Yvonne bought me a postcard of Pollock in full flow - shot from above in 1950 by Nauman . I decided I ought to do my own MIDI file of 21.5.

In memoriam John Rawls the LRB quotes:

�The perspective of eternity is not a perspective from a certain place in the world nor the point of a view of a transcendent being � rather it�s a certain form of thought and feeling that rational persons can adopt within the world. And having done so they can - whatever their generation - bring together into one scheme all individual perspectives and arrive together at regulative principles that can be affirmed by everyone as s/he lives by them, each from his own standpoint. Purity of heart if one could attain it � would be to see clearly and to act with grace and self-command from this point of view.�

This an intimate project we could embark on behind the veil of ignorance?

On her Chritsmas card Claire (mid 70s consort of Brian Wells) says she enjoyed Serious Music. Most Christmas music I don�t like. About 10 years ago I did a game Geoffery (bass player Horn) and Sarah�s New Years party where the task was to spot Christmas melodies which I had learned to play backwards. Sarah did her nursing training with Claire � maybe she will be there on 28 Dec when we visit.

There was a cracking Xmas tune today in the service. It is dated at 1582 and attributed to Nyland. It has a 7 phrase structure. If the first four ABCD but then in the fifth A and B are compressed into a single phrase before finishing with an E and F. A possible picture of the symmetry.

A B

C D

AB*

E F

Maybe its call and response � and development at the same time. Almost Sonnet like.

The words to this tune are fourth century � post Constantine I suppose � which is (I would guess) just after the Virgin began to feature prominently in liturgy. When you think about it there has to be a connection � the rhetorical space that the Virgin came to occupy must have been pre-existing in the Roman culture. I was wondering this morning how far you could reconceptualise Christianity as being mostly a development of Roman and Greek civilisation and as little as possible anything Jewish. This triggered a random historical walk � I bought a copy of Josephus� Jewish Wars � and then started trawling the net about him � and this lead onto Tacitus and Pliny, Nero and Caligula.

Anthony and Cleopatra are defeated by Augustus who decides that all the world should be taxed. Herod the Great sucks ups to A and starts major renovation of the Temple. Tiberius follows Augustus and he appoints Pilate and recalls him. T dies before Pilate gets back to Rome and is replaced by Caligula who live fast and dies after a few years to be replaced by Claudius. Nero murders him and (probably) executes Paul. Nero is dethroned and there is a period of turbulence at the centre of the Empire which comes to an end when Vespasian returns from putting down the Jewish Revolt during the war which destroys the Temple.

Foucault observes (as the HIV virus progresses through his system): �A mistrust of the pleasures, an emphasis on the consequences of their abuse of the body and the soul, a valorization of marriage and a disaffection with the spiritual meanings imputed to the love of boys � Christian authors borrow extensively from this body of ethical thought�..especially forceful and explicit under Augustus.� In this period the obligation to cultivate the relationship of oneself to oneself is intensified. The worldspirit embarks on a path stretching beyond the boundaries of the empire towards Kierkegaard (in Denmark) whose Sickness Unto Death starts:

�Despair is a sickness of the spirit, of the self, and so can have three forms � being unconscious in despair of having a self (inauthentic despair), not wanting in despair to be oneself, and wanting in despair to be oneself�.

Hmmm something rotten in the state of Denmark?

I finished off the article on Measure for Measure. I wrote quite a lot on this subject about a year ago � and then put it to one side. It feels to me now like a late play in its moral sophistication and formal density :

�We may chose between the hysterical disintegration of the living Claudio and the quiet dignity of the (dead) pirate�s head but in the event we get both.�

Mariana is at one point helpless passive and abject but as a character is transformed in the play into a being of sufficient emotional force to provide Tennyson with his first big hit as a poet and to reveal the taut sensuality in the Pre-Raphaelite view of the Medieval. Everett (the author of the LRB article) suggests that in drawing her Shakespeare pushed his comedy so deep that he hit a new well of symbolic energy � (she includes Barnadine in this eruption � Shakespeare is able, in this character, to reach forward to Beckett and Kafka.) Marianna's transformation arises from lack of assertiveness, Barnadine�s from the polar opposite � but as moral circumstances shift round them they become perversely potent figues.

The chilling backdrop to the play is the suppression of identity in sex and death. It doesn�t matter which head is used to deceive Angelo into believing in Claudio�s decapitation � we all look the same in death. It doesn�t matter whose body Angelo couples with in the moathouse because in that situation a similar physical equivalence prevails. As Everett concludes �The extreme abstraction that roots the play in the most moving of Biblical texts � the reconciliation of justice and mercy � is only one aspect of a work both paradoxical and sensational.�

It only gets more so if you read the Duke as a metaphorical expression of God�s activity and see MfM as a contribution to natural theology. Pascal could hardly complain that the romance of this tale might trick our better nature into the akrasia of seduction. Maybe it should be compulsory reading behind the veil of ignorance � certainly it won�t improve your ability to fill your basket well in Tescos either.

Alan Bennet reports the only conversation he can remember having with Dudley Moore about jazz: DM says that you should not think of the musical beat as an instant but have having duration. The art of playing good jazz is to hit the beat as close to the end as possible. I am not sure I agree but its certainly worth a shot at some point.