Intelligence
6 April

I was looking forward to the weekend.

Watched AI on Friday night. I didn't like it. I didn't like the direction - too slick and clever and knowing with all those oblique Kubrick references thrown in - and I didn't like the narrative style - was it a fable, a fairytale, Wizard of Oz for the new millennium, a social satire, a vision of a dystopia, a science fiction exploration, a morality about the nature of being human, a parable of love conquering all, a ripost to 2001? for it was all of these at some time or other in its 120 minutes.

But most of all I found it uncomfortable for purely personal reasons. The robot boy was called David. In one of the film's more dramatic moments, his human keeper/mother released him into the woods. He pleaded with her, said he'd be a good boy, do anything she wanted, was sorry for anything wrong he'd done, would do anything he could to earn and keep her love.

It was an anguished 3 minute encapsulation of my relationship with my mother. I explained this to Ross and said that it was bound up with my need to feel emotionally safe. Ross then proceeded to do most of things I've asked him not to do because they allow me to unhinge from my feeling of safety. He followed this up by doing most of the things I've explained will compound these feelings for me.

We repeated the procedure on Saturday morning.

I felt lonely for most of the rest of the day and Ross and I seemed to find it in ourselves not to agree on anything.

Roland and I met up in the evening to go to a Phil concert - not one I'd planned to go to but he had a spare ticket. We heard the overture to Die Zauberflöte which was a pleasant follow on from Thursday's La Clemenza di Tito and then the Brahms Violin Concerto and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 1 Winter Daydreams.

The Brahms is not one of my favourite pieces but our soloist, Kyoko Takezawa, gave a beautifully voiced performance by turns lyrical and passionate but always graceful. She and the conductor, Vassily Sinaisky, kept the piece very classical in its sound, not thick and soupy as Brahms is so often made. And the Tchaikovsky was a revelation. I cannot ever remember hearing this piece before and it was well worth a good hard clap at the end. Sinaisky seems to favour very sprung rhythms, plenty of forward propulsion and maximum clarity in the inner parts of the orchestra so you can hear what's going on. It's a style of conducting which I really like so I shall look out for him again.

Roland and I also talked a lot about life and partners. We both did a bit of weary head-shaking at the notion that, after more than five years, one might expect one's partner to read one a bit better. However, I must say that Colin does seem much more willfully obstructive that Ross has ever been.