A week of teeth and music
May. 22nd, 2021 03:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustI have long-standing but quite mild issues with sensitive teeth, nothing that can't be controlled by using suitable toothpaste. So it took me a while to realise that I was suffering more pain than usual, and that - as far as I could tell - it wasn't in the usual place. I'll spare you the long thinky post about how hard it is to localise pain which is inside your mouth, not actually a large area and yet ... ("'The problem is all inside your head' ... There must be fifty ways / To cure your toothache.") Eventually I took my problem to the dentist, who identified not toothache but a gum infection, and prescribed a five day course of antibiotics. I delayed filling this, because naturally, I was already feeling better, but the improvement stalled, and on Monday I went to Boots and started taking the large yellow pills...
Which is why our emergence into society on Monday evening was even more low-key than we had planned, because I wasn't drinking. It was very pleasant, regardless, to visit S. in her house and in the company of G., and to sit across the wide expanse of S.'s dining table and gossip, and eat food that I had not only not prepared myself, I hadn't even had to plan.
The BBC seems to have decided that the responsibility for celebrating Bob Dylan's 80th birthday (on Monday) falls to Radio 4, so the programming has been unexpectedly talk-based.
durham_rambler and I listened together to a series of short talks by Sean Latham, Director of the Institute for Bob Dylan Studies at the University of Tulsa. It was not explained why the University of Tulsa has an Institute for Bob Dylan Studies (but can you call yourself a university if you don't have an Institute for Bob Dylan Studies?). It also has the Bob Dylan Archive, which is just down the road from the Woody Guthrie Archive, and that, at least, makes sense. We listened to each day's episode over a cup of tea, and heckled quite a lot. Compressing 60 years of creative life into five short programmes requires simplification and selection, and I wasn't entirely convinced by the result; but I came away prepared to try again to get to know some of the later material.Yesterday evening's tribute to Dylan came with a bonus - because of course if Dylan is 80, then so is Martin Carthy, and yesterday was his birthday. He turned up on Front Row to talk about the early days, and they asked him about the piano and the samurai sword: yes, he said, it's true, and told the story - which is what he does best, telling stories. It was a joy to hear him sounding so fresh and alive, after that Zoom concert at which he had seemed so rusty: getting back to work seems to be good for him.
We moved seamlessly from the radio to an online folk club gig by Nancy Kerr and James Fagan, which promised more Carthy-related pleasures: it is allegedly possible to listen to James Fagan's community radio programme Thank Goodness It's Folk, yesterday's installment of which featured Martin Carthy and his own selection of records - and I will go and do that thing as soon as I have finished this. The gig was excellent, of course: highlights included a Leon Rossellson version of 'The Grasshopper and the Ant' which I didn't know (with a promise of more Rossellson to come soon), Robb Johnson's Herald of Free Enterprise, some Northumbrian pipe tunes and Nancy's own Queen of Waters.
From the sublime to the ridiculous: tonight is Eurovision. How will I get through it without a glass in my hand?
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Date: 2021-05-22 05:46 pm (UTC)I ask because other half had similar issues and switching to an electric solved them.
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Date: 2021-05-23 10:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-22 08:49 pm (UTC)I am very glad to hear it.
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Date: 2021-05-23 10:13 am (UTC)