Ojos - A novel in two parts.

A 20 year old Isolde wrote this. The immaturity shows, although the language is vast and unrelenting and it shows a promise of what is to come in her later works.

The plot of the first half of the story is basically the classic, terrible tale of woe of the desperate woman, Luna. Lost in a wilderness of bricks and mortar, the child-woman wanders through the smog searching desperately for anything she can call kindness. She encounters a pair of eyes through the fug in a bar which are focussed on her. Luminous eyes which she is bewitched by and can't stop gawping at. Rather foolishly, she follows the eyes to their owner and then a torturous affair is commenced in which she loses much of self and self-belief and identity. Of course, the villain is a cliche; all arrogance and affairs and harsh punishments. A child is born in this madness. Unfortunately he has inherited his father's eyes. Although they eventually escape from the terror into the countryside, Luna feels forever trapped by the sorcery of her child's eyes and cannot bond with him and eventually - rather predicatably - kills herself.

The second half of the story is a somewhat more painful. The child - Sebastian - cannot ever look at his own eyes in his reflection and spends his time trying to escape himself. The foster carers into whose gentle and loving care he is placed, despair as they see a beautiful and tender child loathe himself. Through careful love and compassion, they gently manage to mould an almost happy child. At the age of eleven, he begins to blossom and enjoy pre-pubescent female attention. But this is all thrown into total disarray when his father shows up. The child - under the tutelage of his father - grows into a man with psychopathic tendencies and self-loathing and eventually develops a taste for murder.

Although the themes in this novel are quite well-developed, the occassional over-flowery and romantic language are quite anachronistic; it seems best placed somewhere between Jane Eyre and the works of Lynda La Plante. Although there is a general lack of understanding of the human psyche, the author attempts to make sense of it through her own limited understanding of the world. In terms of Isolde's later works, the most important feature is the reliance on stream of consciousness as the main narrative element.

5/10

"Bluebells" for string ensemble.

Isolde writes: "Someone once told me that when you walk through a bluebell-carpeted wood, you 'hear them tinkle' as your brain struggles to compute the information of the over-whelming colour and fragrance and believes it it hearing sound even when there is complete silence.
I have no idea if this is true or if he were ineptly trying to describe synaesthesia, but I adored the concept."

"Bluebells" is a very quiet piece. Although the work is fully scored and the performers are required to finger many complex passages, it comes with the dynamic instruction "pppppppppp or attempt to keep your bow half a millimetre away from the strings at all times". However, there is an inevitable leakage of sound: a few notes slip out and the harmonics created by simply fingering resound as you strain to listen. This is entirely neccessary, else it would be simply "pretending to play". But the ensemble play diligently, following the conductor.

All of this changes in the last fragment, as if tunnelling into the bluebell-insane brain we begin to hear the music being played. It crescendos to a very audible and suddenly very loud ppp. The music is seemingly chaotic and naturalistic, yet effortlessly evokes the colour blue.

Is this just another pretensious re-working of silence? Does it offer anything new to a tired and already over-worked theme? You find yourself longing to hear the notes that are being performed and are almost bent double, leaning in to listen. When the music actually arrives it is quite surprising and cacophonic, strident, even, after straining to hear the few strands that have escaped.

Luckily, it was a very small and contained audience, else the spell may have been broken. The performers and audience alike looked exhausted after the performance.  I rather feel that this was Isolde grinding her old axe again: including the suffering of music and a life of music in performance. But it was intriguing, nonetheless. And I slept deep that night and dreamt of spring.

7/10