Stranger Here Myself
Aug. 7th, 2005 06:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nameandnatureWe went to a Proms in the Park concert in Bedford last night. There were the usual favourites, finishing up with singing Jerusalem, Land of Hope and Glory, and then watching a firework display while the orchestra played 633 Squadron and Live and Let Die. Great fun. The people waving flags all over the place gave me an unusual burst of national pride.
Aled Jones was there, much to the delight of the grannies. He has an excellent singing voice: I don't think I've heard him sing since Walking in the Air all those years ago. Among other things, he sang How Great Thou Art, which is apparently the nation's favourite hymn.
I once sang it on a hillside in Derbyshire, on a CU houseparty. It was night. We could see the lights of the village below (whose residents hopefully couldn't hear us). There was a cloudless, starry sky. I see the stars, indeed. Aled Jones's singing, beneath another clear night sky, was fiercely evocative of that moment, one of those echoes which left me feeling strangely dissociated. The music can revive the emotions from that time, but the reason behind them has gone, and, of course, these days any emotional response associated with Christianty is also tinged with something of the pain of loss (although it's not particularly searing, thankfully, more a sort of nostalgia).
So, I came home and watched the latest episode of season two of Battlestar Galactica, which fell off the back of a lorry and landed at my feet, guv'nor. It's good stuff, although as some fans have said, I live in fear that the writers don't actually know where they're going, and the whole thing will end up like The X-Files. Still, there are some obvious future plotlines being set up, so we live in hope.
Someone on a web page I was reading the other day compared the present unpleasantness to the Idiran-Culture war. I do hope not: the things a highly technological society can do when forced to defend its very existence don't bear thinking about. With that in mind, and with my Stephenson "some cultures are better than others" hat on, Blair's latest proposals sound like a good idea.
Aled Jones was there, much to the delight of the grannies. He has an excellent singing voice: I don't think I've heard him sing since Walking in the Air all those years ago. Among other things, he sang How Great Thou Art, which is apparently the nation's favourite hymn.
I once sang it on a hillside in Derbyshire, on a CU houseparty. It was night. We could see the lights of the village below (whose residents hopefully couldn't hear us). There was a cloudless, starry sky. I see the stars, indeed. Aled Jones's singing, beneath another clear night sky, was fiercely evocative of that moment, one of those echoes which left me feeling strangely dissociated. The music can revive the emotions from that time, but the reason behind them has gone, and, of course, these days any emotional response associated with Christianty is also tinged with something of the pain of loss (although it's not particularly searing, thankfully, more a sort of nostalgia).
So, I came home and watched the latest episode of season two of Battlestar Galactica, which fell off the back of a lorry and landed at my feet, guv'nor. It's good stuff, although as some fans have said, I live in fear that the writers don't actually know where they're going, and the whole thing will end up like The X-Files. Still, there are some obvious future plotlines being set up, so we live in hope.
Someone on a web page I was reading the other day compared the present unpleasantness to the Idiran-Culture war. I do hope not: the things a highly technological society can do when forced to defend its very existence don't bear thinking about. With that in mind, and with my Stephenson "some cultures are better than others" hat on, Blair's latest proposals sound like a good idea.
