18 August 2004

From the friends, Th'inkwell:

Wednesday 18 August 18 2004

FrightFest fare 

It seems that M and Max aren’t too interested in the offerings of FrightFest 2004. All I got was a pair of wrinkled noses when I uttered the words ‘Horror’, ‘Psychological Thriller’ and ‘Suspense’. 

Instead, I was told: 

Max: “Why don’t you ask THEM” 

Me: (puzzled) “Who?” 

Max: “You know,” (gesturing to the computer with casual, practiced, mock distaste) “your fans.” 

-The blog has a history of being somewhat of a persona non gratis in the household because it makes me sit at a screen for hours on end holding up my end of a conversation with half-muttered and occasionally inappropriate ‘uh huh’s. - 

Me: “Ummm, that’s a little weird. Interesting, though.” 

Max: “You could run a competition ... Win A Date With ...” 

Me: (interjecting) “ ... ahhhhh yeeeees, I see your point but I don’t really think that people are going to enter a competition to sit next to me at a cinema.” 

M: (seemingly from nowhere) “You never know.” 

Sweet. I suppose that’s why he’s my husband – he actually thinks going to the movies with me is like a prize. Unless, of course, it’s a horror flick, in which case wrestling with some Linux flavour named after a hat is a damn sight more interesting. I suspect, therefore, that I'll be going alone.

4 August 2005

From the friends, Th'inkwell:


Wednesday 4 August 2004


A good day gets better 


It's difficult to have one overriding perception of London. There are beautiful areas, ugly areas, prosperous and frightening areas, places where even the sky seems to be made of ugly 60's concrete...and places like this: 

This area is literally a 10 minute meander or a 5 minute walk from my front door. I live 20 minutes from the heart of London. The contrast couldn't be greater and I have to admit I come here often to recharge. 

It's easy to forget that you're in the middle of a city. Easy to forget you're in the middle of this century in fact in such a timeless setting. I find my mind freely wandering to all kinds of places and my neck muscles unknotting as I step over tree roots and scare ducks into waddling away from me in that silly way they do. Geese fly overhead in strict V formations and swans glide across the lake with seeming effortlessness, sharing it rather disdainfully with wobbling boats and dipping oars. The people that come to the lake are calm and quiet - they even smile at you when you walk past. Children seem to be mesmerised by this place and don't shriek overly loudly. The lake is one of the reasons I really do love where I live. 

Today was so beautiful that I made M, Max and our visiting Aussie Lee promise to be home at a reasonable time so that dinner could be a picnic on the lake. 

We ate wonderful food, exchanged gossip over wine and wandered around the lake until the sky turned violet and a refreshing breeze came over the fields to tell us it was time to go home. 


I told you I was having a good day. 

30 July 2004

From the friends, Th'inkwell:


Saturday July 31 2004


Twas my fete


I was at the Victoria & Albert Museum’s ‘Village Fete’ today, billed as: 


“The best of British and international up-and-coming creative talent design stalls take over the V&A's Garden, surrounded by the activities of a traditional British Fete.” 


It was supposed to be: “A quintessentially English event” with a “modern twist”. 


What it actually entailed was a crowd of painfully fashionable young things strolling around the V&A courtyard to dubious music. On the edges of the courtyard were the stalls manned by the artistes. Most of the stuff was harmless, but showed a shocking lack of imagination from people who should be brimming with ideas. 


Nevertheless, I was glad to be out on a balmy night and photographed some of the most interesting goings on: 

“Are you always the one who makes the tea? Are you surrounded by colleagues, friends and family who shirk their tea-making responsibilities? Teabuddy is the answer to your prayers.” 


You’ve skinned them alive and hung their hides from the lintels to warn others in the office of my severe dislike for making 20 cups of tea instead of just one? Awww, thanks guys, you shouldn’t have. 


“Teabuddy is a tool for keeping-up with the making of tea in the office, at home, or, just about anywhere. No more fighting over who made the last round, or exactly how you like to take your tea - Teabuddy simply takes the hassle out of tea-making.” 


Ahh, they didn’t. 


Essentially, it’s a web site with a list of tea preferences listed next to coworker’s names. Every time you twitch in your seat so that you can be construed as looking in the direction of the tea room (and therefore be burdened with The Making Of The Tea), you can just tick the names that want tea, print off a handy tray sized list (arrow) and take it with you to the tea room, safe in the knowledge that your subservience to the common horde will be up to their exacting standards.* 


Please note that the tea-totallers were, in fact, imbibing Foster’s beer (circled). 


Asked how they will be making money off the site (whilst taking my free tea), I was told that they won’t – that they do this out of the goodness of their hearts. 


You know, sometimes I wish I had a trust fund to fritter away too, it might be fun. 


*(Why don’t I like making tea for the whole office? Simply because what was going to be a 45 second task turns into a production of theatrical scale. Others presume I’m going to make them a beverage simply because I’m making my own. Absurd. Also, as a recovering HR person, I can advise that it’s actually a better idea for everyone to get up from their chair to get their own tea as they will inadvertently be stretching, relaxing, helping their circulation and posture as well as allowing their eyes to focus on longer distance things than just their monitor and desk for a few minutes. ) 

This man was recruiting an elite militia for a new country called Bananistan. Qualifications required were an asymmetrical haircut, sneakers that had never been used for any form of exercise and hideous vintage clothing that cost more than a monthly mortgage payment. Most of the people in the crowd qualified. 

When creative people go bad. 


Pay a pound, get a baseball bat, lab coat, gloves and goggles. Lucky dip as to what you get to smash. Hope for the melon. Get a piece of electronic equipment instead. Be glad that you didn’t take your afternoon dose of Ritalin. Umm, smash stuff. You have 60 seconds. 


This booth attracted one of the largest, loudest crowds. I have to say I was a little disturbed by the sight of the previous boy baseball-batting the bejeezus out of a life-size female dummy’s head. 

One of the more creative ways to win things was dreamt up by guys who used old transport pallets to make laptop stands. 


A toy rat was placed into the top of a large PVC tube and the contestant given the rat paddle. They had to ‘Smack the Rat’ against the wall as it came out the bottom. This woman missed the critter and it’s on the floor in a sorry heap (arrow). 


What fete would be complete without the stick-your-head-in-this-thing-and-look-silly stand? 


I diligently stuck my head in and looked very, very silly.

26 July 2004

From the friends, Th'inkwell:

Monday 26 July 2004

Bugged

Max recently commented that I sound rather angry on my blog, as if I don’t like anything – ever. Then she remonstrated that I always find something negative about cultural things she takes me to. She’s quite right on that account, the last two things she had taken me to were a shockingly bad modern music concert and a very poor talk by a woman who gallivanted her way around Antarctica, finding it to be (surprisingly) full of male scientists.

This comment, however, was made after taking me to the National Portrait Gallery’s showing of the entrants and winners of the BP Portrait Award and listening to my running commentary.

Essentially the half hour diatribe can be summarised thus: 5% were excellent, 15% were good, 20% were passable, 60% should have been recycled for the valuable canvas underneath. Somehow, most of the winners were chosen from the last group.

Max knows I’m generally a happy, bouncy person. Max listens to me warbling songs at inopportune moments. Max just wonders why I choose to be so cuttingly negative so often.

The answer is passion. I just don’t have lukewarm feelings towards anything I give a damn about. I either love it or I hate it. I may love it despite some small flaws, I may hate it yet see some redeeming qualities – but you won’t find me shrugging my shoulders and saying “Yes, well, I suppose it’s nice.”

I once heard a definition for ‘nice’ that I very much liked. Nice stands for:

Nothing

In me

Cares

Enough

…which sums up the concept perfectly.

It’s easy to know when I don’t care about something or someone. I’ll be very quiet, I won’t venture an opinion, I’ll smile weakly, I’ll say that it’s ‘nice’.

If I get fired up, whether it be foaming at the mouth from anger or beaming from adoration – it just means that I care, I really do. Perhaps the reason that there are so many negative entries on my blog is that I give a damn about too many things that are out of my influence to change.

So here’s something positive – something I wrote a while ago and shelved, thinking that it wasn’t really good enough to do homage to something I truly loved. Perhaps it’ll balance things up a tad.

_____

Firefly

(I guess it’s all been written before. I’m sure I’m not the first blogger to be struck with ‘I’ve just watched the entire series of Firefly, there aren’t any more left and I simply must immortalise the grief with a post’-itis.

It’s probably been written more prosaically, it’s probably been written by someone with a unique angle, it’s probably been as done to death as anything popular with the smarter people on the web. However, in light of the fact that I can be as commandeering as Mal and as scary as Zoe, I’ll just go ahead, do it anyway and stare down anyone who so much as twitches at the plan.)

A firefly is a creature given to metaphor. Short lived, dazzlingly and surprisingly bright – it conveniently mirrors larger occurrences in history and allows us to essentialise and encapsulate them in one convenient image. Part of the fun of being human, I suppose.

I don’t think Joss Whedon gave his show the moniker with any foresight that it would so closely mirror the actual lifespan of nature’s firefly. I’d like to think, rather, that he knew - given the right creative freedom - he could make the show sparkle and delight like the little bug. Happily, he was right, I was utterly delighted.

It wasn’t until I saw the extras on my DVD set that I came to a more complete understanding of why this series was so good. The sections went through the concept, set design, camera/FX/CG work and musical score - I saw how each element was controlled by someone with a deep understanding for their craft, a genuine love for the show and run in a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants experimentation mode. Many things weren’t done the way that they’re usually done. I heard the phrase ‘you simply don’t do that’ many times. I LOVE to hear that kind of thing – it’s usually the way fantastic new processes happen.

To me, Firefly is an example of what happens when a talented group of people come together and give their best to a project which is itself led by someone talented giving their best.

In the same way as like attracts like on a personal level (you can tell a man by the company he keeps as the old saying goes), like hires and retains like on a professional level (you can tell a company by the people it keeps). I think it explains why companies carefully and obsessively controlled by the original entrepreneur or by a strong CEO have such a different feel to those which are controlled by the ‘everyone and no-one’ of committees committed to the ‘everyone and no-one’ concept of stakeholders.

I don’t buy into the new ideas about the way things should be run. Things that work are always, ultimately, controlled by an individual.

One person holds a vision, controls it’s execution at the macro level – he hires people he can see ‘get it’ and they control it’s execution at the micro level. Joss Whedon wrote the theme song, for chrissakes. There’s no mistaking who was at the wheel here.

I daresay that he fought every decision the besuited bumpkins at Fox handed down with the superior mein of those who forage daily at the trough of popular opinion.

Someone who didn’t understand the concept of Firefly and who wasn’t completely and irrevocably committed wouldn’t have fought for its original inception tooth and nail. We wouldn’t have had the short, fresh, violent and utterly brilliant season of Firefly we do today – we would have had ‘Friends’ on a spaceship arguing over who would receive which quarters and wondering whether the Alliance General gave Rachael the eye. It would have lasted 10 years. It would have canned laughter every time Ross fell off his horse or fumbled with his gun. The horror is actually palpable, isn’t it?

Whedon had his concept, though. He fought for it and today we have a piece of art that is incredible in it’s design and execution.

So, besides the fact that someone stubborn got his way, why do I love it so much? Let’s start with the fact that I’m not a passive watcher/listener/reader of entertainment. Silly though it may seem, I talk back. Often, I will suggest what I see as obvious actions for characters to take in their situation. As the episode goes on and the characters (inexplicably) ignore me, I become more and more agitated. Occasionally, I yell. Often, I swear.

Half an hour into the first Firefly, I remained in the same position on the couch. I had been completely silent. An hour in and not a muscle twitch. Two hours gone and all I could do was turn to M, slack-jawed, before quickly scurrying to the mouse and clicking on the next episode.

***Warning…spoiler…plot element discussed below.***

In the second episode, when Mal is confronted by a giant of a man who vows to spend his life hunting Mal down to kill him, I find myself thinking – “Aha! This is the clincher…this is the Bad Guy who will pop up every once in a while, try to kill Mal and be thwarted. All this because Mal is going to have one of those weak moments of hippy conscience at the very time when he could stop the Bad Guy. Gotcha – same old lazy scriptwriting.”

It may not seem it, but damn do I love being proven wrong, especially when I think something’s not good.

And so it was that I was proven wrong, so very, very wrong.

Just when I was beginning to grumble something to the effect of “Just kill him, for chrissakes, why the hell would you let…” Mal simply shrugged and kicked the bastard into a turbine engine. It was the loveliest little bit of violence I think I have ever seen. I made a noise, something like “Oip!” and felt my eyebrows raise far beyond safety limits.

***End of plot spoiler, you can read below safe in the knowledge that you will be surprised by EVERYTHING in Firefly. I promise.***

What Firefly gets so right – what sets it apart from every other show I’ve seen - is the fact that the morality is so damn close to what I agree with. The characters don’t faff about – they know which action gives them the most benefit personally and they take it without qualms. There is no apology for what would be considered crude opportunism in other shows.

You also won’t find your stock standard characters, your Tortured Soul 56b and Bimbette 29a on the show. You’ll find very complex characters making very difficult decisions and *gasp* actually THINKING those decisions through.

You’ll also be entertained. Joss spins his usual verbal mastery and gives the characters strong, punchy, funny lines.

So here’s an endorsement – nay, a directive.

If you like what you read on my blog, if you’ve clicked through on a few of the links and enjoyed them, go and buy Firefly on DVD. There’s no prerequisite to have enjoyed Sci-Fi previously, this isn’t traditional Sci-Fi.

When there’s so much entertainment around and so much of it is lukewarm, finding something that makes you think, laugh, gasp, worry, chew the couch cushions and admire the actors is a prize. Go discover it for yourself.

24 July 2004

From the friends, Th'inkwell:

Tuesday 3 August 2004

Vettriano

Last week, I went to the Jack Vettriano exhibition at the Portland Gallery in London. I scrawled notes of such incomprehensibility that it’s taken me a week of painful reconstruction to figure out what on earth I was trying to say.

Now, I’m no art critic and my education in art is simply to have been dragged to galleries as a child – more and more willingly as time progressed – to listen to my mother’s (art specialist by profession) commentary on pieces. Eventually, I came to see the great satisfaction in seeing good art without sulking and kicking car tires first.

Nowadays, going to a gallery is a treat at home and a must every time I travel to a new city. I think I’m one of the only people my age that rates the Rijksmuseum as the highlight of their stay in Amsterdam.

Anyhow, on to my post and what I was thinking when I saw the exhibition.

Jack Vettriano isn’t popular with the art establishment, particularly the female subset who make vapid noises about the way women are portrayed sexually in his art. What better recommendation, then, could one have to go and see an exhibition?

There are two Vettrianos, though. The nice, light, romantic ‘Dance me to the end of Love’ Vettriano and the darkly sexual Vettriano. It was the latter on display at the Portland Galleries this time including some that are almost impossible to see outside of his live exhibitions.

Dance Me To The End Of Love

I think the impact was interesting for me because I (as a female) got to look through the eyes and step into the desires of an unashamedly sexual man. Vettriano is a singularly talented narrative painter; it’s very easy to be transported to his scenarios and even easier to become involved in them.

His talent, I think, is to bring movement to an inherently still medium. The same canvas and paint that could show the calm, frozen time of a still-life instead shows a great deal of movement – movement about to happen, movement suppressed, freedom of movement captured lightheartedly and perfectly. It’s almost painful for me to watch these characters, half expecting them to continue their paused movement at any moment to do what it’s so evident they’re about to do.

You won’t get the same feeling from these thumbnails, unfortunately. Don’t try for it in the reprints either. As with most oil paintings, the originals are so good because of the way that light interacts with the suspended particles in the paint – you have a richness and a glow that gives depth. That’s why serious collectors will buy an original – they really are getting something that no-one else can have, no matter how good their copy.

As I mentioned, this exhibition was dominated by the ‘darker’ Vettriano. I’m quite glad for it, as it seemed that his breezy beach paintings (well composed though they are) were just him warming up. Getting used to the human form, getting used to space and colour, getting used to movement.

This is not to say that he now uses the crisp, photographic form of the Renaissance painter. He seems to borrow a little of his style from the early impressionists, many brush strokes are obvious and you are under no illusion that this is oil on canvas. I think it aids in conveying the movement inherent in his compositions.

The evident brushstrokes also serve to give the hint of structure that you must fill in for yourself. The form is there, the detail is occasionally ambiguous, the intent and emotion behind the pose is all important.

So what is the intent? The scenes in this exhibition were split between portraits of his favorite models engaged in a solitary activity such as walking or gazing out a window and those of sexual tension and sexual encounters.

Now - if you think that sex should always be a gentle confluence of souls with lots of talking about feelings before and after (sometimes during) then I’m afraid you’re not going to like these Vettrianos. These poses are all about clandestine, forbidden, passionate sensuality. He openly admits that these couplings are doomed from the start and that he portrays people who just can’t help themselves when it comes to temptation.

The Embrace of the Spider

What you see, though, is not the ugly portrayal of sex which is evident in so many contemporary artists. These are not confrontational scenes of rape, the nudity is not incidental. At the same time, each painting is blatantly honest about what it is portraying.

Passion Overflow

Because there’s no attempt to hide the sexuality, there is no need for the audience to draw it out from insinuations in the images. It’s all there and it’s definitely unapologetic for its chosen theme – you have the time to focus on the sensuality of the pieces instead. To put it another way – you get over the fact that you’re seeing a garter belt very quickly and become far more interested in the positioning of the bodies and the expressions on faces than seeing a peek of something that is traditionally forbidden.

The focus seems to be on WHAT is happening far more than HOW it is happening. It’s why the subjects are in that situation in the first place and the relationship between them that is emphasized.

Along Came A Spider

Interestingly enough, unlike the artist that idealizes the virginal, the untouched, the woman before she is sullied with the taint of sex, Vettriano seems to show his women with the familiarity of an established lover. These women have ‘fallen’ into ‘sin’ already – yet don’t seem to be any less desirable for that fact. Rather than wanting to find and pluck something new, he seems to hunger for more of the same and venerate those women he knows can give it to him. This is where, I think, the evident appreciation for his models comes through in the painting and why the art is so sexually charged. It’s not a work of contempt – it’s a work of understanding and appreciation.

There is no contempt for the human form either. Although not sculpting his male or female forms to the fashion magazine ideal of today – there is no mistaking that both are rather attractive and both are DISTINCTLY posed and dressed for their gender. As he puts it:

"I’ve always loved women who dress as women, you know, pure femininity." ... "When you know a woman’s wearing stockings there’s no sort of question about it, and I love that world where there’s a strict division between men and women. If you were painting contemporary life now, man and woman, from the back, you can’t tell the difference.”

If the women are ultra feminine, then the men are ultra masculine. Far removed from the pretty-boy Beckhams, DiCaprios and Pitts, these creatures radiate masculinity, poise and strength.

The power play between the sexes is clearly shown. We don’t have two sexually androgynous humans coming together for a night of sensitive-to-each-other’s-emotional-needs lovemaking interspersed with tea, basket weaving and psychotherapy. There is a man who evidently dominates the woman physically – there is no shying away from who will be doing what to whom.

Pincer Movement

Equally powerful (although in a completely different way) is the woman, who is sure of her power over the man and is wielding it unflinchingly.

In fact, in the introduction to “Lovers and Other Strangers”, Anthony Quinn says of the brunette used in most of Vettriano’s paintings:

“..she looked like a woman to whom a pledge of eternal love might provoke her to stab you with a stiletto.”

Vettriano himself says:

“I portray women wielding sexual power.”

Clearly, these are not damsels in distress.

What I think I see in equal measure is the man surrendering himself to what he perceives as his basest desires whilst at the same time physically dominating the female in the piece. It’s rather a clichéd juxtaposition and one that relies on considering the longing for sex to be something other than honorable.

Although I don’t really agree with this dim view on humans as flawed due to their desire to copulate, I must applaud his mastery at perfectly conveying this idea.

Other paintings, those with a person alone, show a strong individual lost in a reverie – completely unaware of the viewer. Even when the subject is a very strong woman in serious and contemplative repose, there is a hint of femininity and sexuality through exposure of a piece of the traditional accoutrements of the feminine seductive arsenal – a hint of stocking, a little piece of bra showing, a very high stiletto heel, even just a beautifully tailored dress. There is no dichotomy between femininity and purposefulness - they coexist naturally and beautifully.

Baby Bye Bye

Edinburgh Afternoon

The men he portrays alone are somewhat of a mystery to me. I get a sense of stoic, practiced isolation from them and am not sure if I’m misreading his intentions. Many are straight self-portraits, which I tend to find difficult to unravel at the best of times.

What I do know is that Vettriano is almost uncannily popular. In a world where it seems the public consistently opts for the worst creative compositions available, the fact that I had to crane around people to see what I considered very good art was somewhat gratifying.

Of course, he comes under fire for this very popularity and comments:

"Well you know, you run the risk of the wrath of the establishment by being popular, but at the same time why shouldn’t people have an image for £10 when they don’t have a lot of money to spend? And anyway, I own the copyright of my work until 75 years after my death and then it’s a free for all and you think - well why shouldn’t I benefit from it now?

"What would Van Gogh have done, what would Monet have done if they had had the opportunity? Instead of that what you get is, the marketplace is flooded with their stuff and they’re not earning a penny from it."

Happily, he’s earning far more than pennies. Annoying the establishment may be a faux pas – but what a profitable one.

Reach Out and Touch

Vettriano quote source - interview

22 July 2004

From the friends, Th'inkwell:


Saturday 24 July 2004

Beggars and Choosers

I have just this evening been told by Perry de Havilland that it is imperative to post daily. Several times if at all possible. I realised I’ve been neglecting the blog – not through want of love for it, but because of my inherent perfectionism and tending to take days to actually write something I’m finally happy with. Leaving it untouched for days simply isn’t on – I’ll have an insurrection on my hands and you’ll all leave me alone to babble to myself in a corner. Clearly, something must be done.

So if you’ll bear with entries that aren’t as polished as usual, I can manage the daily(ish) rant. Here’s today’s -

Yesterday, Max and I were on our way to the National Portrait Gallery for an evening lecture from Sara Wheeler, author of Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica as part of the Three Centuries of Women Travellers exhibit. The lecture itself had some interesting points, although I was disappointed by the author’s constant need to obtain cheap laughs from the audience by peppering her halting tale with obligatory anti-man jokes. There are only so many times you can chuckle at the use of the word ‘testosterone’.

Anyhow, in one of the interminable underground walkways connecting tube stations, we came across a man who was huddled in the corner with a sign: ‘Hungry, please help.’ I noticed Max slow down, but was swept along myself by the rush-hour crowd. When she caught up with me, I saw a wry smile on her face.

Apparently, she had read the sign and stopped to offer him her packed dinner. Not a shabby dinner either – a flat bread stuffed with freshly grilled salmon, avocado and salad. The man, however, had refused as he was a vegetarian.

Now, correct me if I’m completely wrong here – but vegetarianism is a moral choice for most people, not a physical requirement for survival. That moral choice usually hinges on some belief that animals are equal to humans and that it’s cruel to eat them. I have severe – SEVERE – problems with those who think that humans and animals are the same. If someone wants to believe that they are no better than a slug, so be it. Don’t apply it to me though.

Nevertheless, this man was starving, wasn’t he? So by not taking the food he was essentially saying that he values a salmon’s (or cow’s, or pig’s … or whatever’s) life above his own. He would rather hold out for someone to give him cash so that he can head to Pret a Manger for a vegetarian baguette and a double espresso.

I myself try to avoid wheat and milk because they’re not particularly good for me – but if I were starving, I’d take a hamburger and milkshake to sustain myself. I can only understand this man’s attitude if eating animal flesh is somehow severely physically detrimental to him. If he’s just doing it to save the whales then perhaps Darwinism can claim a deserving victim.

What on earth is it that makes people think they can demand the constituents of alms granted to them?

The one thing I can say for him is that at least he was just begging, rather than mugging us as is the government’s regular wont to do. Where it was his (stupid) prerogative to refuse the very thing he actually needed and demand something else to satisfy his whim, it is not a prerogative that is open to those who are on government assistance.

This is why I can’t stand to read of people not satisfied with the standard of government housing , government provided childcare or whining about social services being provided in a way that’s not sensitive to their particular bent . To my thinking, they’re damned lucky that they obtain anything at all.

Don’t like the housing? Start paying market rates of rent like the rest of us and you can choose from a variety that will stagger you.

Don’t like the childcare? Either don’t breed or pay for your own goddamned sprog.

Don’t like the way social services are delivered to you? Don’t take any.

Better yet, throw social services out the window and ask me directly for what you need. I’ll see what I can spare. 

18 June 2004

From the friends, Th'inkwell:

Monday 21 June 2004

Random Beauty

I sought out beauty today*, travelling to the ‘Sequenza and the Artea Quartet’ concert at the Royal Academy of Arts. Max was going and it sounded like something that we would enjoy – after all, how can you go wrong with classical music?

....welllllll, it can be modern classical music for one.

4 young things in suitably dark attire took the stage and – in a flutter of seriousness befitting gouty men 3 times their age – began the first piece, ‘String Quartet’ by Philip Venables.


You know you’re in trouble when the tuning was more melodic than the performance.

Remember The Music playing in That Shower Scene from That Hitchcock Movie? 


Remember the music from ‘Jaws’? I did when I heard this, because it essentially sounded like a rap remix of the two. (No, I’m not exaggerating – I leave exaggeration to the times when I’m talking about the sharks I caught off Perth’s coast one weekend…they’ve steadily grown from 2 foot to larger than a Cadillac.)


The sounds were intentionally random, but they teased you. You thought that perhaps you could catch some pattern or latch onto a sound and follow it through – then it was completely cut off by a violin screech so high and so loud that you could actually see the rippling shudder of discomfort from the audience.


Tortured chords – sometimes beautiful – always murdered by the surrounding cacophony emerged to give the audience brief hope, some melody, some beauty to latch on to. These respites from the overall horror were fleeting – as was my attention.


As if on queue, all three of us hunted pens and began scribbling frantic notes to each-other. I knew I was in for a rough ride until the Stravinsky later in the concert, so settled in to write this blog post (no need to make it a complete waste of time).


Venables himself led the orchestra onto the stage for the second piece. He took the opportunity to explain what it was that we had just heard. (New from the RAA! Music so darned incomprehensible that it needs freakin’ subtitles!). 


The rabble that had followed him onto the stage included :


- A girl intent on showing us that she could have been a plumber’s assistant through the subtle and post-modern use of too-low-slung-hipsters.


- Another girl who was too damn cool for this whole classical music gambit and would prove it to us by having a crop-top under her too small suit jacket, a pudgy little belly hanging out, piercings galore and hair gelled at every angle bar ‘down’.


- The flautist in an exquisite black gown…and sequinned red shoes.


- The singer, a barely groomed urchin of a girl whose fuchsia, pink and orange dress could have done with some serious ironing.


Am I being a purist? Perhaps a little. There are certain standards that an orchestra should maintain – some decency of appearance. Respect goes both ways.


He spoke about ‘chopping’ bits and pieces together, he spoke about inspiration, he spoke about ‘layers’. He smiled an awful lot – the kind of smile you see on a kid explaining why the hell his hand is stuck in the cookie jar in the first place. I wasn’t quite sure what the sneering little gimp wanted from me – adoration or for me to laugh along at his little joke on the world.


He finished by stating that the Stravinsky ‘Pastorale’ would be ‘…just…well…nice!’ compared to his music. He gave the imploring look of one fishing for a compliment. What the hell were we supposed to do? Stand up and shout:

“No, no, Mr Venables – I want to hear more of your music, I do. Just let me readjust my skin – it seems to be crawling its way to the exit.”

He also took the opportunity of explaining the next piece to be played, Luciano Berio’s ‘O King’. Mentioned something about the ‘tranquil surface’ of the piece being ‘almost unnoticeably disturbed’ by the piano.


The ‘subtle’ piano sounded like an overweight cat with distemper suspended from the ceiling by a bungee cord was landing on the keyboard at unfortunate moments.


What talent the flautist had was drowned out by the random screechings of the rest of the orchestra.


As for the role of the singer, well, that’s an interesting one indeed. It seems that ‘O King’s lyrics are in fact simply the words “O Martin Luther King” sung very slowly. Once. Vvvvvveeeeeeeerrrryyyyyy ssssslllllllloooooowwwwwwwwllllyyyyyyyyy.


Oh yeah – kwality with a capital ‘k’ there.


The brief break as the stage was reset for the next piece (Venables’ ‘I Fed My Wardrobe to the Night Wind’) was a welcome respite. The silence was blissfully harmonious.


Phil certainly fed his wardrobe to the night wind. The wind let out an almighty belch. Phil took it down verbatim.


There was some random melody to the piece, but by this time I wasn’t sure if I would latch onto ANYTHING after being battered by the beastliness of it all. The piece was relegated the place it deserved in my attention – as background music to my frantic search for a new pen as the venom had run out of the first.


When a piece of good classical music starts, I feel my entire body relax. I exhale as I settle into the luxurious cushion of sound that envelops me.


When this tripe started, I realised that I had been holding my breath in anticipation – and all I wanted to do was take another sharp breath in as a buffer to the sound. My neck was tense, my shoulders were tense, my calves were knotted as if my entire body was poised to sprint the hell out of the hall.


It ended mercifully quickly; all we were left with was one….more….piece…..of …..trash until I could hear something composed by a man of any measurable talent. (Although Venables DOES have talent – it’s quite difficult to make completely random sounds, as we found on the way to the tube when we tried to emulate what we had just heard.)


The last test of my patience was Luciano Berio’s ‘Opus Number Zoo’. Four musicians had been planted in the audience. They donned feathered masquerade half-masks and jumped up on their seats, barefoot. They began to make animal noises. I realised I was grinding my teeth.


There followed a drawn out pantomime with wildlife themes, a little bit of instrument playing, a whole lot of vitriol-filled-poetry spitting and – somehow – an anti-war message weaved in with all the subtlety of a drag queen at the Mardi Gras.


I was particularly offended at the players stalking the audience, using their instruments to emulate rifles. Blatantly giving menacing looks and shoving the instruments in the audience’s face. As I said, subtle.


So I had paid my price, Stravinsky was next.


What a difference!


Although not my favourite composer, it was a surprising pleasure to listen to the singer. (A soprano! Who would have thought, given her shocking ill-use in the last set?)


Suddenly the full, rich, disciplined voice was released. She stood differently, her shoulders back. She looked (and sounded) like a magnificently talented individual instead of the seeming street urchin reedily gasping out nonsense earlier.


She made an absolute dog’s breakfast of the Russian pronunciation in the lyrics but it didn’t detract from the piece terribly. I suspect that no-one else in the audience was really the wiser. In fact it was fascinating to see how she broke up the words. The music was Japanese-influenced and she broke where the music did. The overall effect was a strange ‘Japanisation’ of the Russian words into short vowel-ish sounds. Sometimes, though, she hit it – and when she did it was worth all the rest. Perfect.


So I didn’t find beauty in any quantity at the concert, certainly not enough to give satisfaction.
We headed home (via M’s office as he was on call and the Paris server had decided to save him from the last bit of the concert). We all had dinner at the office’s cafeteria, watched a bit of TV, fraternised with the night shift, had a couple of laughs. Heading home, we agreed that the latter bit of the evening took most of the sting out of the disappointment of the former. I had pretty much stowed the whole thing away as a C- on the report card of the evenings of my life.


Deciding to run down the escalators to get some nervous energy out, I reached the bottom and suddenly, jarringly, stopped – as had many others.


On the concourse separating the two platforms was a man with a violin playing the third movement of ‘Summer’ from Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’.


He played so beautifully, so precisely. The glorious sounds echoing off walls – staving off the insipid announcements about not leaving baggage unattended and the thundering roar of arriving trains. The passion for this music was evident in the way his whole body moved, in the tension of his hands and fingers, echoed on the involuntary expression on his face. This was what those young players were mimicking so badly. Passion for music isn’t something one puts on like a morning suit – it is something that one lets out. It’s a radiance, not a scowl.


Leaning against the coolly tiled wall of the underground, I listened to the kind of music I had been begging for all afternoon just handed to me randomly in the most unexpected place. M and Max caught up with me and soundlessly stood next to me, listening as well. We stood though a couple of pieces, exchanged expressions of surprise at his talent, dropped some money into his case and caught our train.


I stood in the crowded, airless carriage and closed my eyes as the train jolted on its way. I replayed the music for myself, extending it from my memory of the piece, enjoying it again and again. I think I grinned a bit much, people were looking at me.


I walked home with a smile on my face.



* Written on Friday, typed out today in between packing everything to move house. 

8 June 2004

From the friends, Th'inkwell:

Tuesday 8 June 2004

Flat-Max

Having an actual flatmate around serves many purposes – some more immediately apparent than others. We thought we were just giving Max a place to live in London and sharing the hideous burden of the rent – but there’s quite a bit more to it than that:

I’ve found that the little habits I thought were perfectly normal are – in fact – exceptionally freakish.

__________

1.

Singing.

Max came home the other day and gave me a small, fierce look, saying:

“Oh god, I’ve started singing.”

Which I thought wasn’t really such a bad thing, I certainly didn’t see what all the fuss was about and told her so.

“But you don’t understand, I’ve picked up your habit of singing about everything during the day – taking a song and playing around with the lyrics.” Her tone picked up a bit on the hysteric-o-meter. “And I’m doing it AT WORK!”

Ahh.

Trying to avoid the glare, I recommenced the carrot-chopping but it’s difficult to do when someone is quite insistently drilling psychic holes in the side of your skull. I didn’t even realise I had begun singing about Max’s singing (to the tune of something from The Lion King) until I looked up and saw her as close to causing me bodily harm as I could have ever imagined. I think I’ve got to start curbing that one.

__________

2.

Apparently, making words up isn’t ‘normal’.

Much as I adore the English language, sometimes its tapestry doesn’t afford me the particular shade and texture I require to describe something. M has long ago observed this and reconfigured his brain to deal with it. Max, on the other hand, stops me mid-flow to ask me what on earth I just said.

My reasoning is that language was made up by people in the first place. It’s not like a dictionary morphed into being one day and we all began speaking English in the same way. We STILL don’t speak English the same way – I’ll wager that if you heard me speak you would find that my Australian accent is ‘strange’ and that you don’t know some of the terms I use.*

I’ll wager that the first guy who looked at his herd of sheep and thought of the word ‘fluffy’ was laughed at too. I’m willing to risk being ridiculed so that future generations can benefit from words like:

• Thinkling – small thought. Not a particularly deep rumination deserving the moniker ‘Thought’, just something small yet significant at the present moment.

• Wifelet – professional wife. A creature whose days are split between beauty salons, designer rag outlets and cafes. She does buy books – but only because their spines match the rug. Can be found hanging barnacle-like off her husband at premieres and parties.

* No Wuckers, for example. Third generation slang:

No fucking worries > No wucking forries > No wuckers

Don’t look at me like that.

__________

3.

Being hermit geeks.

We’ve stopped being such hermit geeks. There are two eras, Before Max (BM) and After Max (AM). Max did influence us from afar, but it was far more like the moon’s gentle tug on the tides rather than the screaming asteroid plummeting into our social life that marks the AM era.

BM – Weekend entailed replenishing food supplies, cleaning and settling in for long (“Sheesh, sunlight already?”) bouts of gaming. Over the years, I became somewhat of a party trick at LANs. The girl who could frag your ass nicely in Quake or passionately discuss the differences between being a Sorcerer or Wizard in an RPG.

AM – Weekend entails stumbling to the kitchen to have Max inform me that someone (insert random friend) is coming over in an hour. Eyes snap open to assess cleanliness of abode, mind starts going through contents of fridge, mouth starts gabbling things about lunch, hands reach for serviettes and start folding them into origami-esque shapes. Max switches on a computer screen and gently guides me to a chair – she knows it’ll keep me in thrall for a couple of hours so that she can complete her dastardly socialisation plan.

BM - Diary had the standard stuff in it. Business appointments, dental checkups,

AM - Diary is now a random assortment of chocolate-box social nibbles. Plenty of things 'to maybe do'. I knew things had changed in my life when last weekend's entry looked something like:

* Buy a fan at Argos

* Call Andy re: lease

* Cheese Rolling festival in Glouchestershire? (Check health insurance if we participate)

Max realised early on that we’re not shy; we just enjoy being at home and with each other. She also figured that we’re good mixers at parties, so we occasionally get dropped into a fray to stir things up a little. Cleverly, she ensures that we navigate the flotsam on our own as the effect of us both interrogating a person isn’t pretty.

__________

4.

Debating teams.

Max now changes the friendly-argument-typology in the house. It’s no longer a détente when some obscure topic is discussed and the ‘net can’t help – there’s a knowledgeable little critter around that doesn’t always take my side.

I have plans to fix this little hiccup in my life, but so far none of the ‘Find Omnipotence Now!’ products have kicked in. Bother.

__________

5.

An overabundance of me-ness.

I have found that friends need to be warned about me before I’m allowed to meet them. I hear about someone from Max for a couple of weeks and tell her to bring them on over…and am informed that they’re not ‘ready’ to meet me yet.

This brings to mind some sort of Getting Ready To Face M Boot Camp held in an Equatorial forest in Guinea. Attendants are battered senseless with questions, have all their premises challenged and are openly told that some of their ideas aren’t just a little wacky but outright stoopid. They are then introduced to the finer points of Pun-Pong* and assaulted with rounds of I’m Going To Sing About You To The Tune Of A Disney Song. If they survive with (most of) their limbs intact, they progress to The Meeting.

I really don’t know what it is that Max tries to instil in these people, but most that I’ve met so far have been rather normal, decent humans. Some have a limp though….

* Pun-Pong. Someone drops an appalling pun into a conversation. Participants (anyone who hasn’t withered away from the sheer badness of the original pun) must then come up with their own pun to counter the last. The pun must be on the same general theme. Footrubs and shoulder massages have been bestowed on the last punner standing in particularly savage rounds. This is a very, very difficult game.

__________

For someone who grew up as an only child, having someone like Max around is discovering what it’s like to have a sister (albeit a well behaved, intelligent, lively sister that doesn’t kick me under the table or acquaint toads with my bedsheets). It’s a view on me from a friendly and close source that isn’t a parent or a lover and it’s decidedly interesting.