Funny. Spring. Rambling.

Funny evening: funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha -- as my dad (and mum) would have said when I was a kid, and when they were still married. But I digress. (Surprise.)

So...earlier, I was feeling a bit out of sorts: not quite past being ill, and mentally and physically inert. And now...it's like something's changed: you know those Philip Pulman books, where the protagonists have a subtle knife that lets them cut through the fabric of space-time and open up a window to another universe? It's a bit like that.

I have days like this, when things seem to turn suddenly -- usually in autumn or spring. It's as if I've reached the end of a long swing, or the full extent of an elastic constraint...as if the tautness is suddenly loosened, and I'm moving freely again. Moving freely, through unresisting, clear air -- rather than through murky water that's been lapping up to my waist, impeding movement and smoothness. It's a lovely, liberating feeling; one that I associate with spring evenings, and with being able to sit with the windows open, hearing the faint hiss of distant traffic, and with smelling the earth coming back to warmth and life, and with the sense that the world is opening up to me again, rather than running down.

So what's made that happen this evening? Music has played a part: the open, relaxed colours of John Coltrane's saxophone playing -- the way that he took a melodic line and played around with it, playing all around the line while keeping it nailed down solidly, so that you can follow the melody even when he's adding trills (terminology?) and little twists. There's that beautiful sense of completion when the melody comes home after an excursion. And you listen to that beautiful control and flawless technique, and you have to marvel. And you think "Maybe I should just give up dabbling in artistic endeavour and listen/read/look at people who have real talent?"

The strange thing is, I bought this Coltrane box set (The Classic Quartet -- Complete Impulse! Recordings) about four years ago, when I was at my Amazon-spending peak at Wrox Press, and I've probably only listened to 50% of the music before...but it's beautiful, and complex, and engrossing, and it's like I'm rediscovering it all. Which is wonderful.

I've also been listening to a John Barry anthology -- Themeology -- which is a compilation of film and TV themes, mostly from the 60s and 70s: stuff like Goldfinger, Born Free, The James Bond Theme, Midnight Cowboy, and The Persuaders. If I allow myself, I can be quite touched by the rich nostalgia this music can evoke: it's from a time before I developed a self-conscious sense of what was fashionable or likely to be approved by the...intelligentsia/arbiters of good taste. A time when I could watch Shirley Bassey on a Saturday night TV variety show and see an effervescent, genuine performer giving it all she'd got, and get the sense that she was genuine, and genuinely enjoying what she was doing; a time when I could watch a Carry On film and not have my enjoyment hamstrung by the sexism and crudity. There's something here about innocence and ignorance, about the 'innocent eye', but there's also something that's not nostalgic, and which is about having the capacity to fully enter into something without your intellect getting in the fucking way and stopping you from enjoying it; something about immersing yourself in the moment.

On evenings like this, when I feel relaxed and open, it's a pleasure to find that I still have that capacity for simple immersion and enjoyment, even with my awareness of all the shit everywhere. Huzzah for the self-perpetuating triumph of human hopefulness!