Music Monday on a Tuesday. Perhaps I should call this Music Weekly? Or Music Sometimes? Or just Music?

Ever since I got back from holiday (lovely, thanks) I have been enjoying Radio 3's Genius of Mozart, in which they are playing only Mozart for 12 days. It's absolutely wonderful, and it strikes me that Mozart is exactly what I think of when I think of classical music. It's a bit like a child's drawing of a house - despite the vast amount of different shapes and sizes that homes can have, if you ask a kid to draw a house they will go for the basic square house, pitched roof with a chimney, door in the middle and windows on either side model. I can and do love anything from Bach to Britten, but Mozart seems for me to be the template from which all other classical music derives. Even the stuff written before him.

Irritatingly, my office internet is too slow right now for me to put on a YouTube clip. I'll come back and do it later.

LATER: Here we go. One of my favourite pieces. Guaranteed to get me welling up:



Meanwhile, while we were on holiday, my sister and I played a game: which three dead musicians / singers would you like to be able to see perform live? We never managed to come up with the definitive list of three but Mozart was one of them. Sis suggested Bob Marley; I had visions of Vegas-era Elvis; we both would love to have seen Ella Fitzgerald; but we agreed that the Beatles would be inaudible because of the screaming. Over to you, commenters.

Music Monday

Some Monday mornings it feels like someone organised all of my ex-boyfriends into a choir and got them to sing.

I've Got My Hand In Your Head: Neuroscience / Music Monday Combo

I have just finished a fantastic book called The Brain That Changes Itself, by Norman Doidge. Perhaps surprisingly for someone with no knowledge of science at all (Physics GCSE and that's it), I am a real neuroscience nerd, and love nothing more than curling up with a good book all about horrific brain injuries. Cosy, eh? On my shelf you will find classic neuroscience tracts by the likes of Oliver Sacks, Steven Johnson and Paul Broks, and I impulsed-purchased The Brain That Changes Itself whilst hanging out in Waterstones before a meeting, and proceeded to inhale the whole thing over the weekend.

Basically, you should stop reading my review now and read the book instead. But seeing as how you are here, TBTCI is a fascinating exploration of the key emerging concept in brain science of neuroplasticity - the idea that far from being a fixed machine which, once damaged, cannot be repaired, the brain is a fluid, living entity where different functions compete for space. The things you do remap your brain; the things you do a lot remap your brain a lot. (I'm simplifying a tad.) And parts of your brain that might usually do one thing are capable of doing others, particularly if trained in the right ways, which gives immense hope to those who are brain damaged, by birth, accident, stroke and so on. Some of the stories here are, no pun intended, mind-blowing: from a woman born retarded who cured herself, to another who was born, and lives and functions, with only half a brain.

This then gives hope to those of us who are not brain damaged but who might have behavioural patterns we are unhappy with. By repeating the patterns, we've worn tracks in our minds which are hard to get out of, which explains why we keep doing the same harmful things over and over. But like any other kind of damage, we can train and practice and get our brains onto a better path. (When I say we, I do mean me, by the way, though perhaps you will recognise yourself also.) Does this sound self-helpy? It isn't meant to. More that the book provides a deep insight into what it actually means, at the level of your personal brain chemistry, when you think of who you are and what you might be trying to change. (There I go with you. I still mean me.)

It's utterly inspiring stuff. Though as a caveat, you will have to have a high tolerance for vivisection, as the researchers in the book are constantly severing monkeys' spinal nerves and sewing kittens' eyes shut. If you like the sound of it - the book, not the vivisection - there's more on the author's website and the book is available in all the usual places. Also, can we pause for a moment to admire this author photo, taken by Denise Grant? This is what a psychoanalyst should look like, no?



All this makes me think about how I'd like to read more non-fiction. I didn't go near the stuff after school and university because I thought it would be all like textbooks, but in recent years I've found I've missed all the learning I took for granted when I was growing up, and now I want to find out more about this world of ours, goddammit. (Not god damn the world. That would be a foolhardy invitation. It's just an expression.) Dearest blog friends, can you recommend some great non-fiction for me to read? Other books on diverse factual topics that I've read and loved have included The Shadow of the Sun (Kapuscinski), Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (Biskind), The Age of Absurdity (Michael Foley) - that may be one for another blog post, in fact, so brilliant is it. But in the meantime, recommendations please.

Have just realised it's Monday. So here's a themed Music Monday - Hand In Your Head by Money Mark. Here's a fact for you: the first time I heard this, I thought the lyrics were "I've got my hand in your hair and I'm pulling out all of your mites."

Music Monday

I'm feeling a bit sorry for myself today so all I'm going to do is post a song I really love.

Music Monday

A change in direction for Music Monday tonight as I have just been having my string quartet rehearsal. One of my not-so-secret no-so-talents is that I play the cello, and our quartet rehearses two or three times a month, depending on our impossible schedules (first violin has just started a new job with network rail, viola is getting married next week etc.) Anyway, it turns out that my parents were right: if I just stuck at it and did enough practice, playing the cello *would* bring me lifelong joy. (Of course I don't practice any more. Let's not go crazy.)

I love playing in the quartet. It's completely different from anything else that I do. It's non-verbal for a start, which is a relief after a day spent writing, and unlike most of my leisure activities, I am participating rather than observing (TV / cinema / theatre / other music / art etc). It's collaborative, which makes a welcome change from the solitude of my work. It's creative, but in a responsive way; I'm not in charge of composing the music, just interpreting it as well as I can so that it will sound beautiful. Or if I can't manage beautiful, nice. Or if I can't manage nice, at least I can try to get most of the notes in the right place. Even if they are the wrong notes. Suffice to say we aren't planning any performances any time soon, but it does bring me a huge amount of pleasure from my limited ability.

Anyway, here's a new piece we started today - the first movement of Schubert's 'Rosamunde' quartet in A minor.



Imagine being a quarter of that! Amazing feeling, right?

Music Monday: NaNoWriMoSpecial

So here's the thing. I don't like NaNoWriMo. In fact I HATE NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo is 'National Novel Writing Month' in which would-be writers are encouraged to pen their novels in one month, on the basis that a couple of thousand words a day for thirty days will get you a nice first draft. Which is true.

What is also true is that a couple of thousand words a day for thirty days in a row without repetition, hesitation or (the killer, this) deviation is bloody difficult. Very few people can toss off a novel in a month. Fewer still can write a good novel, even a good draft, in a month. Ian Rankin claims to be able to do so, Alexander McCall Smith also. You may have your own opinions on the talents of these writers, but it shouldn't be overlooked that they are both massive best-selling millionaires, which does imply some adeptness at what they do, in contrast with those of us (almost all other writers) who are not massive best-selling millionaires, which may (or may not) imply that we find writing a bit harder. They also both write genre novels (ie, in a non-judgmental sense, formulaic) with worlds and characters that they have already devised. In sum, I don't think that Rankin and McCall Smith are typical of most writers.

At the moment I am almost two years into writing my second novel. I have been working hard on it. I really don't like being told that my two years of my job can be done in a month. I am guessing that whatever your work is, you would also not enjoy a national 'your job here' month, which implied that two years of your work could be done in a month if you just applied yourself a bit harder. It makes me feel inadequate. And jealous. Definitely jealous.

So yes, let's encourage people to write - I [mostly] love writing, I love the idea that other people can get the same joy I [sometimes] get from writing - but let's not spread the idea that writing a novel is easy. Quite aside from anything, the difficult reality is likely to put off the very people that NaNoWriMo is trying to reach.

Oh, and as it's Music Monday...

Music Monday EXTRA! On a Friday

I hate washing up. Which is why I have a dishwasher. But for reasons that are not exactly too lengthy to explain, but would lure me into an orgy of cursing my plumber and my electrician that I fear I would never emerge from, I can't use my dishwasher at the moment, so I have been reduced to washing all my dishes by hand. The only way to survive - aside from stacking the dirty dishes very neatly so that they don't look as threatening - is to listen to the radio while washing up. And so, this morning, cleaning up after dinner for four last night, I discovered - thanks to Huey on 6 music - the absolutely perfect music for washing up to. You can boogie as you scrub, it's full of resentment, and it even has housework-related lyrics. It's A Town Called Malice (do do do do do do!):

Music Monday: Miliband special

So for one selfish reason at least I am glad that Ed Miliband won, because it gives my 'time I met him at a barbecue' anecdote so much more currency. Maybe I should save it until he's Prime Minister, but seeing as that's not exactly guaranteed, I will tell it now. It was around the time that Gordon Brown took over from Blair, but before we all hated Gordon; we were in Hay on Wye; he had a stinking cold.

Him: Hi, I'm Ed.
Me: Hi Ed. So what do you do?

(I paraphrase. We may have discussed the sausages and the quality of literary entertainment on offer first.)

Him: I'm an MP.
Me: Really? That must be very interesting. God, it's hard becoming an MP isn't it? How did you manage to get selected for your seat?
Him: I work very closely with Gordon Brown.

(Hear that sound? It's the sound of a penny not dropping.)

Me: Oh, now is a good time to be on Team Gordon. I like Gordon Brown. He reminds me of my dad.

(Gordon Brown does not remind me of my dad. They both have the same colour hair and that's about it.)

Him: So what do you do?
Me: I'm an author.
Him: I never read fiction.

(I like to think he said this so that he, too, would have contributed something idiotic to the conversation.)

Me: Oh well you should read my book anyway. In fact, what you should do is, when you have constituency surgeries in - where's your constituency?
Him: Doncaster.
Me: Is that in the north? Anyway, when you have constituency surgeries in Doncaster, you should always be reading Gods Behaving Badly when people come in, and be laughing loudly, and then put it cover side up on your desk and wipe your eyes and say "That's such a funny book. What can I do for you?"
Him: Please excuse me. I need to go to the loo now.

I have seen Ed Miliband in Hay on Wye on a number of occasions since, and every single time, I have hidden.

This is the song that I got stuck in my head when the leadership was announced. It is not by the Steve Miller Band but I'm glad to see that joke's still trucking along. No visuals, sadly all the ones where you can see the sequence from Cabaret have had their embedding disabled.

Music Monday

Yes yes yes. I know everyone's been talking about Janelle Monae for months. I have been busy.

Music Monday

A short Music Monday today. I've been finding myself singing this song a lot lately for obvious reasons, and it reminded me how fantastic the whole of the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid soundtrack is (also check out the brilliant 'South American Getaway'), and thence how fantastic the whole of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is, one of my favourite films for a long time and probably only not now because it's so long since I've watched it, and so how I absolutely must watch it again. But in the meantime, here's the classic bicycle scene with Paul Newman and Katharine Ross looking impossibly young and beautiful:



Oh screw it, here's 'South American Getaway' as well:

Music Monday: Crush Special

There's not been a lot of talk of David Tennant round these parts of late. Fear not, I would still leap onto him like a kitten up curtains given even the slightest hint of a chance, but in terms of crush maintenance it has been tricky. David has been doing a lot of resting since his stint as Doctor Who, and when he hasn't been resting, he has been doing voiceovers for Tesco and filming BBC1 dramas for which advance stills look like this -



A BBC1 drama about a widowed dad, set at a farm show with people dressed in battle reenactment costumes, carrying fishing rods and in mid-1990s indie clobber in the background? It's just as well I love you David. Love is ever forgiving. Ever forgiving. Even so, I'd really prefer it if you didn't turn into the male Sarah Lancashire.

And then there's Michael Cera. Now I've had a Michael Cera thing since Superbad, and I have to be very careful around underage-era Arrested Development DVDs, but last week I went to see Scott Pilgrim - which is fabulous, incidentally, in an I-wish-I-was-still-a-teenager-and-could-dye-my-hair-blue-without-looking-like-an-eejit way - but for Michael Cera I felt nothing, in the trouser department anyway. Nada. In fact my affections were far more taken by Kieran Culkin as his flatmate Wallace. That's Kieran Culkin, brother of Macauley, as his gay flatmate, Wallace. Au revoir Michael, I guess all good things come to an end.

Just as well I have backup, really. Here's Benedict "Sherlock" Cumberbatch doing his best to make me fancy the suit off both him and DT (taking one for the team, Ben - nice, very nice):



And then there's new arrival Joseph Gordon-Levitt. JGL is 29 and has been hovering on the brink of cute for quite some time, being hilarious but underage and bad of hair in Third Rock from the Sun, and then dorky-cute and standing too close to Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You, and then intense-cute in I-didn't-like-it-as-much-as-I-was-told to Brick. But THEN I saw him in Inception with his hair sorted out, stealing a kiss off Ellen Page and doing exceedingly cool things in zero gravity. And THEN THEN there was this in (500) Days of Summer - aha - did you wonder when the music was going to kick in?



OK so full disclosure: that was Hall & Oates, and actually I wanted the bit when he sings 'Here Comes Your Man' in the karaoke bar, but Youtube didn't have it, and I started this out as a musical post, and that's an incredibly cute dance sequence even if the fringe was an error, but the clothes were just right, and also did I mention cuteness, and SIGH, and I should do some work now.

This was just a public service announcement to let you know my hormones are in full working order. There may be more coherent posts later in the week.

Musical bookswap on a Monday

And why not? It's my blog.

I am SO BLOODY EXCITED about the Firestation Bookswap on Thursday. Here are some reasons you might want to get excited too:

1. It's the bookswap's first birthday! I might wear that transparent dress I accidentally wore on the first night, to celebrate. Then again, I might not.

2. We have had some amazing guests on the bookswap so far but it'd be hard to beat this month's line-up. I read Matt Rudd's William's Progressin one sitting, despite being filled with horror at its hilarious revelations about the truth about having young babies - yes I will now never have children and it is all Matt Rudd's fault, but I will forgive anybody who makes me laugh. Get a taste of his inimitable sense of humour at his blog. And Andrew Kaufmann's All My Friends are Superheroesis the only book that has ever made me cry from happiness. I read it less than a year ago, have already given away four copies (including Scott's - sorry Scott, if I can remember who I gave it to I might be able to get it back) and I love love LOVE it. In fact if you buy a copy you can find a quote from me on the back confirming this very thing. His latest, The Waterproof Bible, is similarly strange and wonderful. Andrew is interviewed on the Beat website by bookswap alumnus Aliya Whiteley and I defy you to read the interview and not want to meet the man in person.

3. For one month only, the bookswap is FREE. Free I hear you say? Why yes -



Hilarious. Could that video be any more 90s? And when did you last think of the Soup Dragons?

Music Monday on a Tuesday

I wasn't here yesterday to do Music Monday on yer actual Monday as I was in transit from a (lovely, sunny) long weekend on Dorset's beaches. On the way home I was listening to my iTrip* (*not actually an iTrip but some ultracheap knockoff I bought off Amazon which just about transmits to my radio if they are within no more than two inches of one another, but hey, that'll do) and reflecting on how, when we used to drive to Dorset as a family, we would listen to only the following tapes ever, for as long as I can remember throughout my entire childhood:

- the Muppet tape - an distinctive olive green tape with songs and skits from the Muppet Show on it (good grief the comedian's a bear!)
- Ella Fitzgerald's Greatest Hits
- Louis Armstrong's greatest hits
- Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits
- the Bubbling Brown Sugar original cast recording

And that's it, for well over a decade. I think you could probably trace all of my musical preferences and half of my personality back to that very list. (I will no doubt be returning to one or more of the above for future Music Mondays.)

That's all very well, I hear you say, but it would be helpful for us to judge your taste, not to mention your sanity, if we knew what Bubbling Brown Sugar is.

I'm so glad you asked. Bubbling Brown Sugar is a musical set in a nightclub in Harlem from the 1920s to the 1940s and features songs from artists including Duke Ellington, Eubie Blake, Count Basie, Cab Calloway and Fats Waller, which played in London in 1977, the year after I was born. I nver actually saw it, but I can probably do the entire album by heart - not necessarily in any way that another human being might enjoy, mind you - and when I was very small, my favourite song was called 'Strollin'. The singer said that in order to be cool you had to stroll, and in order to stroll you had to "walk with your left leg dipping a bit, resembling a limp". I thought this sounded like a great idea, so that's exactly what I did. All the time. Without telling anybody. I was three. My mother thought that I had orthopedic problems and nearly took me to see a specialist, except that I got bored of doing it just in time.

Here's a bit of Bubbling Brown Sugar performed on a Dutch TV gala a few years ago. No strolling, alas.

Music Monday on a Monday

A return for Music Monday, the much-loved feature that never gets a single comment, presumably because you are all in so much awe of it that you can find no words to say. And a very special Music Monday it is too, celebrating the reprieve of BBC6 Music from the champing jaws of BBC cuts. It is indeed a joyful day for thirtysomething Guardian-reading music snobs everywhere. Thirtysomething Guardian-reading music snobs like me. Hurrah!

I've noticed lately that everywhere I go and everything I do I am so in the middle of my demographic that I may as well sport a giant hat with the word AVERAGE on it, only that would actually make me not average. I doubt that anybody at any of the music events I attend doesn't read the Guardian or have an iPhone. I run into friends of mine wherever I go, from Jose Gonzales at the Festival Hall (he was pure genius, and I ran into my friend the literary agent there) to the Hay festival (everyone from primary school friend, the children's book author, to the co-godparent of my documentary-maker friend's baby - I put in the jobs here so you can see how smug and middle class boho it all is.) Even where I don't know people, everyone looks like they could be a friend of mine, if only I actually knew them. A while ago I went to see an avant-garde music event in a condemned warehouse in Kings Cross and took some pictures of the cellist on my iPhone. Last week I was doing a literary event with the writer Tim Coates, whom I'd never met before, and it turned out the cellist was his son. On Saturday night I went to Kenwood House to see Rufus Wainwright. King and Queen posh boho, Tim Burton and Helena Bonham-Carter were in attendance. I used to serve them when I worked at Daunt Books; H B-C went to my school. Afterwards, I told my parents how brilliant Rufus was, and they said they already knew - they'd been performed to by him at the American Embassy, at a private reception with 150 guests. I am so far from the cutting edge I have fallen off the handle.

Perhaps I should be depressed at being so very predictable, but I'm quite happy really. I've found the bit of life that I like, the bit which makes me feel like I'm hip without actually having to hang out with teenagers. Guess which festival I'm going to this summer. Go on, guess. That's right. Latitude. OK, so I'm either turning into Helena Bonham-Carter or into my mum - probably just depends on which haircut I get. Either way I'm quite contended. And now even my perfect radio station has been preserved for my listening pleasure. Could it be that I have found my niche, and that niche is marked "self-consciously cool but ultimately safe author in early middle age"? Who on earth thought there'd be so many of us?

Whatever. Here's some Rufus Wainwright.

Music Monday

Woke up this morning feeling as if I had barely slept, after a particularly egregious "I have to do my A levels again" dream, which I am now having a couple of times a week. Every time it is exhausting as I explain that I've already done my A levels and have been to university twice, so surely I don't actually have to do them again, and this is just like that dream where I have to do my A levels again. A brief stand back from my life reveals that it is in fact an awful lot like having to do my A levels over and over (second novel syndrome anyone?) so I suppose it isn't that surprising. More surprising was the friend who recently revealed that she too has the dream about having to do her A levels again, only she never actually did A levels.

On the theme of revisiting childhood, this week's Music Monday is Shirley Ellis performing The Clapping Song with some fabulous 1960s Breton top-wearing backing dancers. Shirley's dancing is slightly less enthusiastic...

Music Monday

Did you think I had forgotten? I had not forgotten. I did, however, spend this morning looking after my four-year-old nephew, who, while behaving angelically, is nevertheless a four year old nephew, therefore finding time to breathe started to look like a stretch. But I am here now.

I have spent the last few days pruning my iTunes and have noticed a few things. Things like:

- thanks to (the fabulous) Songlines Magazine I have a gigantic World Music collection that I mostly uploaded onto my iTunes without listening to first. I have now listened to it all. I adore most of it. I really, really don't adore some of it. Some of it sounds like people tuning their instruments, doing the washing up, and wailing from toothache all at the same time. But I love most of the African, the South American, the Caribbean, the folk and the klezmer (I seem to have more klezmer music than someone who's only slightly Jewish, and the wrong kind of Jewish at that, could ever require.) I do not like the sitar music and anything with that loud reedy wind thing in it (Turkish?) Much World Music rap makes my ears bleed. The extra free CD of South African music from a year or two ago is brilliant. The extra free CD of Danish music is not. Sorry, Denmark.

- I don't 80s funk any more.

- Ditto Acid Jazz.

- I still feel bad about buying the substandard Kristen Hirsch solo CD I've been trying to like for fifteen years. And the rubbish Beck album which managed to be the only one I own - and all the others are good. And that Jimi Tenor one I got because my boyfriend liked it. I didn't. £10 that I spent in the year 2000 and still it haunts me.

Not all Jimi Tenor is bad though. Here's 'Sugardaddy'. No video. Just listen to it through your headphones. It is as good as an autobiographical song about being a Finnish male prostitute can be.

Music Monday

It's a new feature. Completely different from Big Mouth's Song for Sunday. Because it's Monday, innit.

You know this one already, but it's what I had going round my head walking into work this morning. Unusual choice for a Monday morning maybe, but it's a beautiful day and I love my new office and the book is going well, so here it is. I think Tamara Connolly has done a lovely job making a video for it too.

Nina Simone, Feeling Good: