Daily delights

One of the things that has helped me heed Sendak’s advice is being unemployed. I’m not in a Monday-to-Friday crush of commuting and deadlines and responsibilities and office politics and tiredness. So there’s time to read and take in cultural events and generally notice the life around me.

Here are three examples from the past week.
Wednesday: I went to a lunchtime Ulster Orchestra concert with a friend, at which symphonies by Saint-Saëns, Enescu, and Dvořák were performed. There were something like 30 violinists, so you have some idea of the swell of the sound in each of these pieces. I found myself nearly in tears several times. I love that there is something deep within us that responds so emotionally to these rich compositions, without ever understanding why.

Thursday: The Out to Lunch Festival is on--50 events over two weeks. I selected three, the first of which was wobbly comedienne Francesca Martinez. She has cerebral palsy but she’s not fond of the medical term so she calls herself wobbly. She asks, reasonably enough, why ugly words like schizophrenic and dyslexic are applied to people while pleasant sounding phrases are used for evil: friendly fire, ethnic cleansing ("sounds like aromatherapy”). She was very funny and very inspiring. I wish I could include the poem she concluded with, which was about how much she loves life--rustling leaves, summer breezes, ice cream--and hates the thought of it ever ending. She notes during her monologue that most pregnant women, told their baby would have a disability, would end the pregnancy. Her poem was very Sendak-like, it was uncanny.

Friday: My second Out to Lunch event, a performer called East India Youth who creates music using a computer and a synthesiser. The sound wasn’t really my thing, to be honest, however I loved his voice. And I met a very nice couple who sat at my table. From the woman, a midwife, I learned that obesity has shot up here in the last 10 years. She blames the arrival of megasupermarkets, whereas Northern Ireland once was a place of small markets. “Why buy one Mars bar when you can buy a packet of five?” she asked. One of the night’s delights was a bottle of Angry Orchard, an American cider I discovered when I was home at Christmas. It is delicious--I probably enjoyed that more than the music.
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