All week long, a frisky wind blew in from what seemed
like the Frozen North to give a taste of Siberia. In such a wind, the tarps on
the woodpiles billowed like sails in a mid-Atlantic storm. Any more than a week
of it might drive a sane man mad. Of course, it was nothing compared to what's
going on around the eastern seaboard of the US, or Siberia for that matter, but
it was a timely reminder that you still have to negotiate February to get to
March.
The wood situation was getting critical, which meant the
reappearance of the feared chainsaw. The fact that it's only an electric
chainsaw from Lidl rather spells out my limited ambitions in the woodsman
category. Nevertheless, I always approach the task with caution, even barely
suppressed terror.
The day chosen for the task was the coldest and windiest
day of the week. It was also the day before my wife's birthday, so there was
even more incentive than usual to avoid hacking off a limb. Suffering as she is
from a damaged knee after an assault by an old lady on the Eurostar platform at
the Gare du Nord in Paris, she was counting on an able-bodied minder to drive
her to Brive and back. What a twist of fate that this should befall at the end
of her self-imposed exile in the frozen north of England to look after her
mother following a knee operation. She's shocked and badly bruised, but not we
trust damaged for life. It certainly hasn't stopped her putting in the hours,
putting her clients back together again.
The wood in question comes in the shape of relèves, as they're called: the edges of
the tree trunks that are transformed at the local sawmill into railway sleepers
for the SNCF. They're bundled up in fagots,
the kind that they used to place around martyrs in medieval times for burnings
at the stake. (Yes, I've been transfixed, as millions have been, by BBC's
adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall
– with a smouldering, transfixing performance by Mark Rylance as Thomas
Cromwell.)
I'm not sufficiently courageous to approach the slicing
of the faggots with the same kind of gusto as my friend Bret. He plants his
left foot on the pile and then cuts down with grim determination as far as the
chainsaw will go, thus sawing through ten or more planks at a time. I like the
economy of his approach, but shy away from the risk of kick-back or simply
getting the saw stuck. Still, I managed a modest safety-first approximation and
I've now got enough planks chopped up and stacked under cover for the month of
February. With wood in the bank, I can rest easy again.
The perfect Clarnico Mint, back in 2006 |
Such a wind usually presages rain – and plenty of it. So
when it died down a little towards the end of the week, it came as no surprise
to see some snow. It was blowing up an incipient blizzard when I left for the
cinema in Vayrac on Thursday evening to see Whiplash.
Debs and Tilley were due to come too, but the wife's knees were playing up
after a hard day at the coal face and The Daughter's working on a commission to
create a costume. So I drove off alone into the dark and inclement night.
The usual crowd were there for version originale films. 'Bunch' is maybe a more appropriate word
given the size of the auditorium and the number of unoccupied seats. Anyway, we
were there to see a film about a young man with ambitions to be a great jazz
drummer, the new Buddy Rich perhaps, and his battles with a teacher determined
to push his charges to the limits of their ability and motivation. Apart from a
sequence involving a car crash and blood all over the kit – which seemed more
appropriate to a soap like Hollyoaks –
it was a gripping film about a subject that would never normally see the light
of cinematic day, and one that clearly deserved its Sundance Festival acclaim.
A little gentle persuasion |
Quite apart from the brilliant music throughout, it also
raised some interesting questions about a subject that's dear to my heart. The
notion of talent and why some people fulfil it while others don't. Just how far
should one go in pushing someone? The teacher, played by a ferocious J.K. Simmons,
is in many respects a monster. Yet, there is something sympathetic in his
make-up, if only because he genuinely wants his pupils to succeed. And not just
to succeed, but to be great – rather than mere also-rans. As he believes, two
of the most damaging words in the English language are 'good' and 'job'. In
other words, we shouldn't be satisfied with mediocrity.
I was talking to a friend on Saturday morning about the
film and we drifted onto the subject of our offspring. He's feeling a little
nervous about his son's ambitions. For all his academic brilliance, his son
seems to have rejected the kind of society that his parents are accustomed to.
He wants to be a writer – in French rather than English – and wants to give it
100% for a couple of years. Then, if nothing happens, he can try something
else.
As a 70% man, a dilettante by any other name, I fully
approve of the idea. Writers in English are two-a-penny, but if he makes it in
French, the Prix Goncourt, Légion d'Honneur and national acclaim could be his.
Blessed or cursed by too many interests, I was a 70% man whenever it was that I
decided that a writer's life was probably
maybe the life for me and, nearly half a century down the line, I'm still a
70% man. So it sounds like he doesn't need a spot of J.K. Simmons-style
motivation.
I, too, feel a little nervous about my offspring's
ambitions. Her talent's not in doubt, but I wonder sometimes whether she's got
the 'mental game'. So she, on the other hand, might benefit from a spot of J.K.
Simmons-style motivation. The trouble is, she's a sensitive soul. If you push
someone too much or too far, you could end up inflicting permanent damage. To
succeed at the kind of level that the Simmons character was talking about, you
have to be very driven and almost unnaturally single-minded. Someone like
Charlie Parker burnt himself out in the process, but the young hero, the
apprentice Buddy Rich, reasons to his family that he'd rather shine brightly
for fewer than 40 years and leave a legacy of astounding work for generations
to come, than be forgotten after living a comfortable, average sort of life until
he was 90.
I know which path father and daughter would opt for. But
who knows, maybe it's possible to have your cake and eat it too. The
megalomaniacal teacher wouldn't have thought so, but then there would have been
no premise for the drama if he had. Interestingly, the writer and director of
the film, Damien Chazelle, started off as a prize-winning drummer, 100% driven
to succeed. Now he's found a new prize-winning career by using the experience
as his creative subject matter. Now that's what I call talent. Should go far.
After the film, the snow had dispersed. Turning into our track, I caught sight of a badger darting through the trees, ears flattened against the elements and dedicated to its chosen nocturnal pursuit. The following morning, I was ready to take my wife down to the station to catch the train to Brive, but she decided that her knees were now sufficiently better after an evening's massage to attempt to drive. She did it, too. She made it there and back without incident. She's nothing if not driven, that one.
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