The Last Samurai

Sometimes my mother did practice but one thing led to another and sometimes she did not. The advice of the homely man was something of a curse. She would not practice at all if she could not practice right so that gradually she played less and less and sometimes not at all.

I used to think that things might have been different. Gieseking never played a scale and Glenn Gould hardly practiced at all, they would just look at the score and think and think and think. If the homely man had said to go away and think this would have been every bit as revolutionary a concept for a Konigsberg. Perhaps he even thought that you had to think. But you can’t show someone how to think in an hour; you can give someone an exercise to take away. My grandfather would not have been troubled by silent thought; he would not have kindly commanded my mother to enjoy her music & so driven her out of the house; and everything might have been different.

ii

—A real samurai would never get so drunk. If he’s as good as you say he’ll parry the blow.

Samurai leader as an impostor

tries to join the band of six

It is not surprising that Seven Samurai was remade by Hollywood because it is already close to the Western in its use of an elite body of brave warriors.

David Thomson,

A Biographical Dictionary of Film

1

We Never Get Off at Sloane Square for Nebraska Fried Chicken

We’ve just pulled into the Motel Del Mar, a.k.a. Aldgate: we are taking the Circle Line in a counterclockwise direction. The pillars are covered in pale turquoise tiles, with lilac diamonds on a single band of cream—it’s a colour scheme I associate with paper-wrapped soaplets & tiny towels with embroidered anchors. What kind of childhood is this for a child? He’s never even been to Daytona.

I’ve been taking him every day to ride the Circle Line to stay out of the cold: I can type at night when he goes to bed, but we can’t have the fire on 20 hours a day. He hates it because I won’t let him bring Cunliffe. Too bad.

I remember once about 10 years ago, or rather 8, reading Nicomachean Ethics Book X in a Circle Line train that had stopped at Baker Street. That lovely soft-grained sepia light filtered down; it was about 11:00 and very quiet. I thought: Yes, to live the life of the mind is the truest form of happiness. Reading Aristotle was not even then my idea of intellectual felicity, but after all it is possible to lead the life of the mind without reading Aristotle. If I could read anything I wanted I would read The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap.

This is absolutely not possible today, with L interrupting every minute or so to ask a word. He is in a bad mood because he hates having to ask; I think he thinks if he asks enough I will let him bring the Homeric dictionary tomorrow. James Mill wrote an entire history of India in the intervals of providing lexical assistance to little John—but he did not have to load a twin pushchair with a small library, a small child, Repulsive, Junior Birdman & Bit—and with all the advantages of a wife, servants & a fire in the room he was still impatient and short-tempered. Repulsive is a three-foot stuffed gorilla; the Birdman is a two-foot fighting turtle misnamed Donatello by its maker; & Bit is a one-inch rubber mouse designed to be lost 30 or 40 times a day.

Even when he is not interrupting people keep coming up. Sometimes they scold him playfully for colouring in a book, and sometimes they stare goggle-eyed when they realise he is reading it. They don’t seem to realise how bad this is for him. Today a man came up and said playfully: You shouldn’t colour in a book.

L: Why not?

Playful: It’s not nice if somebody wants to read it.

L: But I am reading it.

Idiot, winking idiotically at me: Oh really? What’s it about then?

L: I’m at the bit where they go to the land of the dead and this is the bit where she changes them into pigs and this is the bit where they go to the king of the winds and this is the bit where they sharpen a stick in the fire and gouge out the eye of the Cyclops because it only had one eye so if they gouged it out it couldn’t see.

Brain left school at six while body did time: Well that wasn’t very nice now was it?

L: If someone’s about to eat you you don’t have to be nice. It’s acceptable to kill in self-defence.

Slow on the uptake (goggle-eyed): Blimey.

L (for the five-hundredth time that day): What does that mean?

Slow: It means that’s absolutely amazing. (To me) Aren’t you worried about what will happen when he goes to school?

I: Desperately.

Only trying to be helpful: There’s no need to be sarcastic.