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20 June
A report from The Aldeburgh Festival:
The piano quintet by Bartók, apparently written 1903 to 1904 (and revised in 1920), is not even like the early string quartets in sounding like Bartók - except perhaps in the wicked dissonances of the second movement and, as it developed, its rhythmicity.
This piece, in four movements (the third and fourth linked), sounded initially as though the main influence had been Brahms, though it did not sound like Brahms, but another composer, aware of his piano quintet. As it progressed, though there were even vague hints of Chopin’s writing for orchestra and piano, and stronger ones of Dvorak (particularly the Dumky piano trio) and Tchaikovsky (Piano Trio No. 1), but the main person, perhaps, without whom this could not have been written was Liszt.
Obviously, in common with Dvorak, a composer who acknowledged folk music in his work, but, for me, the signs of Liszt at play were in the phrasing, the attack when the piano planted chords of its own as complement to that of the strings, and the sheer exuberance of cutting loose.
It would not have been, in true Lisztian style, for the piano to support the string texture so much, and supply it with patterns, motifs and melodies that the strings did not exactly took over, but maybe worked through with the piano, but I nonetheless see his thought-world in the making of this piece. Especially in one moment, I think in the third movement, where the piano doodles with some trills and a few related notes, and from this, as if magically (yet contrarily organically), a melody emerged.
Maybe there aren’t many recordings of this (I’d be surprised if there were), and maybe the magic of to-night’s playing by Tamara Stefanovich and The Keller Quartet wouldn’t be matched, but I shall be looking into this piece a little further – and not just to see if anyone else agrees with me about what was in Bartók’s mind and soul at the time!
Afterwards came a performance of the composer's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, admirably performed when Stefanovich was joined by Pierre-Laurent Aimard and by Daniel Ciampolini and Sawm Walton. It was a long time, too long to name, since I had heard this piece, and the first time to hear it live.
Infected though I was by what Richard Sennett had written in the programme about his lecture the following day to the effect that members of the audience, not just the performers, can be anxious that something will go wrong, I managed to put from my mind the notion that Ciampolini might come in at the wrong place or miss it altogether by concentrating on the pianists, and I had one the musical experiences of a lifetime, even confusing, though I was, the Piano Concerto No. 1 and even the Musi for Percussion, Strings and Celeste as to what came next.
The smile on my face said it all, and the rest of the audience were just as enthusiastic with their applause.
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Wednesday, 20 June 2012
Thursday, 14 June 2012
Beneficial exercise - or not going to the gym (1)
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14 June
A pill to motivate you to hit the gym?
Sounds too good to be true - but scientists think they have cracked it
The usual wittering of some sign-on page or other
If only there were a pill to motivate you to take that gym-motivation pill
And a pill to motivate you to take that one, &c., &c.
Or a pill so that such rot selectively just became invisible or did not attract the eye / mind / soul and wrap it up in the dross of ages past!
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14 June
A pill to motivate you to hit the gym?
Sounds too good to be true - but scientists think they have cracked it
The usual wittering of some sign-on page or other
If only there were a pill to motivate you to take that gym-motivation pill
And a pill to motivate you to take that one, &c., &c.
Or a pill so that such rot selectively just became invisible or did not attract the eye / mind / soul and wrap it up in the dross of ages past!
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Wednesday, 13 June 2012
Some poets
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13 June
Passing for quirky observation, a string of abuse
At readings, some poets:
* Are just better at reading poetry - theirs or that of others (though not necessarily 'alike')
* Apologize for their poetry, in either of two principal ways
* Either explaining how it came to be written, or by saying - in more or less so many words - Here it is, for what it's worth
* Need to be told, in response, that it probably weakens hearing the poem to have it explained, and that, if they do not have confidence in their work, maybe they should not have had the confidence to say that they would take part
* After all, not even in his notes*, does T. S. Eliot, I think, apologize for quoting Wagner texts in The Waste Land, or otherwise, in the opening lines, suddenly introducing the German of Bin gar keine Russin**
* Forget that, as some have noted before, those listening just will not 'get' every reference (even if they study a text), and feel they need explanation
* Do not stop to realize that it appears curious to have put the references in, but still feel obliged to say what they mean, unless they are to be construed as boasting what they have seen, done, heard or read
* Read too quickly, not letting their words / lines / metre speak or sing
* On account of reading too quickly, and not allowing the reading to breathe, also underplay the end of each poem
* Maybe do not want to leave the final line hanging in the air, but there is little danger, as they are already finding the next book-mark, or starting with further words to introduce the next poem (whether its title or an explanation), and which mingle with the closing words
* Would, if they do not easily let each poem have a time just to be when read, benefit from applause between one choice and the next, which might slow them
* Might feel less frightened, and exude less fear, if they had the feedback of applause, although it seems sacrilege in poetry-reading circles
End-notes
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
13 June
Passing for quirky observation, a string of abuse
At readings, some poets:
* Are just better at reading poetry - theirs or that of others (though not necessarily 'alike')
* Apologize for their poetry, in either of two principal ways
* Either explaining how it came to be written, or by saying - in more or less so many words - Here it is, for what it's worth
* Need to be told, in response, that it probably weakens hearing the poem to have it explained, and that, if they do not have confidence in their work, maybe they should not have had the confidence to say that they would take part
* After all, not even in his notes*, does T. S. Eliot, I think, apologize for quoting Wagner texts in The Waste Land, or otherwise, in the opening lines, suddenly introducing the German of Bin gar keine Russin**
* Forget that, as some have noted before, those listening just will not 'get' every reference (even if they study a text), and feel they need explanation
* Do not stop to realize that it appears curious to have put the references in, but still feel obliged to say what they mean, unless they are to be construed as boasting what they have seen, done, heard or read
* Read too quickly, not letting their words / lines / metre speak or sing
* On account of reading too quickly, and not allowing the reading to breathe, also underplay the end of each poem
* Maybe do not want to leave the final line hanging in the air, but there is little danger, as they are already finding the next book-mark, or starting with further words to introduce the next poem (whether its title or an explanation), and which mingle with the closing words
* Would, if they do not easily let each poem have a time just to be when read, benefit from applause between one choice and the next, which might slow them
* Might feel less frightened, and exude less fear, if they had the feedback of applause, although it seems sacrilege in poetry-reading circles
End-notes
* Which, I am assured, were to fill up space, and not to be taken seriously, however fascinating the fisher-king.
** We have all heard of The Baltic States now, so Stamme aus Litauen / Echt deutsch that follows might mean more.
@TheAgentApsley
Monday, 11 June 2012
Of Cabbages and Kings
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11 June
To Chris Bell
Heat me, said the soup.
It was not, as fictional unwanted soup is, glutinous. It looked, smelt, tasty soup. That said, it was conciliatory cabbage, begging to be eaten.
But I hated cabbage and my former lover with it. When I used to do all the cooking, why did she think that I needed a bloody food-parcel ? Good soup, trying to say I love you, I want you back, but made with what I didn’t eat – what was I, Ivan Denisovich ?
I could just have dropped the pot in the bin, but I wanted to boil it dry, cremate it in the oven, and write huge offensive slogans with the residue. The saucepan had other ideas.
Hey, it said, I’m the reincarnation of Goering : treat me with some respect ! The author of The Blitz, demanding respect from me. I heated the soup. Ate it with silent rage. It was delicious.
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11 June
To Chris Bell
Heat me, said the soup.
It was not, as fictional unwanted soup is, glutinous. It looked, smelt, tasty soup. That said, it was conciliatory cabbage, begging to be eaten.
But I hated cabbage and my former lover with it. When I used to do all the cooking, why did she think that I needed a bloody food-parcel ? Good soup, trying to say I love you, I want you back, but made with what I didn’t eat – what was I, Ivan Denisovich ?
I could just have dropped the pot in the bin, but I wanted to boil it dry, cremate it in the oven, and write huge offensive slogans with the residue. The saucepan had other ideas.
Hey, it said, I’m the reincarnation of Goering : treat me with some respect ! The author of The Blitz, demanding respect from me. I heated the soup. Ate it with silent rage. It was delicious.
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Madonna in Turkey
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11 June
There is a piece on MSN ('Why Madonna's made a right boob of it') about what Madonna did in her concert in Istanbul last week, flashing the nipple of her right breast during one song (Human Nature).
I tried to post a comment, but, for want of succeeding, here it is:
I don't see how, by calling women 'the fairer sex' (which is patronizing), this article does them any favours, because it simultaneously claims that Madonna has 'been a role model for women for nearly three decades' and that she always chooses to behave disgracefully and to trade on images of overt sex.
So is she a role model, championing sexual freedom, or is she an embarassment? Are women, lining the streets of our cities at night in precious few clothes, championing their sexual freedom or a disgrace? Would they flash a breast, if they felt like it?
I don't know who does claim Madonna as a role model, but there's no getting over the things that haven't been mentioned: appearing in Playboy, her explicit book Sex, and the film In Bed with Madonna, where she confronts another woman with a reference to their previous lesbian activity, so wouldn't that model have to include those undeniable matters, as I am not aware that she has recanted?
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11 June
There is a piece on MSN ('Why Madonna's made a right boob of it') about what Madonna did in her concert in Istanbul last week, flashing the nipple of her right breast during one song (Human Nature).
I tried to post a comment, but, for want of succeeding, here it is:
I don't see how, by calling women 'the fairer sex' (which is patronizing), this article does them any favours, because it simultaneously claims that Madonna has 'been a role model for women for nearly three decades' and that she always chooses to behave disgracefully and to trade on images of overt sex.
So is she a role model, championing sexual freedom, or is she an embarassment? Are women, lining the streets of our cities at night in precious few clothes, championing their sexual freedom or a disgrace? Would they flash a breast, if they felt like it?
I don't know who does claim Madonna as a role model, but there's no getting over the things that haven't been mentioned: appearing in Playboy, her explicit book Sex, and the film In Bed with Madonna, where she confronts another woman with a reference to their previous lesbian activity, so wouldn't that model have to include those undeniable matters, as I am not aware that she has recanted?
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Saturday, 9 June 2012
More about zoo animals - Harry Potter and the serpent
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9 June
On that date, when I began this posting as a reminder to myself, we could read (on MSN) the caption:
Visitors to Rotterdam Zoo capture amazing footage of a submerged polar bear attempting to shatter his glass enclosure with a rock
Presumably, the vertical image of such a bear, not clearly doing anything (it could have been standing at a counter, waiting to order a drink), was - or was meant to be - that bear.
If so, as I have suggested, the choice of what to show was a poor one, if it was meant to exemplify the 'amazing footage', i.e. nothing very amazing about it, and a picture barely worth 10 words (This is a polar bear upright in water in Rotterdam zoo).
What is more amazing is the cunning, maybe subconscious, use of the word capture, for no bear would - unless bred there, with parents from the wild (itself, an awkwardly poor way of describing The Animal Kingdom where it is meant to live) - be in the zoo without having been captured. Our Let's capture this on tape! has the same thrill of the early explorers, and, in common with them, makes the chase more valuable than the rights or liberty of the thing to be caught.
Any story where an animal supposedly safely, i.e. we are safe from it, in captivity does something violent or dangerous is apparently newsworthy. I believe that I made a posting a few months back about a giraffe being attacked, which I shall endeavour to locate. Yes, thanks to the tag (and not a giraffe as such): Escaped lion kills camel at zoo (according to AOL®).
Which is where I come in with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Whether it is Tom Riddle's snake Nandini, the basilisk, or the one in the zoo, there is something thrilling about the fangs, the venom, the glass disappearing, or the serpent otherwise making an unfriendly house-call...
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9 June
On that date, when I began this posting as a reminder to myself, we could read (on MSN) the caption:
Visitors to Rotterdam Zoo capture amazing footage of a submerged polar bear attempting to shatter his glass enclosure with a rock
Presumably, the vertical image of such a bear, not clearly doing anything (it could have been standing at a counter, waiting to order a drink), was - or was meant to be - that bear.
If so, as I have suggested, the choice of what to show was a poor one, if it was meant to exemplify the 'amazing footage', i.e. nothing very amazing about it, and a picture barely worth 10 words (This is a polar bear upright in water in Rotterdam zoo).
What is more amazing is the cunning, maybe subconscious, use of the word capture, for no bear would - unless bred there, with parents from the wild (itself, an awkwardly poor way of describing The Animal Kingdom where it is meant to live) - be in the zoo without having been captured. Our Let's capture this on tape! has the same thrill of the early explorers, and, in common with them, makes the chase more valuable than the rights or liberty of the thing to be caught.
Any story where an animal supposedly safely, i.e. we are safe from it, in captivity does something violent or dangerous is apparently newsworthy. I believe that I made a posting a few months back about a giraffe being attacked, which I shall endeavour to locate. Yes, thanks to the tag (and not a giraffe as such): Escaped lion kills camel at zoo (according to AOL®).
Which is where I come in with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Whether it is Tom Riddle's snake Nandini, the basilisk, or the one in the zoo, there is something thrilling about the fangs, the venom, the glass disappearing, or the serpent otherwise making an unfriendly house-call...
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Is Professor McMillan for real?
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9 June
I'm sure that he's real, but is his every word on The Verb for real?
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9 June
I'm sure that he's real, but is his every word on The Verb for real?
As I have said in a Tweet or two, great though it is to have the programme, has Professor Ian's geniality begun to wear a bit thin? That and the attempt to shock, inspire and amuse - I know it's the cabaret of the word, but cabarets don't always have the same Master of Ceremonies, and I don't get:
* Asking me to listen as if I were missing a layer of skin (in the last programme)
* Never having anything critical to say, although the occasional provoctaive question
* Even why there are so many regulars, given commissions or challenges
I have no regrets: without The Verb, I would probably not have heard Janice Galloway, written two pieces that I submitted to its competitions, encountered Paul Griffiths as (contrary)novelist (about which I have blogged elsewhere), etc., etc.
But would the next series of the programme benefit from giving guest hosts a turn, which worked well with Have I Got News For You? when Angus fell from grace.
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Friday, 8 June 2012
Spot the film
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9 June
No, I didn't mean 'Spot, the film', or anything to do with fictional dogs!*
Take a look at this:
A drama critic learns on his wedding day that his beloved maiden aunts are homicidal maniacs, and that insanity runs in his family.
What springs out about this as a one-sentence synopsis (taken from IMDb)?
* Is it the pointless specificity of giving Cary Grant's occupation (or calling)?
* Likewise as to when in his life the revelation takes place?
* The banality of the tone in which the message is conveyed? As if the text read
An accountant learns on his way home that his beloved maiden aunts are going on a long journey, and that a liking for travel runs in his family.
* Or is it this? That whether objectively the sisters are killers, who are acting under a delusion, they believe themselves to be sisters of mercy, saving those whom they despatch from further suffering
End-note
* This pointless gibe at the writings of one Lynn Truss was sponsored by a major Plc.
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9 June
No, I didn't mean 'Spot, the film', or anything to do with fictional dogs!*
Take a look at this:
A drama critic learns on his wedding day that his beloved maiden aunts are homicidal maniacs, and that insanity runs in his family.
What springs out about this as a one-sentence synopsis (taken from IMDb)?
* Is it the pointless specificity of giving Cary Grant's occupation (or calling)?
* Likewise as to when in his life the revelation takes place?
* The banality of the tone in which the message is conveyed? As if the text read
An accountant learns on his way home that his beloved maiden aunts are going on a long journey, and that a liking for travel runs in his family.
* Or is it this? That whether objectively the sisters are killers, who are acting under a delusion, they believe themselves to be sisters of mercy, saving those whom they despatch from further suffering
End-note
* This pointless gibe at the writings of one Lynn Truss was sponsored by a major Plc.
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NHS Choices : content reviewed
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8 June
Who's mad here*?:
Thank you for contributing to the NHS Choices website. We have removed your
contribution because we feel it is unsuitable for publication on this page. We
do not allow comments which actively seek to dissuade other site users from
following the evidence-based health advice provided.
Judge for yourself:
Commenting on http://www.nhs.uk/news/2012/06june/Pages/exercise-may-not-ease-depression.aspx ('Exercise 'still valid depression treatment')
“Exercise doesn't help depression,” according to The Guardian. The paper said that patients advised to exercise fare no better than those who receive only standard care.
Exercise is among the treatments for depression currently recommended by the NHS, with many patients 'prescribed' a course of physical activity as an alternative to antidepressant medication or therapy. Despite what several headlines have suggested, new research has not re-examined the effect of exercise on depression, but instead looked at whether giving depressed patients additional support to encourage exercise proved beneficial.
During the research, 361 adults with depression were randomly allocated to receive either standard treatment or standard treatment with additional encouragement and advice on exercise. Standard treatment can include medication, therapy and physical activity. This means that all participants could take up prescribed exercise, but some had greater encouragement to do so.
The research found that encouraging activity increased physical activity levels but did not reduce depressive symptoms more than standard care alone. This is a useful finding for NHS staff wishing to know the best way to help patients with depression. However, given that the study did not test the general effect of exercise, the results do not support the view that exercise is 'useless' for treating depression, as some news sources have suggested.
Exercise has a host of benefits for physical and mental health, which may help patients with depression in ways other than reducing their immediate depressive symptoms. These include reducing the risks of other diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
Where did the story come from?
The study was carried out by researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Exeter, and the Peninsula Medical School. It was funded by the Department of Health as part of the National Institute for Health Research’s Health Technology Assessment programme.
The study was published in the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal.
Media reports of this story were slightly misleading, and may have given the impression that the researchers specifically tested the effect of exercise. This was not the case, as the research compared two groups of people who were offered the same range of treatments, but with one group receiving additional support and advice designed to encourage exercise. This meant that all participants had access to exercise-based treatments, but some received some additional encouragement.
The Metro newspaper went too far in saying that the study showed exercise “had no positive benefits on mental health”. The study in question looked at the effect of one particular exercise intervention programme on depression symptoms, so did not directly address other mental health problems or other exercise programmes.
What kind of research was this?
This UK-based multi-centre randomised controlled trial (RCT) looked at whether a specific exercise support programme helped reduce symptoms of depression in adults more than standard care alone. The study was 'pragmatic' in nature, which means it tested interventions in a real-world setting rather than in the highly artificial environment of many trials. For example, patients were prescribed the most appropriate form of treatment from a range currently used in clinical practice, rather than a set treatment that might not have been ideal for them. As such, the study was well designed to assess how the exercise programme would work in reality.
The authors say previous evidence suggests that exercise is beneficial for people with depression, but that this evidence has come from small, less well-designed studies using interventions that may not be practical for use by the NHS. Therefore, this latest research aimed to investigate whether depression symptoms could be reduced by an activity programme that could be practically implemented by the NHS if deemed effective.
This type of study is one of the most effective at demonstrating whether a particular health programme, or 'intervention', has a measurable benefit in patients.
What did the research involve?
The researchers recruited 361 patients, aged 18 to 69 years old, who had recently been diagnosed with depression by their GP. Participants were randomly divided into two groups, who received either usual care methods from their GP or usual care plus a physical activity intervention.
Participants were recruited if they were not taking antidepressant medication at the time of initial diagnosis or if they had been prescribed antidepressants but had not taken these for at least four weeks before their diagnosis. Patients with depression who had failed to respond previously to antidepressants were excluded from the study, as were people aged 70 or over.
Participants in both groups were asked to continue to follow the healthcare advice of their GP for their depression. This was classed as 'usual care' by the researchers. Both groups were, therefore, free to access any treatment usually available in primary care, including antidepressants, counselling, referral to 'exercise on prescription' schemes or secondary care mental health services. However, those in the physical activity group were also offered up to three face-to-face sessions and 10 telephone calls with a trained physical activity facilitator over eight months. The intervention aimed to provide individually tailored support and encouragement to help participants engage in physical activity.
Depression was measured before enrolment and then at four, eight and 12 months after the intervention to measure any changes. Depression was initially diagnosed using standard, recognised assessments, including the 'clinical interview schedule-revised' and the 'Beck depression inventory'. Subsequent changes in depression symptoms were based on self-reported symptoms of depression, as assessed by the Beck inventory score.
During a trial, researchers should aim to conceal, if possible, which treatments participants receive. This is known as 'blinding' and avoids the risk of bias from participants knowing which treatment they are getting. This study was a 'single blinded' RCT as treatment allocation was concealed from the study researchers. It was not feasible to blind the participants to which group they’d been allocated to.
The analysis of this study was appropriate and based on an 'intention to treat principle'. This means that everyone who was allocated to a group was included in the final analysis, irrespective of whether they followed the intervention or dropped out. This is good way of analysing the 'real world' effects of an intervention.
What were the basic results?
At month four, there were no statistically significant improvements in mood among participants encouraged to exercise compared to those in the usual care group. Similarly, there was no evidence that the intervention group had significantly improved mood at the 12-month follow-up compared to those receiving usual care only.
There was no evidence that the exercise intervention led to a statistically significant reduction in the use of antidepressants compared to usual care.
Using data from all three follow-up points combined (four months, eight months and 12 months), the participants in the intervention group reported significantly more physical activity during the follow-up period than those in the usual care group, which was maintained at 12 months. This suggested the activity-support intervention was successful at increasing activity levels. Importantly, the participants stuck with the intervention well and completed on average 7.2 sessions with their exercise advisor. By four months, 102 (56%) participants had at least five contacts with the advisors.
How did the researchers interpret the results?
The researchers concluded that adding an intervention to usual care that encouraged physical activity did not reduce symptoms of depression or the use of antidepressants compared to usual care alone, despite the exercise intervention significantly increasing physical activity levels.
Conclusion
This well-designed randomised control study provides strong evidence that adding an exercise-promoting support programme to standard care did not significantly reduce symptoms of depression compared to standard care alone.
While this study has many strengths, including its large size and randomised design, it is important to bear in mind its limitations.
This study assessed just one type of exercise intervention that involved facilitating greater activity levels. Therefore, this study does not tell us whether other types of support or exercise programme may have a positive effect on depression. Consequently, the study’s findings do not mean that no exercise interventions can reduce symptoms of depression, especially as there is some evidence from systematic reviews that certain types of exercise intervention may be therapeutic.
Also, there are other benefits of exercise beyond those related to mental health. The Daily Mail quoted an expert as saying: “It is important to note that increased physical activity is beneficial for people with other medical conditions such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease and, of course, these conditions can affect people with depression.” The trial did not assess whether exercise prevents depression.
Exercise has a host of benefits for physical and mental health that may help patients with depression in ways other than reducing their immediate symptoms. However, the finding that this exercise support intervention doesn’t seem to reduce depressive symptoms is very useful to NHS staff wishing to know what interventions may help patients with this condition.
So far so good?
The Agent Apsley said on 07 June 2012
OK, so what we seem to learn is that those experiencing depression, if encouraged, will tend to exercise and go on exercising, as against those with just access to information and a lower level of advice from their GP.
Well, any good habit needs to be fostered, and the best of us needs encouragement - I write something, show it to you, and, although you have suggestions for improvement, you say that it is good, and that I should write more. If I trust my judgement or yours, thinking you sincere, I might do some more writing.
Depression is marked by benefiting from prompting or encouragement for many who experience it, though the reality is that they may all too often be alone, having no partner, and can only look to friends and maybe understanding neighbours to offer words of encouragement or reminders. This quite apart from the disabling and debilitating effect of losing or not being in employment (or in employment under pressure), with the resultant likelihood of the additional stress of low income.
Obviously, then, the always rather dubious-sounding claim that, by exercising and releasing endorphins, one may imrove one's prognosis for recovery should not be the only reason for all to be encouraged to exercise. This study seems to show that the specific intervention of encouragement used did tend to give rise, if the participants are truthfully reporting their 'exercise levels' (and not just to second guess that they are supposed to say so), to the establishment of regular exercise in daily life.
Depression's not unique amongst mental-health disorders in that another's insight - 'You might feel better, if you have a shower and change your clothes' - can be a useful intervention, clearly a programme, based on GPs' surgeries and the long-overdue task of properly assessing the physical-health profile and needs of such patients, is needed to give them the kind of prompting to look to the needs of the body that those able to afford personal trainers get.
Comments welcome - here, or via Twitter®!
End-notes
* Postscript (as at 9 June)
I rather wonder whether I am: I took what had been written to me at face value, and believed that my comment had been removed, but, when I go there to see anyone else's comments, mine is still there...
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8 June
Who's mad here*?:
Thank you for contributing to the NHS Choices website. We have removed your
contribution because we feel it is unsuitable for publication on this page. We
do not allow comments which actively seek to dissuade other site users from
following the evidence-based health advice provided.
Judge for yourself:
Commenting on http://www.nhs.uk/news/2012/06june/Pages/exercise-may-not-ease-depression.aspx ('Exercise 'still valid depression treatment')
“Exercise doesn't help depression,” according to The Guardian. The paper said that patients advised to exercise fare no better than those who receive only standard care.
Exercise is among the treatments for depression currently recommended by the NHS, with many patients 'prescribed' a course of physical activity as an alternative to antidepressant medication or therapy. Despite what several headlines have suggested, new research has not re-examined the effect of exercise on depression, but instead looked at whether giving depressed patients additional support to encourage exercise proved beneficial.
During the research, 361 adults with depression were randomly allocated to receive either standard treatment or standard treatment with additional encouragement and advice on exercise. Standard treatment can include medication, therapy and physical activity. This means that all participants could take up prescribed exercise, but some had greater encouragement to do so.
The research found that encouraging activity increased physical activity levels but did not reduce depressive symptoms more than standard care alone. This is a useful finding for NHS staff wishing to know the best way to help patients with depression. However, given that the study did not test the general effect of exercise, the results do not support the view that exercise is 'useless' for treating depression, as some news sources have suggested.
Exercise has a host of benefits for physical and mental health, which may help patients with depression in ways other than reducing their immediate depressive symptoms. These include reducing the risks of other diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
Where did the story come from?
The study was carried out by researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Exeter, and the Peninsula Medical School. It was funded by the Department of Health as part of the National Institute for Health Research’s Health Technology Assessment programme.
The study was published in the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal.
Media reports of this story were slightly misleading, and may have given the impression that the researchers specifically tested the effect of exercise. This was not the case, as the research compared two groups of people who were offered the same range of treatments, but with one group receiving additional support and advice designed to encourage exercise. This meant that all participants had access to exercise-based treatments, but some received some additional encouragement.
The Metro newspaper went too far in saying that the study showed exercise “had no positive benefits on mental health”. The study in question looked at the effect of one particular exercise intervention programme on depression symptoms, so did not directly address other mental health problems or other exercise programmes.
What kind of research was this?
This UK-based multi-centre randomised controlled trial (RCT) looked at whether a specific exercise support programme helped reduce symptoms of depression in adults more than standard care alone. The study was 'pragmatic' in nature, which means it tested interventions in a real-world setting rather than in the highly artificial environment of many trials. For example, patients were prescribed the most appropriate form of treatment from a range currently used in clinical practice, rather than a set treatment that might not have been ideal for them. As such, the study was well designed to assess how the exercise programme would work in reality.
The authors say previous evidence suggests that exercise is beneficial for people with depression, but that this evidence has come from small, less well-designed studies using interventions that may not be practical for use by the NHS. Therefore, this latest research aimed to investigate whether depression symptoms could be reduced by an activity programme that could be practically implemented by the NHS if deemed effective.
This type of study is one of the most effective at demonstrating whether a particular health programme, or 'intervention', has a measurable benefit in patients.
What did the research involve?
The researchers recruited 361 patients, aged 18 to 69 years old, who had recently been diagnosed with depression by their GP. Participants were randomly divided into two groups, who received either usual care methods from their GP or usual care plus a physical activity intervention.
Participants were recruited if they were not taking antidepressant medication at the time of initial diagnosis or if they had been prescribed antidepressants but had not taken these for at least four weeks before their diagnosis. Patients with depression who had failed to respond previously to antidepressants were excluded from the study, as were people aged 70 or over.
Participants in both groups were asked to continue to follow the healthcare advice of their GP for their depression. This was classed as 'usual care' by the researchers. Both groups were, therefore, free to access any treatment usually available in primary care, including antidepressants, counselling, referral to 'exercise on prescription' schemes or secondary care mental health services. However, those in the physical activity group were also offered up to three face-to-face sessions and 10 telephone calls with a trained physical activity facilitator over eight months. The intervention aimed to provide individually tailored support and encouragement to help participants engage in physical activity.
Depression was measured before enrolment and then at four, eight and 12 months after the intervention to measure any changes. Depression was initially diagnosed using standard, recognised assessments, including the 'clinical interview schedule-revised' and the 'Beck depression inventory'. Subsequent changes in depression symptoms were based on self-reported symptoms of depression, as assessed by the Beck inventory score.
During a trial, researchers should aim to conceal, if possible, which treatments participants receive. This is known as 'blinding' and avoids the risk of bias from participants knowing which treatment they are getting. This study was a 'single blinded' RCT as treatment allocation was concealed from the study researchers. It was not feasible to blind the participants to which group they’d been allocated to.
The analysis of this study was appropriate and based on an 'intention to treat principle'. This means that everyone who was allocated to a group was included in the final analysis, irrespective of whether they followed the intervention or dropped out. This is good way of analysing the 'real world' effects of an intervention.
What were the basic results?
At month four, there were no statistically significant improvements in mood among participants encouraged to exercise compared to those in the usual care group. Similarly, there was no evidence that the intervention group had significantly improved mood at the 12-month follow-up compared to those receiving usual care only.
There was no evidence that the exercise intervention led to a statistically significant reduction in the use of antidepressants compared to usual care.
Using data from all three follow-up points combined (four months, eight months and 12 months), the participants in the intervention group reported significantly more physical activity during the follow-up period than those in the usual care group, which was maintained at 12 months. This suggested the activity-support intervention was successful at increasing activity levels. Importantly, the participants stuck with the intervention well and completed on average 7.2 sessions with their exercise advisor. By four months, 102 (56%) participants had at least five contacts with the advisors.
How did the researchers interpret the results?
The researchers concluded that adding an intervention to usual care that encouraged physical activity did not reduce symptoms of depression or the use of antidepressants compared to usual care alone, despite the exercise intervention significantly increasing physical activity levels.
Conclusion
This well-designed randomised control study provides strong evidence that adding an exercise-promoting support programme to standard care did not significantly reduce symptoms of depression compared to standard care alone.
While this study has many strengths, including its large size and randomised design, it is important to bear in mind its limitations.
This study assessed just one type of exercise intervention that involved facilitating greater activity levels. Therefore, this study does not tell us whether other types of support or exercise programme may have a positive effect on depression. Consequently, the study’s findings do not mean that no exercise interventions can reduce symptoms of depression, especially as there is some evidence from systematic reviews that certain types of exercise intervention may be therapeutic.
Also, there are other benefits of exercise beyond those related to mental health. The Daily Mail quoted an expert as saying: “It is important to note that increased physical activity is beneficial for people with other medical conditions such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease and, of course, these conditions can affect people with depression.” The trial did not assess whether exercise prevents depression.
Exercise has a host of benefits for physical and mental health that may help patients with depression in ways other than reducing their immediate symptoms. However, the finding that this exercise support intervention doesn’t seem to reduce depressive symptoms is very useful to NHS staff wishing to know what interventions may help patients with this condition.
So far so good?
The Agent Apsley said on 07 June 2012
OK, so what we seem to learn is that those experiencing depression, if encouraged, will tend to exercise and go on exercising, as against those with just access to information and a lower level of advice from their GP.
Well, any good habit needs to be fostered, and the best of us needs encouragement - I write something, show it to you, and, although you have suggestions for improvement, you say that it is good, and that I should write more. If I trust my judgement or yours, thinking you sincere, I might do some more writing.
Depression is marked by benefiting from prompting or encouragement for many who experience it, though the reality is that they may all too often be alone, having no partner, and can only look to friends and maybe understanding neighbours to offer words of encouragement or reminders. This quite apart from the disabling and debilitating effect of losing or not being in employment (or in employment under pressure), with the resultant likelihood of the additional stress of low income.
Obviously, then, the always rather dubious-sounding claim that, by exercising and releasing endorphins, one may imrove one's prognosis for recovery should not be the only reason for all to be encouraged to exercise. This study seems to show that the specific intervention of encouragement used did tend to give rise, if the participants are truthfully reporting their 'exercise levels' (and not just to second guess that they are supposed to say so), to the establishment of regular exercise in daily life.
Depression's not unique amongst mental-health disorders in that another's insight - 'You might feel better, if you have a shower and change your clothes' - can be a useful intervention, clearly a programme, based on GPs' surgeries and the long-overdue task of properly assessing the physical-health profile and needs of such patients, is needed to give them the kind of prompting to look to the needs of the body that those able to afford personal trainers get.
Comments welcome - here, or via Twitter®!
End-notes
* Postscript (as at 9 June)
I rather wonder whether I am: I took what had been written to me at face value, and believed that my comment had been removed, but, when I go there to see anyone else's comments, mine is still there...
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Dolmio® branches out?
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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8 June
Some may know the connection - which, as most connections are, may all be in the mind* - or even the history of the connection between Italy and good coffee: they are invited to add an informative comment.
All that I know is that when, at a friend's place, I went to make (sadly, instant) coffee just now, it was in a small jar whose lid suggested that it must formerly have contained pasta sauce (or, maybe, really rich tomato puree).
From this, the brand being (or purporting to be**) from Italy, sprang the thought: this patently isn't it, but do these people sell coffee (anywhere) under that name***?
Answers to that one, please, solely via Twitter, where I have - what Leonora urges me to call - the same John Henry (q.v.).
End-notes
* After all, unless I haven't had the real stuff (when what is available is expensive enough), there isn't actually anything very remarkable about Belgian chocolates, or Swiss ones.
** My fridge and freezer - separates - bear a German trade name that belies Italian manufacture. No matter, as I was interested in the energy-rating of A, not the provenance.
*** By the way, if these good people do not, but want to thank me for the observation of what might be a gap in the market****, I shan't decline a payment - in dollars, to be on the safe side.
**** A nonsensical phrase, as, when one is in a physical market-place, buying a pitch (not least in these times of trouble) is not necessarily difficult or a betrayal of one's business cunning, and the gaps that exist, welcome though they are to find, are for navigating into, around and out of the market.
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8 June
Some may know the connection - which, as most connections are, may all be in the mind* - or even the history of the connection between Italy and good coffee: they are invited to add an informative comment.
All that I know is that when, at a friend's place, I went to make (sadly, instant) coffee just now, it was in a small jar whose lid suggested that it must formerly have contained pasta sauce (or, maybe, really rich tomato puree).
From this, the brand being (or purporting to be**) from Italy, sprang the thought: this patently isn't it, but do these people sell coffee (anywhere) under that name***?
Answers to that one, please, solely via Twitter, where I have - what Leonora urges me to call - the same John Henry (q.v.).
End-notes
* After all, unless I haven't had the real stuff (when what is available is expensive enough), there isn't actually anything very remarkable about Belgian chocolates, or Swiss ones.
** My fridge and freezer - separates - bear a German trade name that belies Italian manufacture. No matter, as I was interested in the energy-rating of A, not the provenance.
*** By the way, if these good people do not, but want to thank me for the observation of what might be a gap in the market****, I shan't decline a payment - in dollars, to be on the safe side.
**** A nonsensical phrase, as, when one is in a physical market-place, buying a pitch (not least in these times of trouble) is not necessarily difficult or a betrayal of one's business cunning, and the gaps that exist, welcome though they are to find, are for navigating into, around and out of the market.
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Wednesday, 6 June 2012
Passing through Pimlico
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6 June
* Contains a wealth of spoilers *
Although I cannot think of a time (perhaps six months?) when I did not know the title of Passport to Pimlico (1949), and convince myself that it must have been on t.v. in my youth (although I was expecting Peter Sellers to be in the cast-list, because I was also thinking of I'm All Right, Jack (1959)), a screening yesterday convinces me that I did not really know the film at all. (And I had little conception of where Pimlico was until 30 years ago and an initiation to what, before it became Tate Britian, was The Tate Gallery.)
Not, at any rate, beyond the basic tenet - implied by the title - that Pimlico (actually, just a small part of it) becomes a separate domain. What follows is informed both by seeing it (again?), and by a review at New Empress Magazine, the work of one Ben Sheppard.
As you might have gathered from reading Ben’s review (if you have done so), Passport is not the best of the so-called Ealing comedies, and it is a little patchy: it would be interesting to research into how it was edited into its circulated form, whether Pimlico was merely chosen for euphony (and, in any case, what the name derives from, which has to be more plausible than the alleged origins of Elephant and Castle!), and how the idea was first hit upon. Maybe some day…
Essentially, the scope of the film episodically, dictated by the to and fro between the residents, the British Cabinet Ministers, and all those, such as the spivs, who would exploit the situation, divides into (in no particular order) the actions of :
* The bullish, even belligerent*, Arthur Pemberton (Stanley Holloway), fronting and furthering this series of stand-offs and stalemates between HM Government and the occupants of what appears to be part of Burgundy
* His daughter Connie (Betty Warren) as a siren, initially yielding to the fishmonger, but finding herself preferring the attentions of the Duke of Burgundy (Paul Dupuis)
* Margaret Rutherford, who, with convincingly scatty eccentricity as Professor Hatton-Jones, propounds the territorial claim, and then, at a key moment, approves the rather unlikely Duke's credentials
* The fishmonger's female employee, whose attentions he has overlooked in favour of buttering up Connie, and who (by leaving the tap on before the water-supply, which has been cut off, comes back on floods the pub basement) loses Pimlico its stockpile of provisions
* The character of Edie Randall (Hermione Baddeley) as a lady of lingerie
* The bank manager, Mr Wix (Raymond Huntley), as the Nick Leeson of his time, and, with Pemberton, part of the brains behind the outfit (although not often in agreement about the tactics)
Much is good value, with a sense of exhilaration when, for example, the Pimlico crew halt and board an Underground train that they have climbed down to intercept passing beneath their territory, or when the local constable (Philip Stainton) creeps out and reinstates the water, whilst Connie and others lure the attention of guards on the barbed-wire boundaries.
As Ben rightly says, the Berlin air-lift, which began midway before the year of release (and ended almost 11 months later), must have been a major source for the idea, and there is quite an uneasy feeling to the comedy in places, when, for all the tricks that the Burgundians try (the blockade is busted by air-drops, including a pig on a parachute), the aim of Whitehall is wilfully to starve them into submission.
By contrast with a better Ealing film from the same year, Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), where the idea of a man taking revenge on and systematically murdering his mother's snobbish relatives (who had either cut her off when she married for love, or stood by when it happened) is deliciously wicked and cleverly executed, this tense and awkward feeling means that one cannot really enjoy the stand-off in Passport to Pimlico and how the game plays out, because it is just that little bit too close to home to seem like sheer fun.
End-notes
* Or, in its genuine meaning, ‘feisty’.
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6 June
* Contains a wealth of spoilers *
Although I cannot think of a time (perhaps six months?) when I did not know the title of Passport to Pimlico (1949), and convince myself that it must have been on t.v. in my youth (although I was expecting Peter Sellers to be in the cast-list, because I was also thinking of I'm All Right, Jack (1959)), a screening yesterday convinces me that I did not really know the film at all. (And I had little conception of where Pimlico was until 30 years ago and an initiation to what, before it became Tate Britian, was The Tate Gallery.)
Not, at any rate, beyond the basic tenet - implied by the title - that Pimlico (actually, just a small part of it) becomes a separate domain. What follows is informed both by seeing it (again?), and by a review at New Empress Magazine, the work of one Ben Sheppard.
As you might have gathered from reading Ben’s review (if you have done so), Passport is not the best of the so-called Ealing comedies, and it is a little patchy: it would be interesting to research into how it was edited into its circulated form, whether Pimlico was merely chosen for euphony (and, in any case, what the name derives from, which has to be more plausible than the alleged origins of Elephant and Castle!), and how the idea was first hit upon. Maybe some day…
Essentially, the scope of the film episodically, dictated by the to and fro between the residents, the British Cabinet Ministers, and all those, such as the spivs, who would exploit the situation, divides into (in no particular order) the actions of :
* The bullish, even belligerent*, Arthur Pemberton (Stanley Holloway), fronting and furthering this series of stand-offs and stalemates between HM Government and the occupants of what appears to be part of Burgundy
* His daughter Connie (Betty Warren) as a siren, initially yielding to the fishmonger, but finding herself preferring the attentions of the Duke of Burgundy (Paul Dupuis)
* Margaret Rutherford, who, with convincingly scatty eccentricity as Professor Hatton-Jones, propounds the territorial claim, and then, at a key moment, approves the rather unlikely Duke's credentials
* The fishmonger's female employee, whose attentions he has overlooked in favour of buttering up Connie, and who (by leaving the tap on before the water-supply, which has been cut off, comes back on floods the pub basement) loses Pimlico its stockpile of provisions
* The character of Edie Randall (Hermione Baddeley) as a lady of lingerie
* The bank manager, Mr Wix (Raymond Huntley), as the Nick Leeson of his time, and, with Pemberton, part of the brains behind the outfit (although not often in agreement about the tactics)
Much is good value, with a sense of exhilaration when, for example, the Pimlico crew halt and board an Underground train that they have climbed down to intercept passing beneath their territory, or when the local constable (Philip Stainton) creeps out and reinstates the water, whilst Connie and others lure the attention of guards on the barbed-wire boundaries.
As Ben rightly says, the Berlin air-lift, which began midway before the year of release (and ended almost 11 months later), must have been a major source for the idea, and there is quite an uneasy feeling to the comedy in places, when, for all the tricks that the Burgundians try (the blockade is busted by air-drops, including a pig on a parachute), the aim of Whitehall is wilfully to starve them into submission.
By contrast with a better Ealing film from the same year, Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), where the idea of a man taking revenge on and systematically murdering his mother's snobbish relatives (who had either cut her off when she married for love, or stood by when it happened) is deliciously wicked and cleverly executed, this tense and awkward feeling means that one cannot really enjoy the stand-off in Passport to Pimlico and how the game plays out, because it is just that little bit too close to home to seem like sheer fun.
End-notes
* Or, in its genuine meaning, ‘feisty’.
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Tuesday, 5 June 2012
Civic amenities - a far cry from the locus amoenus?
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5 June
It could be urban myth, but, then, urban myth itself could just be urban myth. In any case, it started being stated in parks and gardens where ducks foregather that they should not be fed bread (whatever they should be fed, they crap a lot, and, if not feeding them bread made the result more like rabbits' pellets, so much the better), as, although Donland was unaware of the fact, in his eagerness to eat it, it is not good for him.
Extrapolating from what may or may not be true about what ducks shouldn't eat, and knowing that koi keepers and specialists have all sorts of elaborate methods and diets (maybe for the fish as well), I was surprised, in Salmon-Fishing in the Yemen, by Dr Alfred* Jones (alias Ewan boy from Perth McGregor), whose predication for being in the story is that he is a fisheries expert, feeding broken-off pieces of what seems ordinary white bread to his own specimens (koi, that is, not ducks).
Now, I think that we are given an insight, catch it if we may, into his (largely inner) turmoil, for although he is mouthing about his wife, his feelings for her and how he views their marriage (and he says more later to the Emily Blunt character), I believe that the key indicator at this moment of how upset he is lies in the fact that his fish, which I would guess are prized, are being fed this bread:
Now, it may not harm them, but maybe, in koi circles, it would be the equivalent of giving a toddler free access to two tubes of Rolos.
If so, then Jones, in the vicarious form of his fish, is venting feelings of self-harm: the fish are his pride and prize, and he is subtly hurting them with this sacrament of what may represent his own body (since he repeatedly professes no belief in the conventional sacrament such that, as ever, one questions whether he protests too much).
Plus the other Biblical overtones: casting bread on the water, and the loaves and fishes of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, etc., etc.
End-notes
* The name doubtless would come from the now, but, I think, not particularly Scottish?
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5 June
It could be urban myth, but, then, urban myth itself could just be urban myth. In any case, it started being stated in parks and gardens where ducks foregather that they should not be fed bread (whatever they should be fed, they crap a lot, and, if not feeding them bread made the result more like rabbits' pellets, so much the better), as, although Donland was unaware of the fact, in his eagerness to eat it, it is not good for him.
Extrapolating from what may or may not be true about what ducks shouldn't eat, and knowing that koi keepers and specialists have all sorts of elaborate methods and diets (maybe for the fish as well), I was surprised, in Salmon-Fishing in the Yemen, by Dr Alfred* Jones (alias Ewan boy from Perth McGregor), whose predication for being in the story is that he is a fisheries expert, feeding broken-off pieces of what seems ordinary white bread to his own specimens (koi, that is, not ducks).
Now, I think that we are given an insight, catch it if we may, into his (largely inner) turmoil, for although he is mouthing about his wife, his feelings for her and how he views their marriage (and he says more later to the Emily Blunt character), I believe that the key indicator at this moment of how upset he is lies in the fact that his fish, which I would guess are prized, are being fed this bread:
Now, it may not harm them, but maybe, in koi circles, it would be the equivalent of giving a toddler free access to two tubes of Rolos.
If so, then Jones, in the vicarious form of his fish, is venting feelings of self-harm: the fish are his pride and prize, and he is subtly hurting them with this sacrament of what may represent his own body (since he repeatedly professes no belief in the conventional sacrament such that, as ever, one questions whether he protests too much).
Plus the other Biblical overtones: casting bread on the water, and the loaves and fishes of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, etc., etc.
End-notes
* The name doubtless would come from the now, but, I think, not particularly Scottish?
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Sunday, 3 June 2012
Shakespeare in a Tweet
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4 June
Yes, cousin Marmaduke and I have had to leave out a few things in our attempts to give you a play in no more than 140 characters, and maybe the wrong ones.
See what you think with my most recent one (from Twitter® - Marmaduke's there, too):
Two men mistrust the wrong offspring, and the others take power: one man goes mad, one's blinded. Both are healed and reunited before death.
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4 June
Yes, cousin Marmaduke and I have had to leave out a few things in our attempts to give you a play in no more than 140 characters, and maybe the wrong ones.
See what you think with my most recent one (from Twitter® - Marmaduke's there, too):
Two men mistrust the wrong offspring, and the others take power: one man goes mad, one's blinded. Both are healed and reunited before death.
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Saturday, 2 June 2012
The last days of Yayoi Kusama's Tate show
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2 June
I need another hour to finish looking at this exhibition, as I am not in the league of two ladies who once, in this very members' room at Tate Modern, declared that they had 'done' one in an hour and a half, because they had graduated from a course in history of art - and I think that they intended to polish off the other one in a similar span. I have no notion of what they did or not absorb or how quickly, but thirteen or so rooms is too much for me, so I work within my limits, and skulk off for a coffee - or something stronger, maybe even food at London prices - when I need to, and, if I have time to go back and want to, I do.
My viewing, then, is incomplete, but I am already sure of two things: that Yayoi Kusama sometimes has a distinctive voice (and then tends to demonstrate her extremely great capacity for creativity), but sometimes does not, and that work, to me, then seems pretentious, and not imbued with the same sure artistic sense. Her friendship with Joseph Cornell, for example, clearly brought out a prodigious talent for collage, which is visible in the pieces exhibited in the corridor that is room 9 (and we are lucky enough that Kusama has allowed three of Cornell's works that she owns to be shown).
I am also insufficiently convinced that what are eagerly called phalli are any more than potatoes or their tubers (as the appearance of the Phallic Shoes of room 8 amply testify), and someone has therefore not been entirely trustworthy, given the scope for Freudian and other interpretation, in applying this deliberate description. Yes, there may be a generative principle (there had been an organic, yet cosmic, quality to Kusama's works in watercolour and gouache in room 2), and the Yellow Trees of room 11, for example, writhe with an energy that, my own psychoanalytic profile apart, is a burgeoning, even threatening (as the coils of serpents have the power to crush), power of nature. Other canvases in that room and from the same period, such as the triptych of Weeds, have a more benign quality of reproducing and filling space.
At some point, we will be faced by the question (and some curatorial interpretation) What does all this filling mean? We are told that it is Kusama's obsessional side (which came out in the series of Infinity Nets), but, although it doesn't prove that she hasn't got one, is it different from or more or less creative than Damien Hirst's Medicine Cabinets (1997), with its ten bought cabinets (each named after a track from Never Mind the Bollocks...) filled with empty medicine packaging, which is supposedly arranged according to some medical curatorship or taxonomy.
Is Kusama's filling of a canvas, whether in the mid-1950s or since, really ridden with angst? Somehow, I doubt it any more than there is really any collecting in procuring the preservation (or, more likely, arranging for others to procure it) of empty tubs and packets of medication:
If one did question that proposition on my part, then, with the display-cabinets full of stainless-steel (assumed) surgical implements (some surely are not!), can one believe that Hirst did much more than get a rep to bring around a good range of samples, which, with no real regard to anything other than entertainingly (and aestehtically) fitting multiples of them in the cabinet in question, he tried on the shelves and then ordered as many as he needed. (A task probably best delegated to an assistant, even, whose judgement would be sufficiently good, as would the willingness of the rep to supply on a sale-or-return basis, that minimal rearrangement would be necessary to perfect the work.)
'You can't sell art like hot dogs or ice cream cones at the Venice Biennale', they said. But I believe them to be wrong. I think that art should be within the price range for the masses rather than a few wealthy individuals.
This comment, made (I think) contemporaneously, refers to what appeared to be the constituent elements, akin (as far as I can tell) in appearance to Magritte's alleged stylized cow-bells, from the arrangement of which Kusama's installation had been made. She was selling them off for two dollars apiece, which would have been a real bargain (until she was stopped). Compare this with Hirst's going directly to the market with the huge auction of his works a few years back...
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2 June
I need another hour to finish looking at this exhibition, as I am not in the league of two ladies who once, in this very members' room at Tate Modern, declared that they had 'done' one in an hour and a half, because they had graduated from a course in history of art - and I think that they intended to polish off the other one in a similar span. I have no notion of what they did or not absorb or how quickly, but thirteen or so rooms is too much for me, so I work within my limits, and skulk off for a coffee - or something stronger, maybe even food at London prices - when I need to, and, if I have time to go back and want to, I do.
My viewing, then, is incomplete, but I am already sure of two things: that Yayoi Kusama sometimes has a distinctive voice (and then tends to demonstrate her extremely great capacity for creativity), but sometimes does not, and that work, to me, then seems pretentious, and not imbued with the same sure artistic sense. Her friendship with Joseph Cornell, for example, clearly brought out a prodigious talent for collage, which is visible in the pieces exhibited in the corridor that is room 9 (and we are lucky enough that Kusama has allowed three of Cornell's works that she owns to be shown).
I am also insufficiently convinced that what are eagerly called phalli are any more than potatoes or their tubers (as the appearance of the Phallic Shoes of room 8 amply testify), and someone has therefore not been entirely trustworthy, given the scope for Freudian and other interpretation, in applying this deliberate description. Yes, there may be a generative principle (there had been an organic, yet cosmic, quality to Kusama's works in watercolour and gouache in room 2), and the Yellow Trees of room 11, for example, writhe with an energy that, my own psychoanalytic profile apart, is a burgeoning, even threatening (as the coils of serpents have the power to crush), power of nature. Other canvases in that room and from the same period, such as the triptych of Weeds, have a more benign quality of reproducing and filling space.
At some point, we will be faced by the question (and some curatorial interpretation) What does all this filling mean? We are told that it is Kusama's obsessional side (which came out in the series of Infinity Nets), but, although it doesn't prove that she hasn't got one, is it different from or more or less creative than Damien Hirst's Medicine Cabinets (1997), with its ten bought cabinets (each named after a track from Never Mind the Bollocks...) filled with empty medicine packaging, which is supposedly arranged according to some medical curatorship or taxonomy.
Is Kusama's filling of a canvas, whether in the mid-1950s or since, really ridden with angst? Somehow, I doubt it any more than there is really any collecting in procuring the preservation (or, more likely, arranging for others to procure it) of empty tubs and packets of medication:
If one did question that proposition on my part, then, with the display-cabinets full of stainless-steel (assumed) surgical implements (some surely are not!), can one believe that Hirst did much more than get a rep to bring around a good range of samples, which, with no real regard to anything other than entertainingly (and aestehtically) fitting multiples of them in the cabinet in question, he tried on the shelves and then ordered as many as he needed. (A task probably best delegated to an assistant, even, whose judgement would be sufficiently good, as would the willingness of the rep to supply on a sale-or-return basis, that minimal rearrangement would be necessary to perfect the work.)
'You can't sell art like hot dogs or ice cream cones at the Venice Biennale', they said. But I believe them to be wrong. I think that art should be within the price range for the masses rather than a few wealthy individuals.
This comment, made (I think) contemporaneously, refers to what appeared to be the constituent elements, akin (as far as I can tell) in appearance to Magritte's alleged stylized cow-bells, from the arrangement of which Kusama's installation had been made. She was selling them off for two dollars apiece, which would have been a real bargain (until she was stopped). Compare this with Hirst's going directly to the market with the huge auction of his works a few years back...
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Monday, 21 May 2012
Kristin shows her comedic flair [in Salmon Fishing in The Yemen (2011)]
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22 May
* Many a spoiler in this belated review of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011) *
I do not know the novel from which this was taken, and can insufficiently conceive that seeing how it differs from the film would merit the time to find out (quite apart from anything else that I would derive from the experience). In any case, my shameless interest was to see Kristin Scott Thomas, and anything else was going to be a bonus.
The typical end-of-film disclaimer always talks of denying resemblances to people living or dead, but we all surely recall the folly of being found out recording having contrived to bury a bad news story, and the fact that Kristin, as the PM's Press Secretary, was called Maxwell might not have been without another irony.
In the screening that I have just been at, KST got some very good laughs, in character, for how she sought to impose (what is usual to call) control* on the situations that she faced, including a rebellious middle son - and, even by then, we weren't quite acclimatized to hearing this actress casually saying 'fucking' as one element of throwing her weight about, which made it naughtily delicious.
As to whether finding a positive story about The Middle East to offset the bad press about the British forces' campaign in Afghanistan made any sense on which to hang this story, not least in terms of the different timescale of day-to-day business of press releases and conferences, I rather doubt anyone in the audience would have been persuaded. However, that was unnecessary, when we were just required to embrace Mrs Maxwell's breezy indifference to reality or other obstacles, few greater than the implausibility embodied in the title itself: she just wanted kudos for the PM and his office, and latched onto any figure mentioned, such as the number of anglers, that suggested that there were votes hanging on what she did.
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
22 May
* Many a spoiler in this belated review of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011) *
I do not know the novel from which this was taken, and can insufficiently conceive that seeing how it differs from the film would merit the time to find out (quite apart from anything else that I would derive from the experience). In any case, my shameless interest was to see Kristin Scott Thomas, and anything else was going to be a bonus.
The typical end-of-film disclaimer always talks of denying resemblances to people living or dead, but we all surely recall the folly of being found out recording having contrived to bury a bad news story, and the fact that Kristin, as the PM's Press Secretary, was called Maxwell might not have been without another irony.
In the screening that I have just been at, KST got some very good laughs, in character, for how she sought to impose (what is usual to call) control* on the situations that she faced, including a rebellious middle son - and, even by then, we weren't quite acclimatized to hearing this actress casually saying 'fucking' as one element of throwing her weight about, which made it naughtily delicious.
As to whether finding a positive story about The Middle East to offset the bad press about the British forces' campaign in Afghanistan made any sense on which to hang this story, not least in terms of the different timescale of day-to-day business of press releases and conferences, I rather doubt anyone in the audience would have been persuaded. However, that was unnecessary, when we were just required to embrace Mrs Maxwell's breezy indifference to reality or other obstacles, few greater than the implausibility embodied in the title itself: she just wanted kudos for the PM and his office, and latched onto any figure mentioned, such as the number of anglers, that suggested that there were votes hanging on what she did.
If we might compare the farcicality, for a moment, to the monumental one of a film such as Doctor in the House (1954) and others in the series (or maybe even Carry on Doctor (1967)), the pompous consultant (James Robertson Justice (or Kenneth Williams as Tickle)), assured of his own importance, is almost in the nature of the role a sketchily drawn character, and provides enough bluster to rub off on and against those more in the lead. Here, though, Kristin was absent for a long stretch at a time, and her character did not, in this regard, appear to have been integrated enough into the film to sustain her: yes, one can argue that, although it is at her behest that any of this is being allowed to proceed, that does not call for her to be on screen, but I rather feel that the film itself lost sight of what it was trying to be, or tried to be too many things, with too many foci, at various points.
It could be a romantic comedy, set against the infighting and machination of politics, but it does not really sit easily as one, and, to judge from a comment that I heard to the effect that 'they have turned it into a slushy romance', nor did it with someone whose reading of the book had led to different expectations. It is more in the nature of the awkward and rather unlikely romance, which brings me onto the pretty-womanization of Ewan McGregor as Dr Jones. No, he is not an LA hooker, but, in an unlikely way, he has to break through his exterior and appeal to his equivalent of Richard Gere (except that Gere thinks Roberts stunning more or less straightaway, and we are the ones who don't understand his fascination).
In a play on stage, one would trust more, because of having to, in one's script and those delivering it, whereas here, when I first saw him, Ewan had been so dolled down, but only in order that he might shine and look gloriously winsome to be the love interest, that I doubted not only what his lifestyle might be doing to him, but also whether I had actually been wrong in inferring that the voice with Scottish accent that we had heard reading a dismissive e-mail must belong to him. It then made it look quite ridiculous, as a depiction of his throwing himself into the project and, with it, in love with his co-star, that he suddenly became boyishly young.
Oh, yes, falling in love can give one a glow and do other wonders, but this was too extreme, as if we suddenly started expecting him to behave like Trainspotting (1996)'s Renton all over again. That and the accent, which might have been - I am no expert - a mannered version of his native one, but which gave the impression of someone so proud of his Scottishness that he made doubly sure that he sounded from there (whereas many a prominent Scot gives not a hint of it in the voice), even at the risk of seeming to be, if not a self-parody, then a target for mockery.
Which might, in some people's mind, link with what Emily Blunt says to him when she thinks that he has called around on her at home to bully her into going back to work, despite her new boyfriend being missing in action. If McGregor's lack of affect (evidenced as Renton), studied choice of language, and self-confessed inability to tell jokes justified her, in this incautious moment, calling him someone with Asperger's, then so be it, but those things, in themselves, do not add up to anything, and I should be disappointed to know if they were meant to.
Disappointed as I would be with As Good as it Gets (1997), if I thought that those watching it - or House or Frasier - believed that they can see both all the problems that are faced, and also, in the love of a good woman, the obvious and redeeming solution. (Not that Dr Jones' wife isn't a belittling cow, more concerned about his final salary scheme than the job that he has to do to get it, but still**.) But more disappointed with what is put in the mouth of Dr Jones as a reply, since there are many who have the hurts to show to disprove the notion that someone with that syndrome would not be wounded by her outburst - or does scriptwriter Simon Beaufoy know something that I don't?
All in all, I enjoyed the patchy political intrigue (as a chance for KST to show the breadth of her talents), the pottily likeable sheikh (Amr Waked) who - surprise, surprise - has more to teach Dr Jones than he imagines and, of course, has to owe Dr Jones his life (in the face of a singularly inept attempt at assassination by someone commissioned in Yemen to kill him, who fetches up in Scotland with no real evidence of a plan). That apart, it is just the will she, won't she with Emily Blunt, and people doing the decent thing as good Britons.
All in all, I enjoyed the patchy political intrigue (as a chance for KST to show the breadth of her talents), the pottily likeable sheikh (Amr Waked) who - surprise, surprise - has more to teach Dr Jones than he imagines and, of course, has to owe Dr Jones his life (in the face of a singularly inept attempt at assassination by someone commissioned in Yemen to kill him, who fetches up in Scotland with no real evidence of a plan). That apart, it is just the will she, won't she with Emily Blunt, and people doing the decent thing as good Britons.
End-notes
* For some, contol freak is a sort of shorthand, but the word 'control', to me, belongs in the day of training dogs the Barbara Woodhouse way. (The phrase is, itself, more likely to have originated with a freak who thinks that it is fit employment to seek to control how we perceive and think about his or her clients, which, when the PM and his government is the client, is where KST in this film comes in.) And the word has no positive companion, such as - to make one up - control champion, just this dismal word in the phrase He's so controlling: engage tongue, switch off mind!
** At Civic amenities - a far cry from the locus amoenus?, I have pondered Dr Jones, at this moment, further.
Sunday, 20 May 2012
What's the difference between a t.v. celebrity and a judge?
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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21 May
If you start a song, both will quickly determine that they want you to stop, but the judge might even possess a good singing voice
One holds court and puts everyone else in their place, whereas the other fits hearing the case in around having a good lunch
When two judges meet socially, they talk about the latest play or film, and so do the celebrities, but bitching about who undeservedly got the role that they should have had
With a judge, that is the person who hears a case at trial, whereas the t.v. celebrity is just a case of being a trial to hear
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21 May
If you start a song, both will quickly determine that they want you to stop, but the judge might even possess a good singing voice
One holds court and puts everyone else in their place, whereas the other fits hearing the case in around having a good lunch
When two judges meet socially, they talk about the latest play or film, and so do the celebrities, but bitching about who undeservedly got the role that they should have had
With a judge, that is the person who hears a case at trial, whereas the t.v. celebrity is just a case of being a trial to hear
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Saturday, 19 May 2012
What did Jesus teach about bluebells ? (2)
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20 May
Continuing the sketchy piece that was What did Jesus teach about bluebells ? (1), it can now be revealed that:
* We have learnt, from the recently discovered Garden-Centre Scrolls, that in the early days - perhaps misconstruing something that Jesus once said or did - followers of his teaching each started carrying around a pot of earth in which had been planted a clump of bluebells
* Since bluebells, in common with many plants, not only have (as The Book of Ecclesiastes¹ advises²) a season for flowering, but also tend to prefer shade, the meaning of the gesture - whatever could have been intended - was not, let us say, always apparent from the display in the pot
* Rationalizing it all, the pots were done away with, and emblems - or badges - depicting a flowering bluebell (or three) took their place
* Some say that, with the version with three bluebells, The Trinity was represented (although any theology of Three in One³ was not formulated until centuries later)
* It could just as easily have been any one of The Holy Family, a prefiguring of Peter's denials, or the women, numbering at least three, who were called Mary
* No more than this is known (until I trouble to make something else up, of course)
End-notes
¹ Parts of many works, in imitation of The Bible, have been called books, but do we know why they are so called? (Greek biblios)
² However, those who do not know it, should not construe this reference to imply that it is a pre-Christian gardening manual.
³ Which has also, curiously, long been a motto for a type of oil for use on bicycles. (Whatever oil one uses, and however one seeks to avoid getting it on one's clothes, the former's contact with the latter is almost always inimical to any attractiveness or cleanliness that they might have, besides which the odour of the oil is both unmistakable and largely ineradicable.)
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20 May
Continuing the sketchy piece that was What did Jesus teach about bluebells ? (1), it can now be revealed that:
* We have learnt, from the recently discovered Garden-Centre Scrolls, that in the early days - perhaps misconstruing something that Jesus once said or did - followers of his teaching each started carrying around a pot of earth in which had been planted a clump of bluebells
* Since bluebells, in common with many plants, not only have (as The Book of Ecclesiastes¹ advises²) a season for flowering, but also tend to prefer shade, the meaning of the gesture - whatever could have been intended - was not, let us say, always apparent from the display in the pot
* Rationalizing it all, the pots were done away with, and emblems - or badges - depicting a flowering bluebell (or three) took their place
* Some say that, with the version with three bluebells, The Trinity was represented (although any theology of Three in One³ was not formulated until centuries later)
* It could just as easily have been any one of The Holy Family, a prefiguring of Peter's denials, or the women, numbering at least three, who were called Mary
* No more than this is known (until I trouble to make something else up, of course)
End-notes
¹ Parts of many works, in imitation of The Bible, have been called books, but do we know why they are so called? (Greek biblios)
² However, those who do not know it, should not construe this reference to imply that it is a pre-Christian gardening manual.
³ Which has also, curiously, long been a motto for a type of oil for use on bicycles. (Whatever oil one uses, and however one seeks to avoid getting it on one's clothes, the former's contact with the latter is almost always inimical to any attractiveness or cleanliness that they might have, besides which the odour of the oil is both unmistakable and largely ineradicable.)
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Thursday, 17 May 2012
Twitter® is old hat*
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18 May
We keep reinventing the telegram, first with text-messages, and then with what is fondly thought of as a revolution in communications, this whole Twatter Splatter, where all these messages are generated to divert from the reality that, in just tens of years, it'll all be going on, if at all, with none of the same personnel.
But the truth is simply this: back in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Shakespeare had to pitch every new idea for a play in the tweet form - give you it in just 140 characters.
The Bard could put over Hamlet like that, but Could you?**
End-notes
* But most of us haven't known, since the days of Laurence Sterne, that the term refers to the female genitals.
** Cousin Marmaduke and I have since taken up my own clannege (? = challenge?) with - I think - creditable attempts by each at a major Shakespeare tragedy on Twitter: by all means do what you like with us then, but find us there!
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18 May
We keep reinventing the telegram, first with text-messages, and then with what is fondly thought of as a revolution in communications, this whole Twatter Splatter, where all these messages are generated to divert from the reality that, in just tens of years, it'll all be going on, if at all, with none of the same personnel.
But the truth is simply this: back in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Shakespeare had to pitch every new idea for a play in the tweet form - give you it in just 140 characters.
The Bard could put over Hamlet like that, but Could you?**
End-notes
* But most of us haven't known, since the days of Laurence Sterne, that the term refers to the female genitals.
** Cousin Marmaduke and I have since taken up my own clannege (? = challenge?) with - I think - creditable attempts by each at a major Shakespeare tragedy on Twitter: by all means do what you like with us then, but find us there!
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Tuesday, 15 May 2012
Kym Marsh rocks skimpy LBD (according to AOL®)
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15 May
It is possible, though I doubt it (it is the whole point of this postlet), that LBD is a recognized term of art in these tinsel teasers on sign-on pages. (Remember the one, a few issues back, that reported Lorraine Kelly tumbling from her horse, whereas a newspaper had reported the story at least a fortnight earlier - not so much breaking news as breaking new ground for peddling old tat!)
For those not initiated (right trouser leg rolled up, etc.), I shall not spell it out*, though I was probably helped - when appeared words appeared to be missing in the headline - by the image below, because that would spoil the Fun of Who Is In The Know, i.e. who is manipulated into using some stupid expression or contraction, but merely continue with my would-be contentious proposition:
Is this a WAG** in the making, or an MCD (to refer gratuitously, for the sake of cross-pollination, to Pork and beef on the same plate) - what some might call a defining moment, when that unhelpful term is contracted to its initials?
Although many acronyms (and some contractions) are no easier to say than the original text, are we heading for A Contracting Universe (ACU)?:
With LSL, she skipped down the catwalk in an LBD, courtesy of NBC, and, after a VAC, went home for a NLS
End-notes
* Though 'skimpy' is already part and parcel of the 'L' of LBD. More asutute readers may surmise, then, that it does not represent London Bomb Disposal, Lesotho Bisexual Dilettantes, or Liverpool Ballroom-Dancing.
** An amazing acronym, not only because the words 'and' merits a letter of its own (after all, it was WMD, not WOMD (which might have been mistaken for WOMB, I guess)), but also two categories of women in a relationship (with a man) are brusquely yanked together!
In fact, though celebrities are not, of course, unfaithful or promiscuous, X's WAG could also be (in the other capacity) Y's WAG - KK, for example, is shown dating other men when, as far as I am aware, the man whom she married, and who alleged just weeks after that she had not been sincere in marrying him, has not yet been announced to have divorced her.
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15 May
It is possible, though I doubt it (it is the whole point of this postlet), that LBD is a recognized term of art in these tinsel teasers on sign-on pages. (Remember the one, a few issues back, that reported Lorraine Kelly tumbling from her horse, whereas a newspaper had reported the story at least a fortnight earlier - not so much breaking news as breaking new ground for peddling old tat!)
For those not initiated (right trouser leg rolled up, etc.), I shall not spell it out*, though I was probably helped - when appeared words appeared to be missing in the headline - by the image below, because that would spoil the Fun of Who Is In The Know, i.e. who is manipulated into using some stupid expression or contraction, but merely continue with my would-be contentious proposition:
Is this a WAG** in the making, or an MCD (to refer gratuitously, for the sake of cross-pollination, to Pork and beef on the same plate) - what some might call a defining moment, when that unhelpful term is contracted to its initials?
Although many acronyms (and some contractions) are no easier to say than the original text, are we heading for A Contracting Universe (ACU)?:
With LSL, she skipped down the catwalk in an LBD, courtesy of NBC, and, after a VAC, went home for a NLS
End-notes
* Though 'skimpy' is already part and parcel of the 'L' of LBD. More asutute readers may surmise, then, that it does not represent London Bomb Disposal, Lesotho Bisexual Dilettantes, or Liverpool Ballroom-Dancing.
** An amazing acronym, not only because the words 'and' merits a letter of its own (after all, it was WMD, not WOMD (which might have been mistaken for WOMB, I guess)), but also two categories of women in a relationship (with a man) are brusquely yanked together!
In fact, though celebrities are not, of course, unfaithful or promiscuous, X's WAG could also be (in the other capacity) Y's WAG - KK, for example, is shown dating other men when, as far as I am aware, the man whom she married, and who alleged just weeks after that she had not been sincere in marrying him, has not yet been announced to have divorced her.
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Monday, 14 May 2012
The motto of Cambridge Drawing Society
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15 May 2012
It would be much funnier to have a Drawling Society, where you could hear a good Jimmy Stewart or even Tom Hanks (as a modern-style Drawler), but we have what we have.
A few things puzzle me about its recent publicity material:
* It begins by saying 'Art Exhibition / At the Guildhall / Cambridge Drawing Society / 1882 - 2008', but I cannot construe the dates, which appear to suggest that the Society has been disbanded several years earlier: overleaf, we are told, no more helpfully, that members 'are proud to maintain the century-long tradition of annual exhibitions in Cambridge'*
* The motto of the Society (at the top of that side) is given as Nulla dies sine linea
* Even if one could misconstrue dies as in apposition to lives**, not as a Latin word that is probably best known from Carpe diem (a phrase re-energed by that otherwise regrettable vehicle for the largely regrettable Robin Williams), it is clear enough what it means
* So to render it Draw a line every day oddly turns it into an instruction, when the Latin is clearly a statement, and, to my mind wrongly, focuses attention on the act of drawing, whereas the sentiment is one about time and of maintaining a habit, day to day, and one has to infer that line is to be made***
* The flyer directs us to Apelles, quoting a story about him that, maybe, I searched long enough to find, but hiding behind pictures in his shop-window to hear comments from passers-by, amongst the many anecdotes and accounts of him and his great technical skill (as no work of his survives the intervening 23 centuries (and we do not know definitely, except by reference to his having been said to be at the court of Philip of Macedon, when he lived), does not seem the best to have chosen to illustrate the motto****
* It seems that Pliny who is the so-called Elder is a major source for knowledge and appreciation of the abilities of Apelles, since we cannot see them displayed in any work: writing around the time of Christ, he would have spoken Latin, but I doubt that the motto, if authentic, would have been in anything other than Greek originally (Apelles is said to have been from the Greek island of Kos)
* It, too, expands the text, but what the Wikipedia® entry gives as a translation is, all in all, more accurate: Not a day without a line drawn
You never know, it could also apply to blog postings!
End-notes
* Actually, for what it is worth, I overlooked this comment: The first public exhibition took place in 1906 in the old Guildhall.
** As one teacher of English was said to have done with the Beckettt title Malone Dies.
*** The Wikipedia® entry goes into detail about a cobbler, one of whose comments (about how a shoe had been painted) Apelles heeded and remedied the mistakes, but whose subsequent comment about a leg earnt him a rude and surprising rebuff from the hidden painter.
**** Not least not to introduce, as if in a non-sequitur, the observation that visitors can write comments in a book, and vote for their favourite picture
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15 May 2012
It would be much funnier to have a Drawling Society, where you could hear a good Jimmy Stewart or even Tom Hanks (as a modern-style Drawler), but we have what we have.
A few things puzzle me about its recent publicity material:
* It begins by saying 'Art Exhibition / At the Guildhall / Cambridge Drawing Society / 1882 - 2008', but I cannot construe the dates, which appear to suggest that the Society has been disbanded several years earlier: overleaf, we are told, no more helpfully, that members 'are proud to maintain the century-long tradition of annual exhibitions in Cambridge'*
* The motto of the Society (at the top of that side) is given as Nulla dies sine linea
* Even if one could misconstrue dies as in apposition to lives**, not as a Latin word that is probably best known from Carpe diem (a phrase re-energed by that otherwise regrettable vehicle for the largely regrettable Robin Williams), it is clear enough what it means
* So to render it Draw a line every day oddly turns it into an instruction, when the Latin is clearly a statement, and, to my mind wrongly, focuses attention on the act of drawing, whereas the sentiment is one about time and of maintaining a habit, day to day, and one has to infer that line is to be made***
* The flyer directs us to Apelles, quoting a story about him that, maybe, I searched long enough to find, but hiding behind pictures in his shop-window to hear comments from passers-by, amongst the many anecdotes and accounts of him and his great technical skill (as no work of his survives the intervening 23 centuries (and we do not know definitely, except by reference to his having been said to be at the court of Philip of Macedon, when he lived), does not seem the best to have chosen to illustrate the motto****
* It seems that Pliny who is the so-called Elder is a major source for knowledge and appreciation of the abilities of Apelles, since we cannot see them displayed in any work: writing around the time of Christ, he would have spoken Latin, but I doubt that the motto, if authentic, would have been in anything other than Greek originally (Apelles is said to have been from the Greek island of Kos)
* It, too, expands the text, but what the Wikipedia® entry gives as a translation is, all in all, more accurate: Not a day without a line drawn
You never know, it could also apply to blog postings!
End-notes
* Actually, for what it is worth, I overlooked this comment: The first public exhibition took place in 1906 in the old Guildhall.
** As one teacher of English was said to have done with the Beckettt title Malone Dies.
*** The Wikipedia® entry goes into detail about a cobbler, one of whose comments (about how a shoe had been painted) Apelles heeded and remedied the mistakes, but whose subsequent comment about a leg earnt him a rude and surprising rebuff from the hidden painter.
**** Not least not to introduce, as if in a non-sequitur, the observation that visitors can write comments in a book, and vote for their favourite picture
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