Radio 3 on Christmas Eve. Terrific programme about Bach’s music as the inspiration for dance performance. Having grown up thinking of Bach as essentially cerebral, something to revise to, logical, mathematical; being invited to hear it as music you can move to was a revelation. Odd how mental categories can get in the way of a perception that should be obvious. Some of the movements are written as forms of dance in the first place (passacaglia) but why did it take someone to point that out to be able to hear it as such? The weird discipline of classical concerts, where everyone sits still (or twitches a bit) until vast stretches of music have wound their way to an eventual end; when all the pent up emotion comes out in a ritualised prolonged applause (and some cheers) may be part of that. A concert of classical music explicitly put on as something to bop to might be an interesting, liberating experience for all concerned.

The following programme, about Jazz reinterpretations was a gem too. The double concerto played by the Hot Club of Paris (in the style of the Hot Club of Paris) reinforced a thought that I have had for some time that any piece of music has much more potential than its habitual form. Inside (for example) the Glory of Prussia march, usually played as intended as a piece of goosestepping Teutonic swank, there is a tremendous swing number trying to get out. Imagine it played by the Glenn Miller Orchestra.

This is your very first post. Click the Edit link to modify or delete it, or start a new post. If you like, use this post to tell readers why you started this blog and what you plan to do with it. The cols theme looks better with longer posts, so we’ll fill this one out with some filler text. ‘I’ll fetch the executioner myself,’ said the King eagerly, and he hurried off.

Alice thought she might as well go back, and see how the game was going on, as she heard the Queen’s voice in the distance, screaming with passion. She had already heard her sentence three of the players to be executed for having missed their turns, and she did not like the look of things at all, as the game was in such confusion that she never knew whether it was her turn or not. So she went in search of her hedgehog.

The hedgehog was engaged in a fight with another hedgehog, which seemed to Alice an excellent opportunity for croqueting one of them with the other: the only difficulty was, that her flamingo was gone across to the other side of the garden, where Alice could see it trying in a helpless sort of way to fly up into a tree.

By the time she had caught the flamingo and brought it back, the fight was over, and both the hedgehogs were out of sight: ‘but it doesn’t matter much,’ thought Alice, ‘as all the arches are gone from this side of the ground.’ So she tucked it away under her arm, that it might not escape again, and went back for a little more conversation with her friend.

When she got back to the Cheshire Cat, she was surprised to find quite a large crowd collected round it: there was a dispute going on between the executioner, the King, and the Queen, who were all talking at once, while all the rest were quite silent, and looked very uncomfortable.

The moment Alice appeared, she was appealed to by all three to settle the question, and they repeated their arguments to her, though, as they all spoke at once, she found it very hard indeed to make out exactly what they said.

The executioner’s argument was, that you couldn’t cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it off from: that he had never had to do such a thing before, and he wasn’t going to begin at HIS time of life.