Tuesday, February 06, 2018

(288) Writer Not Fighter! Artist or Combatant!? Singer or S(e)argent!?

In Playing to Win, I wrote of Kasparov´s televised victory over Karpov in the final game from their 1985 Moscow match which made Gary World Champion.

Games like this show that what the board game may offer is a unique blend of science, sport and art. And if we have the pleasure of watching the moves come in live, rather than playing through them afterwards, we will also sense an unmistakable element of theatre.”


On the morning of February 6th 2018 I was listening to episodes of the Radio/TV show Just A Minute.
I then took a shower and found myself musing on some remarks made to me the previous year on my lack of committed professionalism. But I responded that I was not really a chess pro. I even said out loud whilst showering, 
"I´m a writer, not a chessplayer!" 
This I cribbed from a song of Gilbert O´Sullivan´s from the 1970s, although It had never been released as a single and I had not heard the track in many years: "I'm A Writer, Not A Fighter" It was also the title track of an album. I am pretty sure that I had never heard the entire album al the way through.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4KxTD9l2yg
A grandmaster had once observed to me of a game of mine, "You play this game like ARTIST!"
I stepped out of the shower and found that the Youtube recordings of Just A Minute had moved on to an episode which had been uploaded in November 2017 and which I had not heard before.
At 8:01 I heard Sue Perkins make a remark to host, Nicholas Parsons re a fellow performer, John Sargent - 
"He´s a dancer. He´s a dancer, not a fighter."
https://www.
And, having noted that, I then logged on to Twitter and sent her a tweet -

@sueperkins Ms P: I have taken the liberty of appending a comment to something YOU said at this Just A Minute episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZziiuyN6HEs  Buttock-clenching stuff?! Not exactly... but all quite true!

(Sadly, the clip has now been removed.)

I then noted I had myself acquired, almost as I made the above post, a new Twitter follower: Mr Morgan Ferriter. His Twitter profile proclaims him to be "Visual artist based in Donegal. All paintings are my own."
When scrawling down previous tweets of Mr Ferriter I saw that one, from November 2017, was a portrait study by an artist of whom I had never heard: John Singer Sargent. My wife told me he was quite well known.
 -
Head study by John Singer Sargent, with colour breakdown showing combinations used to achieve different areas of tone, light and shade.

And at 20:20 that same day I was to see that Zoe Margolis had just retweeted something from someone whom, unlike Zoe, I had never followed -
 Retweeted
I'm a writer I'm a thinker Not a fighter Not a blinker
P

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