by none other than the Kronos Quartet:
Shook hands with the president and the pope in Rome
Been to parties where I had to be flown
This told me everything is sacred, nothing is profane
Money's something that you
throw off of the back of a train
Always keep a diamond in your mind
Always keep a diamond in your mind
Wherever you may wander
Wherever you may roam
Always keep a diamond in your mind...
Steamer of gravy and them little fried pearls
Floating like a necklace on a beautiful girl
And Jonah said thanks for the food and land
And something 'bout God
that I just don't understand
Always keep a diamond in your mind
Always keep a diamond in your mind
Wherever you may wander
Wherever you may roam
Always keep a diamond in your mind...
She's got milky human kindness and the fat of the land
Skin like a baby, but she drives like a man
She lives in Natchez and she operates a crane
She's like a wrecking ball
that's no longer connected to the chain
Zerelda Samuel said she ain't never prayed
Since her right arm was blown off in a Pinkerton raid
They lashed her to a windmill with 3-fingered Dave
Now she's a hundred and two
and drinking juleps in the shade
Sing it with me now:
Always keep a diamond in your mind
Always keep a diamond in your mind
Wherever you may wander
Wherever you may roam
You will always keep a diamond in your mind
Will you always keep a diamond in your mind...
Monday 23rd July
Tower Hill, Winter 2006
......previous week
