Oddly enough this blog has reverted, atleast temporarily, to its diary like function of yore with these two posts methinks. Not very much in character with the recent past, but arguably a valid alternative to a long hiatus of the sort its suffered from chronically.
Today i attended a remarkable PhD defense at college. This man has worked for eight years on the singing voice, analysis, transformation, and synthesis. He has built up a system that is commercially deployed by Yamaha, the results of his work are remarkably natural sounding synthesized vocals in Spanish and Japanese, and there some 50 patents, papers and book chapters that have come out of this body of work. The best minds in the research community were there among the jury, and each one was impressed with the scope, the completeness, the innovation and the lucid presentation of the thesis. The bar has been set at a height indeed for all to come.
My flatmate, an Irish actor-in-training and as genial a soul as you would wish to encounter, has been reading Ulysses the past week. She came in with this tome, one evening, as we were pirouetting around in the small kitchen to avoid stepping on each others' feet, and plonked it down along with her groceries for the week. Simultaneously, three voice exclaimed - 'That's going to be a hard read'. We all then volubly compared notes on our attempts at taming that text. None of us had gone very far . The book-leaser said nonchalantly that she had never heard of it being such a challenge, and had merely picked it up as a much acclaimed output from a fellow Irishman. A few days later, as we sat sipping tea on the sunny balcony, i asked her how the reading of Ulysses fared. Her response stymied me - 'Its a decent read you know, but i don't see what the fuss about its complexity is about. [i moan inaudibly about the constant barrage of almost unrelated imagery and thought trains] Alright, yes, i agree there are probably some images he raises or refers to that are rather clearer to Irish eyes, and yes, the rapid jumps in thought trains are probably quite Irish too. I find it comfortable, really." I hope to hear more about it from her, in a couple of weeks time. It thrills me, utterly so, to see someone handle that work of Joyce's with ease and pleasure.
I am ODing on adverbs aren't I. Quite in bad taste.
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