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9 August
The difference being that there's just the dialogue - the comic bit is so passé!
I say, Bradshaw, what's that thing with its teeth in your trousers?
Dunno, French, but I'll kill it off with a bad review, as usual!
Le motto: Wouldn't know a good film, if...
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Wednesday 8 August 2012
Tuesday 7 August 2012
Pap instead of news-reporting
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8 August
From Yahoo!®, 's e-mail sign-on page:
As the search continues for 12-year-old Tia Sharp, members of her local community have pledged to do all they can to help find her
Irrespective of the cause, why the same stale expressions? Those first four words, for example, which pointlessly have to link with something else.
What they mean is that, although the search has gone on for x hours / days, they're not giving up.
But, as for this pledge nonsense - Pledge is a household product, and no one was signing documents to say that they would persist.
Nor were they from her local community - realistically, the middle word does not add anything, nor does 'to do all they can'.
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8 August
From Yahoo!®, 's e-mail sign-on page:
As the search continues for 12-year-old Tia Sharp, members of her local community have pledged to do all they can to help find her
Irrespective of the cause, why the same stale expressions? Those first four words, for example, which pointlessly have to link with something else.
What they mean is that, although the search has gone on for x hours / days, they're not giving up.
But, as for this pledge nonsense - Pledge is a household product, and no one was signing documents to say that they would persist.
Nor were they from her local community - realistically, the middle word does not add anything, nor does 'to do all they can'.
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Madonna works tight knee-high boots (according to AOL®)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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8 August
So is it G4S Games absconders who write this stuff?
Is there no sense that, whatever people nowadays might really mean (if they stopped to ask) by some model or starlet working whatever clothing it may be, working something tight (or loose) means something, too?
Or why the hell do I despair at the typical knowledge-base of a human being?
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8 August
So is it G4S Games absconders who write this stuff?
Is there no sense that, whatever people nowadays might really mean (if they stopped to ask) by some model or starlet working whatever clothing it may be, working something tight (or loose) means something, too?
Or why the hell do I despair at the typical knowledge-base of a human being?
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Monday 6 August 2012
Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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7 August
It's not here, but it's there at http://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk/, everything that's so far been announced about this year's Festival...
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7 August
It's not here, but it's there at http://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk/, everything that's so far been announced about this year's Festival...
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Thursday 2 August 2012
KST / Bradshaw
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This was meant to be a draft, for me to use to comment on what the great Messrs Bradshaw and French have 'made of' this film, but it seems to have gone live - whatever they have to say...
Philip French:
In Your Hands (aka Contre toi) is a subtle psychological thriller, the second full-length feature by the French writer-director Lola Doillon, but the first to be shown here. A claustrophobic virtual two-hander, it stars Kristin Scott Thomas as confident, childless divorcee Anna Cooper, a surgeon working in the obstetrics and gynaecology department of a prison hospital, and Pio Marmaï as Yann, a wild young man.In Your HandsProduction year: 2012Country: FranceCert (UK): 15Runtime: 81 minsDirectors: Lola DoillonCast: Jean-Philippe Ecoffey, Kristin Scott Thomas, Pio MarmaiMore on this filmAt the beginning Anna appears distraught but carefully controlled, running from a shabby suburban house to her smart Parisian apartment. The movie doesn't leave us long to wonder about her conduct. She goes to the police to report her abduction, and in a tensely developed flashback we learn that she has been held in a cellar by Yann, the vengeful husband of a patient who died during a Caesarean operation carried out by Anna. In this first part there's an emotional ebb and flow, the threat of violence and some physical conflict, as the two discuss the case and its emotional ramifications.In the second part, a delayed instance of the Stockholm syndrome, some mixture of guilt and sympathy seems to draw Anna to seek out Yann. A passionate affair ensues that is in its way as dangerous as the period of incarceration, possibly more so. The end is abrupt and not entirely satisfactory, but it's a convincingly performed and constantly intriguing film
Kristin Scott Thomas gives us another movie in a distinctive genre that she has made her own: modern day, no makeup, speaking French, transgressive sex. It's an intense and claustrophobic two-hander, well acted – especially by her – but frankly a bit of a shaggy-dog story with a faintly unsatisfactory ending. Scott Thomas plays Anna Cooper, a single professional woman living on her own in Paris and a bit of a workaholic. The name signals that, though a fluent and idiomatic French speaker, she is British but otherwise there is no back story. At the beginning of a rare holiday, Anna comes into traumatic contact with an intense figure: Yann, played by Pio Marmaï, and their encounter becomes a terrifying ordeal. The film begins intriguingly and promises much, with an interesting flashback structure which initially conceals as much as it reveals. But in its third act, the movie runs out of ideas and has no more to tell us. Set alongside Philippe Claudel's I've Loved You So Long (2008) and Catherine Corsini's Leaving (2009), In Your Hands showcases of one of this country's most remarkable screen performers, a vividly intelligent presence – but it does not quite work. PB
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This was meant to be a draft, for me to use to comment on what the great Messrs Bradshaw and French have 'made of' this film, but it seems to have gone live - whatever they have to say...
Philip French:
In Your Hands (aka Contre toi) is a subtle psychological thriller, the second full-length feature by the French writer-director Lola Doillon, but the first to be shown here. A claustrophobic virtual two-hander, it stars Kristin Scott Thomas as confident, childless divorcee Anna Cooper, a surgeon working in the obstetrics and gynaecology department of a prison hospital, and Pio Marmaï as Yann, a wild young man.In Your HandsProduction year: 2012Country: FranceCert (UK): 15Runtime: 81 minsDirectors: Lola DoillonCast: Jean-Philippe Ecoffey, Kristin Scott Thomas, Pio MarmaiMore on this filmAt the beginning Anna appears distraught but carefully controlled, running from a shabby suburban house to her smart Parisian apartment. The movie doesn't leave us long to wonder about her conduct. She goes to the police to report her abduction, and in a tensely developed flashback we learn that she has been held in a cellar by Yann, the vengeful husband of a patient who died during a Caesarean operation carried out by Anna. In this first part there's an emotional ebb and flow, the threat of violence and some physical conflict, as the two discuss the case and its emotional ramifications.In the second part, a delayed instance of the Stockholm syndrome, some mixture of guilt and sympathy seems to draw Anna to seek out Yann. A passionate affair ensues that is in its way as dangerous as the period of incarceration, possibly more so. The end is abrupt and not entirely satisfactory, but it's a convincingly performed and constantly intriguing film
Kristin Scott Thomas gives us another movie in a distinctive genre that she has made her own: modern day, no makeup, speaking French, transgressive sex. It's an intense and claustrophobic two-hander, well acted – especially by her – but frankly a bit of a shaggy-dog story with a faintly unsatisfactory ending. Scott Thomas plays Anna Cooper, a single professional woman living on her own in Paris and a bit of a workaholic. The name signals that, though a fluent and idiomatic French speaker, she is British but otherwise there is no back story. At the beginning of a rare holiday, Anna comes into traumatic contact with an intense figure: Yann, played by Pio Marmaï, and their encounter becomes a terrifying ordeal. The film begins intriguingly and promises much, with an interesting flashback structure which initially conceals as much as it reveals. But in its third act, the movie runs out of ideas and has no more to tell us. Set alongside Philippe Claudel's I've Loved You So Long (2008) and Catherine Corsini's Leaving (2009), In Your Hands showcases of one of this country's most remarkable screen performers, a vividly intelligent presence – but it does not quite work. PB
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Big bloody news: King Juan Carlos of Spain trips over (according to AOL®)
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2 August
No doubt there's an awkward piece of footage, showing the royal foot stumbling over something - do we think that it was the right one, or the left?
And did Juan Carlos - just in case we don't know where he is king of (as I am not aware of any other king so named), we have to be told - just trip, or did he actually stumble and end up on the floor, crying Shit!?
And is it better or worse than when the poor blighter sneezed yesterday, maybe three times in succession? And, if so, better or worse than when Beckham (unofficial King of Span) tripped over in 2007...?
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2 August
No doubt there's an awkward piece of footage, showing the royal foot stumbling over something - do we think that it was the right one, or the left?
And did Juan Carlos - just in case we don't know where he is king of (as I am not aware of any other king so named), we have to be told - just trip, or did he actually stumble and end up on the floor, crying Shit!?
And is it better or worse than when the poor blighter sneezed yesterday, maybe three times in succession? And, if so, better or worse than when Beckham (unofficial King of Span) tripped over in 2007...?
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Wednesday 1 August 2012
An ambivalence for Kristin - first thoughts
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2 August
* Contains spoilers - if you can still catch this film, you probably would not wish to know too much *
We see characteristics of Dr Anna Cooper (though her name and profession do not emerge until we hear her listening to her answering-machine), at the outset of this film, that will haunt its progress and eventual ending, did we but know it: I planned to go back to see whether that foreknowledge matters, and, having done so, can say that it does not.
To my taste, Kristin Scott Thomas inhabited the difficult role of Anna to perfection, for she drives and dictates so much of the pace, although, given that she has been kidnapped, one might assume that she is not in control. In this respect, the title in English, In Your Hands, cleverly exploits an ambiguity of the original, Contre Toi, whereas it has to be said that the subtitles are a somewhat ham-fisted affair.
For example, after Anna has been given the response of I sure do when asked whether she likes tea, the utterance Avec plaisir, when she is offered some, is rendered a little more convincingly along the lines of I'd love some. My ability to keep up with spoken French is not brilliant, but I can usually get the gist of dialogue, guided by what I see. Not here, where such a freedom - clearly for the benefit of speakers of US English - had been taken with the tone and style.
It can sometimes be a slow matter of engaging with a film when one is relating to such a familiar face as that of KST, and almost admiring the acting, rather than - if this denotes the separate thing that I intend - following the performance.
For me, an important moment to settle me in was to see her responding to the messages on her answering-machine, following an absence, but also to see how I would relate to her as a doctor, when she arrives and dresses for work at the hospital. (In this film, her name is the closest that we get to an explanation for anyone detecting that she is not French, which I am sure that the noisy pair of couples behind and to the side of me would have made grist to their mill of whispering / talking through the film, since they also laughed at several inappropriate moments.)
Anyone who did not see a poster or other advertising for this film beforehand will not know that they had to envisage, as they were watching what unfolded, how a certain scene would be reached. In fact, I almost came to wonder whether the image had just been - which it is not - a teaser to set the audience off on the wrong scent. Not that this is a thriller, but it is about psychology, about what makes people tick, have the upper hand, in the relations with each other.
And not in a calculating way largely, because there is a lot of instinct at work, and - if we are not busy laughing in a way that suggests we should have left the film to those who wanted to watch it - it will be open to interpretation quite what is happening. No dogma here about even what happens, let alone the rights and wrongs, and in the intelligent domain of films such as Haneke's Hidden (2005) and Code Unknown (2000) (of both of which I was reminded early on), if not equally of The Woman in the Fifth (2011).
More to come...
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2 August
* Contains spoilers - if you can still catch this film, you probably would not wish to know too much *
We see characteristics of Dr Anna Cooper (though her name and profession do not emerge until we hear her listening to her answering-machine), at the outset of this film, that will haunt its progress and eventual ending, did we but know it: I planned to go back to see whether that foreknowledge matters, and, having done so, can say that it does not.
To my taste, Kristin Scott Thomas inhabited the difficult role of Anna to perfection, for she drives and dictates so much of the pace, although, given that she has been kidnapped, one might assume that she is not in control. In this respect, the title in English, In Your Hands, cleverly exploits an ambiguity of the original, Contre Toi, whereas it has to be said that the subtitles are a somewhat ham-fisted affair.
For example, after Anna has been given the response of I sure do when asked whether she likes tea, the utterance Avec plaisir, when she is offered some, is rendered a little more convincingly along the lines of I'd love some. My ability to keep up with spoken French is not brilliant, but I can usually get the gist of dialogue, guided by what I see. Not here, where such a freedom - clearly for the benefit of speakers of US English - had been taken with the tone and style.
It can sometimes be a slow matter of engaging with a film when one is relating to such a familiar face as that of KST, and almost admiring the acting, rather than - if this denotes the separate thing that I intend - following the performance.
For me, an important moment to settle me in was to see her responding to the messages on her answering-machine, following an absence, but also to see how I would relate to her as a doctor, when she arrives and dresses for work at the hospital. (In this film, her name is the closest that we get to an explanation for anyone detecting that she is not French, which I am sure that the noisy pair of couples behind and to the side of me would have made grist to their mill of whispering / talking through the film, since they also laughed at several inappropriate moments.)
Anyone who did not see a poster or other advertising for this film beforehand will not know that they had to envisage, as they were watching what unfolded, how a certain scene would be reached. In fact, I almost came to wonder whether the image had just been - which it is not - a teaser to set the audience off on the wrong scent. Not that this is a thriller, but it is about psychology, about what makes people tick, have the upper hand, in the relations with each other.
And not in a calculating way largely, because there is a lot of instinct at work, and - if we are not busy laughing in a way that suggests we should have left the film to those who wanted to watch it - it will be open to interpretation quite what is happening. No dogma here about even what happens, let alone the rights and wrongs, and in the intelligent domain of films such as Haneke's Hidden (2005) and Code Unknown (2000) (of both of which I was reminded early on), if not equally of The Woman in the Fifth (2011).
More to come...
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Tuesday 31 July 2012
Kosmos revisited
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31 July
* Contains spoilers – do not read, if you want to watch the film for the first time *
Kosmos (2010) has passed my Does it Bear Watching Again? test (DIBWA) (or whatever I call it). If I had had a chance to watch it again at Cambridge Film Festival, it would have been to check on detail that I felt that I had missed first time around.
As it is, ten months later, it had me in tears at the end, after having been weighing in the balance whether knowing what was to happen (although getting the sequence wrong several times, not, I think, because it had been re-edited*) mattered to my appreciation for all but the last few minutes. For I was watching it through the more critical lens of scrutinizing it to see whether it worked, but the cumulative impact still hit me, even if (partly because of reading TAKE ONE’s review) I had been more aware of the way in which the soundtrack, including electronic and natural sounds, played its part.
Some things that I had remembered aright:
* Someone who reviewed the film on IMDb wrongly thought that the woman with the crutch (reminiscent of Lady Archer) kills herself, not the teacher - as if there were any doubt, the former is still around at the end
* That Neptün and Kosmos both counter gravity, and, with the paperwork that litters the place, fly around his lodging
* The role of the falling star / spacecraft in healing the boy who was not speaking
* Kosmos irritating those who think that he should conform to what living a proper life consists in, having a job and doing work
Some things I had not weighed properly:
* How Neptün is jealous of the teacher, because of her relations with Kosmos, and we are twice shown her throwing stones at the other woman's window (and that she had given herself this name, then Kosmos his own in response)
* Just how ambiguous it is whether she has sex with Kosmos at the conclusion of the scene referred to above (and / or an earlier scenes at his lodgings, where they behave like wolves)
* The coherence of the scenes with the cattle and the geese, and of the views of the civic clock
* The way in which popular opinion turns against Kosmos at the end, despite his grief at what happens to the teacher and the boy
* How raids against the cheese-shop, pharmacy and other premises influences residents against campaigning to re-open the border
* The use of CGI in making the snow and effects with the wind happen, as clearly no one could wait for it to be snowing to film a scene - once I became aware of this artificiality, I could not easily shut it out
As to the impression that the film left me with, it is an abiding and powerful one of a film-maker thoughtfully presenting a series of images and not insisting that any one way of looking at them is correct. This is as it should be with the best films, and this one compares very well with Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011).
End-notes
* Although some things that I could have sworn were to come never happened: a follow-up to the brush that Kosmos has with the tip of a lighted cigarette, in showing his immunity to cold, though I forget what, although I thought that it involved the stove.
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
31 July
* Contains spoilers – do not read, if you want to watch the film for the first time *
Kosmos (2010) has passed my Does it Bear Watching Again? test (DIBWA) (or whatever I call it). If I had had a chance to watch it again at Cambridge Film Festival, it would have been to check on detail that I felt that I had missed first time around.
As it is, ten months later, it had me in tears at the end, after having been weighing in the balance whether knowing what was to happen (although getting the sequence wrong several times, not, I think, because it had been re-edited*) mattered to my appreciation for all but the last few minutes. For I was watching it through the more critical lens of scrutinizing it to see whether it worked, but the cumulative impact still hit me, even if (partly because of reading TAKE ONE’s review) I had been more aware of the way in which the soundtrack, including electronic and natural sounds, played its part.
Some things that I had remembered aright:
* Someone who reviewed the film on IMDb wrongly thought that the woman with the crutch (reminiscent of Lady Archer) kills herself, not the teacher - as if there were any doubt, the former is still around at the end
* That Neptün and Kosmos both counter gravity, and, with the paperwork that litters the place, fly around his lodging
* The role of the falling star / spacecraft in healing the boy who was not speaking
* Kosmos irritating those who think that he should conform to what living a proper life consists in, having a job and doing work
Some things I had not weighed properly:
* How Neptün is jealous of the teacher, because of her relations with Kosmos, and we are twice shown her throwing stones at the other woman's window (and that she had given herself this name, then Kosmos his own in response)
* Just how ambiguous it is whether she has sex with Kosmos at the conclusion of the scene referred to above (and / or an earlier scenes at his lodgings, where they behave like wolves)
* The coherence of the scenes with the cattle and the geese, and of the views of the civic clock
* The way in which popular opinion turns against Kosmos at the end, despite his grief at what happens to the teacher and the boy
* How raids against the cheese-shop, pharmacy and other premises influences residents against campaigning to re-open the border
* The use of CGI in making the snow and effects with the wind happen, as clearly no one could wait for it to be snowing to film a scene - once I became aware of this artificiality, I could not easily shut it out
As to the impression that the film left me with, it is an abiding and powerful one of a film-maker thoughtfully presenting a series of images and not insisting that any one way of looking at them is correct. This is as it should be with the best films, and this one compares very well with Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011).
End-notes
* Although some things that I could have sworn were to come never happened: a follow-up to the brush that Kosmos has with the tip of a lighted cigarette, in showing his immunity to cold, though I forget what, although I thought that it involved the stove.
The usual deal in the trailer for The Hunter
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31 July
If you did believe the trailer, you would expect a fast-paced experience from watching the feature. However, it will not materialize, because the trailer is not remotely representative: almost all the action has been squeezed together in a few minutes, and put with the sort of pounding music that makes me feel very unpleasantly anxious.
Imagine, instead, more and more of the glimpses that you have of Martin David (Willem Dafoe) exploring and setting his traps, cut occasionally with the rightly praised photography of the scenery, and you have a better measure of the ratio of what we call ‘action’ to his everyday hunting activities, because this is really not, unless you excite easily, one that will have you on the edge of your seat.
And I wonder how many of these trailers there are: is this the let's-extract-the-last-iota-of-momentum version? Has it mystifyingly attracted attention away from anyone who might have seen In Your Hands (2012), though a film in French with subtitles is a tricky proposition?
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31 July
If you did believe the trailer, you would expect a fast-paced experience from watching the feature. However, it will not materialize, because the trailer is not remotely representative: almost all the action has been squeezed together in a few minutes, and put with the sort of pounding music that makes me feel very unpleasantly anxious.
Imagine, instead, more and more of the glimpses that you have of Martin David (Willem Dafoe) exploring and setting his traps, cut occasionally with the rightly praised photography of the scenery, and you have a better measure of the ratio of what we call ‘action’ to his everyday hunting activities, because this is really not, unless you excite easily, one that will have you on the edge of your seat.
And I wonder how many of these trailers there are: is this the let's-extract-the-last-iota-of-momentum version? Has it mystifyingly attracted attention away from anyone who might have seen In Your Hands (2012), though a film in French with subtitles is a tricky proposition?
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Sunday 29 July 2012
'Trends' for New Zealand on Pratter
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29 July
Why is it ridiculous that these are items 6 to 10 in that list?
6. Aussies
7. Brazil
8. Australia
9. Sky
10. Kiwis
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29 July
Why is it ridiculous that these are items 6 to 10 in that list?
6. Aussies
7. Brazil
8. Australia
9. Sky
10. Kiwis
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My 'favourite' browser (3)
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29 July
Following on from where I left off, I spot three new browsers:
* Konqueror (sounds a wee bit aggressive (and martial)),
* CriOS (the dead bones enchanted by The Witch of Endor), and
* Namoroka (some bloody weirdo film-director)
Others that I'd like to see:
* Brendel (makes faces at you when playing music-clips)
* Ashkenazy (the same, but makes less amusing, more pained, faces)
* SuperDry (despite its name, it drenches you with a bucket of water for fun occasionally)
* Texugenbag (just complete crap, but someone would choose the name)
* Brodsky (specially programmed to display weird pairings, yoking Kim Kardashian's image in peach with text about salt-beef and prune salad)
* BJ69XXX (a mind-blowing browsing experience that makes sex seem rather inadequate)
* Sarah/Michael (a way of displaying content that takes something from the different ways of viewing the world of these most famous Palins - also known as S&M)
* Carrot (nothing exciting, unless you like orange immensely, as the colour-bias is that what inclined - perfect for saving celebrities money on tans)
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29 July
Following on from where I left off, I spot three new browsers:
* Konqueror (sounds a wee bit aggressive (and martial)),
* CriOS (the dead bones enchanted by The Witch of Endor), and
* Namoroka (some bloody weirdo film-director)
Others that I'd like to see:
* Brendel (makes faces at you when playing music-clips)
* Ashkenazy (the same, but makes less amusing, more pained, faces)
* SuperDry (despite its name, it drenches you with a bucket of water for fun occasionally)
* Texugenbag (just complete crap, but someone would choose the name)
* Brodsky (specially programmed to display weird pairings, yoking Kim Kardashian's image in peach with text about salt-beef and prune salad)
* BJ69XXX (a mind-blowing browsing experience that makes sex seem rather inadequate)
* Sarah/Michael (a way of displaying content that takes something from the different ways of viewing the world of these most famous Palins - also known as S&M)
* Carrot (nothing exciting, unless you like orange immensely, as the colour-bias is that what inclined - perfect for saving celebrities money on tans)
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Saturday 28 July 2012
Explore the natural beauty of Caledonia (according to AOL®)
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28 July
What is this? Bloody cornering the market in a fanciful form of what Fowler dubbed Elegant Variation?
Just so that you can refer to it as Scotland below?
And why not Hibernia, whilst you're at it?!
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28 July
What is this? Bloody cornering the market in a fanciful form of what Fowler dubbed Elegant Variation?
Just so that you can refer to it as Scotland below?
And why not Hibernia, whilst you're at it?!
@TheAgentApsley
A back-hander?
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28 July
Is what follows a strange thing to write, or is it just a clumsy compliment?
I honestly don't know, but the assumption seems to be 'You might be able to write this at Level 1, but could you present it to an audience any better than Level 2 (or 3)?'. I might have bridled myself, so this seems quite a good retort as a put-down:
@TheAgentApsley
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28 July
Is what follows a strange thing to write, or is it just a clumsy compliment?
@MarkOneinFour @PJ_and_Doo If that was delivered half so well as it was written it must have been a really good session.
— The Care Guy (@StuartSorensen) July 28, 2012
I honestly don't know, but the assumption seems to be 'You might be able to write this at Level 1, but could you present it to an audience any better than Level 2 (or 3)?'. I might have bridled myself, so this seems quite a good retort as a put-down:
@StuartSorensen @PJ_and_Doo The speech? It was on stage in front of a proper auditorium full of folks, with lights and everything!
— Markoneinfour (@MarkOneinFour) July 28, 2012
@TheAgentApsley
Melvyn Tan and Bach
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28 July
As soon as Melvyn Tan sat at the keyboard and was satisfied with the height of the stool, he was ready to play, and began the second of the so-called English Suites (in A Minor, BWV 807) so definitely that I was straight into Bach and knew that he was, too: the fluency and confidence were there right from the first notes of the Prélude, along with tremendous energy and equal restraint and grace.
One knew that this was playing out of conviction, and the deftness with which the trills and other ornaments were executed assured of Tan's mastery of his craft, and the interpretation that he brought that the music is a living thing in and for him. The first three movements in the Suite led up to an audacious tempo in the Sarabande, in which Tan was most persuasive, and so provided a vivid contrast with what followed. Altogether, an interpretation that was evidently as well received generally as it was by me, and of which he could have been left in no doubt.
However, although I am no expert on piano-lids and Steinways, when the audience is not exactly large for a recital in a hall that holds around 400, I don’t know if it needs to be open so much: at any rate, in the rendition of this Suite and a later one, I found a brightness at times in the octaves just above Middle C, which, when there was a rich texture, meant that the chords as a whole wanted for clarity. (It could equally have been something about the acoustic itself (given fewer bodies in the hall), or not pedalling suitably (as there did not seem to be much use of the pedal).)
Otherwise, the only surprise, other than being reminded how joyous Bach is in his depth and invention, his compassion and humanity, was the seemingly hesitant cæsuræ – I can think of nothing else by which to describe them – with which, I suspect, Tan (and not the score) punctuated some movements, seemingly to break up the flow of phrases in some movements.
These little pauses had the effect of catching this listener unawares, but they did not, for all that, initially seem deliberate, more as if the pianist were unsure (Tan played them from memory) what came next - or, maybe, how to speak it in the syntax of its context. In the first Suite played, I came to accept them, whereas they frankly began to jar in the other one (No. 5 in E Minor, BWV 810).
They did so partly because, in between the Suites, I had had to concentrate quite hard to follow eleven different composers’ works in Variations for Judith - I know the Bach Suites from CD (with Glenn), but I found it taxing to listen to this collection of ‘reflections’ on (or of) Bist du bei mir?, the Bach aria from the Anna Magdalena note-book (BWV 508). The title calls them variations, but they were more like versions, since there could be no sense that the variations developed from one contribution to the next (even though Tan chose an order of his own from the score).
Apart from two which Tan, in his introduction, said did not meet the stipulation when the contributors were asked to take part of 'easy' to play, what the pieces broadly seemed to have in common was that they stated the theme, although one deliberately chopped it up, putting interjections from the latter part in the right hand after utterances from the first part in the bass.
Sadly, even if I had had the score, my ability for reading one is so limited that I would not have been able to work out whose contribution was which by following it, so I was left with rather shadowy speculations as to the voice behind each little piece. Perhaps that is the vanity that the writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes complains of, of trying to catch a figure such as Sir Richard Rodney Bennett in his participation - and yet what else is asking all these people to contribute for?
As Tan suggested, the collection is interesting to hear, but it necessarily lacks the coherence of something like the Diabelli Variations or the Goldbergs, as, with every one, it is a reversion to the original, not a progression, not a development. Whereas, if one of these composers had taken the aria for a ride 'properly', who knows!
As I had been taxed in this way, getting back to Bach was not, although I had expected that it would be, a restorative move, but one that simply left me aware that music was being played, but unable to listen to it (although I do also think that, of these six Suites, No. 5 was not the best one to have chosen).
If the recital were to have worked for me, maybe it would have been better like this, ending with the Variations:
1. Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue (BWV 903)
2. English Suite No. 2 in A Minor (BWV 807)
3. Variations for Judith (BWV 508 + 11 others)
My rationale being that the desire to contrast Bach with compositions based on Bach's work would not have wanted a sandwich, or the two Suites, as played, merely to precede the new work(s), but that the Fantasy and Fugue would show a contrasting and more contemplative side to Bach's virtuosic writing in the Suite. Maybe it would'nt work, but this seemed the obvious 'solution' to the problem that I, at least, had faced with the programme.
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28 July
As soon as Melvyn Tan sat at the keyboard and was satisfied with the height of the stool, he was ready to play, and began the second of the so-called English Suites (in A Minor, BWV 807) so definitely that I was straight into Bach and knew that he was, too: the fluency and confidence were there right from the first notes of the Prélude, along with tremendous energy and equal restraint and grace.
One knew that this was playing out of conviction, and the deftness with which the trills and other ornaments were executed assured of Tan's mastery of his craft, and the interpretation that he brought that the music is a living thing in and for him. The first three movements in the Suite led up to an audacious tempo in the Sarabande, in which Tan was most persuasive, and so provided a vivid contrast with what followed. Altogether, an interpretation that was evidently as well received generally as it was by me, and of which he could have been left in no doubt.
However, although I am no expert on piano-lids and Steinways, when the audience is not exactly large for a recital in a hall that holds around 400, I don’t know if it needs to be open so much: at any rate, in the rendition of this Suite and a later one, I found a brightness at times in the octaves just above Middle C, which, when there was a rich texture, meant that the chords as a whole wanted for clarity. (It could equally have been something about the acoustic itself (given fewer bodies in the hall), or not pedalling suitably (as there did not seem to be much use of the pedal).)
Otherwise, the only surprise, other than being reminded how joyous Bach is in his depth and invention, his compassion and humanity, was the seemingly hesitant cæsuræ – I can think of nothing else by which to describe them – with which, I suspect, Tan (and not the score) punctuated some movements, seemingly to break up the flow of phrases in some movements.
These little pauses had the effect of catching this listener unawares, but they did not, for all that, initially seem deliberate, more as if the pianist were unsure (Tan played them from memory) what came next - or, maybe, how to speak it in the syntax of its context. In the first Suite played, I came to accept them, whereas they frankly began to jar in the other one (No. 5 in E Minor, BWV 810).
They did so partly because, in between the Suites, I had had to concentrate quite hard to follow eleven different composers’ works in Variations for Judith - I know the Bach Suites from CD (with Glenn), but I found it taxing to listen to this collection of ‘reflections’ on (or of) Bist du bei mir?, the Bach aria from the Anna Magdalena note-book (BWV 508). The title calls them variations, but they were more like versions, since there could be no sense that the variations developed from one contribution to the next (even though Tan chose an order of his own from the score).
Apart from two which Tan, in his introduction, said did not meet the stipulation when the contributors were asked to take part of 'easy' to play, what the pieces broadly seemed to have in common was that they stated the theme, although one deliberately chopped it up, putting interjections from the latter part in the right hand after utterances from the first part in the bass.
Sadly, even if I had had the score, my ability for reading one is so limited that I would not have been able to work out whose contribution was which by following it, so I was left with rather shadowy speculations as to the voice behind each little piece. Perhaps that is the vanity that the writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes complains of, of trying to catch a figure such as Sir Richard Rodney Bennett in his participation - and yet what else is asking all these people to contribute for?
As Tan suggested, the collection is interesting to hear, but it necessarily lacks the coherence of something like the Diabelli Variations or the Goldbergs, as, with every one, it is a reversion to the original, not a progression, not a development. Whereas, if one of these composers had taken the aria for a ride 'properly', who knows!
As I had been taxed in this way, getting back to Bach was not, although I had expected that it would be, a restorative move, but one that simply left me aware that music was being played, but unable to listen to it (although I do also think that, of these six Suites, No. 5 was not the best one to have chosen).
If the recital were to have worked for me, maybe it would have been better like this, ending with the Variations:
1. Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue (BWV 903)
2. English Suite No. 2 in A Minor (BWV 807)
3. Variations for Judith (BWV 508 + 11 others)
My rationale being that the desire to contrast Bach with compositions based on Bach's work would not have wanted a sandwich, or the two Suites, as played, merely to precede the new work(s), but that the Fantasy and Fugue would show a contrasting and more contemplative side to Bach's virtuosic writing in the Suite. Maybe it would'nt work, but this seemed the obvious 'solution' to the problem that I, at least, had faced with the programme.
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Friday 27 July 2012
Nocturnes or Why the hell did I write that? (1)
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26 July
This book is subtitled (or captioned) Five Stories of Music and Nightfall
A question that both the narrator of the middle story*, ‘Malvern Hills’, might usefully have asked about his inconsequential (self-)revelation (if we weren’t supposed to see him as blind to his hypocrisy and selfishness – the biggest act of which must be boring us with his tale!), and his creator, Ishiguro, about cobbling this and four other offerings together to make some sort of five-part whole.
I say some sort […] of whole, because, under the pretext that we have different narrators (who, in their own ways, engage with the title-theme), we are actually being peddled inferior (and probably previously rejected) attempts at short-story writing. One (i.e. ‘Cellists’) cannot even manage to tell a quite lame narrative without giving the game away: if you tell your reader that your friends have already said something about a woman (even if it is part of the story is that you ignored their warning), he or she will not be amazed when that suggestion turns out to be the truth. It doesn’t work, because this is pap, not Henry James.
As for the other stories, amateur critics have been impressed that a minor, if necessary, character** in the first story (‘Crooner’) appears later in ‘Nocturne’ (the fourth), itself a fairly feeble attempt to portray the behaviour of the rich and / or (once) famous through the eyes of a session musician who is about as convincing as John Smith’s is a bitter. The prism for the narration is coming in contact with a celebrity whose claim to fame has not weighed on her fellow inmate at a private health clinic.
Steve, too, is supposed to be an instrumentalist, though I detect no knack on Ishiguro’s part for making him sound (in words, thought or nature) like a sax-playing session musician, with his own studio at home. For someone who supposedly does not think that his appearance need not ‘improved’ to make him more of a success in his career (which his partner urges), he (cringingly) keeps alluding to himself and ‘my loser’s face’.
His ambivalence about why he at the clinic is matched only by that towards the celebrity, who, when she shows him attention, is a nuisance, but then grows on him (though not he on her, because an incident with the cavity of a cooked turkey [sic] does not help). (There is also something about a game of chess, but probably best forgotten.)
The story has what, if generous, one could call a wistfulness about it, but, in truth, it is that does not go – and never was going – anywhere, since the real story-teller (Ishiguro) cannot deliver, through his substitute (the musician Steve), any more than one of those rambling accounts that someone gives to an unwilling listeners in the pub: the strings are seen and heard pulled, and the puppet delivers a monologue, largely devoid of significant content (as it is no more discerning than the pub drunk about what to leave in, what leave out), as well as of style, consistency, conviction.
We know that there is no such thing as the character whom a writer creates, but this one does such a poor job of depicting Steve credibly through his attributed spoken words that we do not care about him, are not interested in the truth or otherwise of what he records, and are left wondering (again) why any of us bothered with it – Steve for consenting to be in it (what union is he in??), and writer and reader for spending any time on it.
This criticism applies alike to all five stories, that they are not really musings on what happened, what might have been, what maybe was, but tiresome excursions into ineptly giving rise to a plausible authorial voice (i.e. one which, at the least, does not repeatedly draw attention to its own inadequacies of tone, syntax and diction). At bottom, do we care that a showbiz couple might separate because his career needs him to have another wife? Do we care how a brother irritates his sister, brother-in-law and, vicariously, someone whom he hates even more?
And then there’s ‘Come Rain or Come Shine’, a piece so stupid in its detail that, even more so than any game of chess, one simply cannot imagine that anyone would embark on telling a tale (Ishiguro or the narrator Ray(mond)) that relies on it. Either shut up (as the phrase has it) or put up – put up a better pretence for developing an idea.
As my friend said in her review on Amazon, much mileage can be had with reading out Tony Gardner’s every utterance with a slur, and ridiculing this entire collection (between guffaws, when one has to suspend reading), but it does not merit its author’s reputation. I do believe that he can write, but he should never have published this:
The links (which, in any case, are pretty tenuous) were obviously invented after the event, because nothing connects the celebrity with the singer in ‘Crooner’, and making people musicians (who actually betray no evidence of ever having played) is a simple editorial task.
Click here for a full exposé of Ishiguro's plots...
End-notes
* He is supposedly a musician (sure some after-thought: please see below in the main piece), whose name I do not believe ever appears, even when his long-suffering sister Maggie is trying to appeal to him.
** With no character, because insufficiently drawn to seem more than someone who, in one of the world’s loveliest cities, is only interested in the least-interesting type of shopping.
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26 July
This book is subtitled (or captioned) Five Stories of Music and Nightfall
A question that both the narrator of the middle story*, ‘Malvern Hills’, might usefully have asked about his inconsequential (self-)revelation (if we weren’t supposed to see him as blind to his hypocrisy and selfishness – the biggest act of which must be boring us with his tale!), and his creator, Ishiguro, about cobbling this and four other offerings together to make some sort of five-part whole.
I say some sort […] of whole, because, under the pretext that we have different narrators (who, in their own ways, engage with the title-theme), we are actually being peddled inferior (and probably previously rejected) attempts at short-story writing. One (i.e. ‘Cellists’) cannot even manage to tell a quite lame narrative without giving the game away: if you tell your reader that your friends have already said something about a woman (even if it is part of the story is that you ignored their warning), he or she will not be amazed when that suggestion turns out to be the truth. It doesn’t work, because this is pap, not Henry James.
As for the other stories, amateur critics have been impressed that a minor, if necessary, character** in the first story (‘Crooner’) appears later in ‘Nocturne’ (the fourth), itself a fairly feeble attempt to portray the behaviour of the rich and / or (once) famous through the eyes of a session musician who is about as convincing as John Smith’s is a bitter. The prism for the narration is coming in contact with a celebrity whose claim to fame has not weighed on her fellow inmate at a private health clinic.
Steve, too, is supposed to be an instrumentalist, though I detect no knack on Ishiguro’s part for making him sound (in words, thought or nature) like a sax-playing session musician, with his own studio at home. For someone who supposedly does not think that his appearance need not ‘improved’ to make him more of a success in his career (which his partner urges), he (cringingly) keeps alluding to himself and ‘my loser’s face’.
His ambivalence about why he at the clinic is matched only by that towards the celebrity, who, when she shows him attention, is a nuisance, but then grows on him (though not he on her, because an incident with the cavity of a cooked turkey [sic] does not help). (There is also something about a game of chess, but probably best forgotten.)
The story has what, if generous, one could call a wistfulness about it, but, in truth, it is that does not go – and never was going – anywhere, since the real story-teller (Ishiguro) cannot deliver, through his substitute (the musician Steve), any more than one of those rambling accounts that someone gives to an unwilling listeners in the pub: the strings are seen and heard pulled, and the puppet delivers a monologue, largely devoid of significant content (as it is no more discerning than the pub drunk about what to leave in, what leave out), as well as of style, consistency, conviction.
We know that there is no such thing as the character whom a writer creates, but this one does such a poor job of depicting Steve credibly through his attributed spoken words that we do not care about him, are not interested in the truth or otherwise of what he records, and are left wondering (again) why any of us bothered with it – Steve for consenting to be in it (what union is he in??), and writer and reader for spending any time on it.
This criticism applies alike to all five stories, that they are not really musings on what happened, what might have been, what maybe was, but tiresome excursions into ineptly giving rise to a plausible authorial voice (i.e. one which, at the least, does not repeatedly draw attention to its own inadequacies of tone, syntax and diction). At bottom, do we care that a showbiz couple might separate because his career needs him to have another wife? Do we care how a brother irritates his sister, brother-in-law and, vicariously, someone whom he hates even more?
And then there’s ‘Come Rain or Come Shine’, a piece so stupid in its detail that, even more so than any game of chess, one simply cannot imagine that anyone would embark on telling a tale (Ishiguro or the narrator Ray(mond)) that relies on it. Either shut up (as the phrase has it) or put up – put up a better pretence for developing an idea.
As my friend said in her review on Amazon, much mileage can be had with reading out Tony Gardner’s every utterance with a slur, and ridiculing this entire collection (between guffaws, when one has to suspend reading), but it does not merit its author’s reputation. I do believe that he can write, but he should never have published this:
The links (which, in any case, are pretty tenuous) were obviously invented after the event, because nothing connects the celebrity with the singer in ‘Crooner’, and making people musicians (who actually betray no evidence of ever having played) is a simple editorial task.
Click here for a full exposé of Ishiguro's plots...
End-notes
* He is supposedly a musician (sure some after-thought: please see below in the main piece), whose name I do not believe ever appears, even when his long-suffering sister Maggie is trying to appeal to him.
** With no character, because insufficiently drawn to seem more than someone who, in one of the world’s loveliest cities, is only interested in the least-interesting type of shopping.
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Thursday 26 July 2012
128 page-views to-day!
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26 July
If the so-called Stats told me more, I'd be able to understand what has been looked at - the old piece about Bel Ami (2011?) is a bit of a surprise, at 8 page-views, but they don't (what I'm shown) add up to 128 :
64 x 2
32 x 2 x 2
16 x 2 x 2 x 2
8 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2
4 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2
2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2
And Hello, China!, with to-day's reported audience of 12...
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26 July
If the so-called Stats told me more, I'd be able to understand what has been looked at - the old piece about Bel Ami (2011?) is a bit of a surprise, at 8 page-views, but they don't (what I'm shown) add up to 128 :
64 x 2
32 x 2 x 2
16 x 2 x 2 x 2
8 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2
4 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2
2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2
And Hello, China!, with to-day's reported audience of 12...
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Wednesday 25 July 2012
Smetana's String Quartet No. 1 (in E Minor) - given The Proms 'treatment'
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26 July
This was played last night, in the Prom's first half, for the first time there.
I have no idea why. (Or why applause was needed after every movement*.)
I am now less resentful of what Mahler did to orchestrate Schubert's String Quartet No. 14, Death and The Maiden, because it still sounded like Schubert:
This orchestration, the work of George Szell, had little identifiable connection with the original, and used brass, amongst its textures. Perhaps the composer's intentions in writing a quartet, which we were repeatedly told contained a motif at the end that represented his blindness (or was it, after all, deafness?), were as dispensable as good employee relations in Ohio.
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26 July
This was played last night, in the Prom's first half, for the first time there.
I have no idea why. (Or why applause was needed after every movement*.)
I am now less resentful of what Mahler did to orchestrate Schubert's String Quartet No. 14, Death and The Maiden, because it still sounded like Schubert:
This orchestration, the work of George Szell, had little identifiable connection with the original, and used brass, amongst its textures. Perhaps the composer's intentions in writing a quartet, which we were repeatedly told contained a motif at the end that represented his blindness (or was it, after all, deafness?), were as dispensable as good employee relations in Ohio.
If you had asked me what I was listening to (without the benefit of whoever's wisdom it was beforehand, or to schedule), I would have had no idea, although I like this string quartet. All grist to the orchestral mill, I s'pose.
End-notes
* Unless it was shocked, grieving applause in embarrassment by those who knew the original.
Horrified tourists watch as man falls from sixth floor of Tate Modern (according to AOL®)
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25 July
So how many things make this reporting imbecilic?
OK, factually it was at Tate Modern, but :
* Was it only tourists who watched (others assumed it to be just a happening, and ignored it)?
* And it was a special sub-set of the tourists, the ones who were alread horrified, who watched?
* Did the choice of floor have some effect on them, or was it just the falling?
* Everyone else (all the other tourists) watched the man fall from a different floor - or, somehow knowing that it had been the sixth, were uncomprehending about the choice of floor
Better stop there...
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25 July
So how many things make this reporting imbecilic?
OK, factually it was at Tate Modern, but :
* Was it only tourists who watched (others assumed it to be just a happening, and ignored it)?
* And it was a special sub-set of the tourists, the ones who were alread horrified, who watched?
* Did the choice of floor have some effect on them, or was it just the falling?
* Everyone else (all the other tourists) watched the man fall from a different floor - or, somehow knowing that it had been the sixth, were uncomprehending about the choice of floor
Better stop there...
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Here's to you, Dmitri S. !
Here's to you, Dmitri S. !
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25 July
Here's to you, Dmitri S. !
Not even knocking it back in one, but drinking it cold from the freezer with enthusiatic company (and on top of other drink), I know that there is a state of regretting having had so much vodka.
The existence of such enthusiastic company would offer support for the notion Any excuse for a drink ! being a current one, of course, which takes me back to this old old topic of anniversaries :
Is Myaskovsky - or are his works - suddenly more interesting because (as last year) it was 130 years since his birth ?
Or 200 years :
* Since his death
* Since he first vomited after too much vodka
* After he stubbed his toe on Poulenc in Montmartre (which he may have done), and so experienced an unexpected orgasm (which he may have done*) ?
End-notes
* But Twitter doesn't tell me...
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Tuesday 24 July 2012
What does the word 'stigma' tell anyone ?
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25 July
These are some further thoughts about what meaningful message, if any, is given to the public by talking about the stigma of mental ill-health*.
I suspect little more (and who judges a book by its cover - don't we all?) than titles of texts such as, being quite random, The Tao of Pooh, The Road to Wigan Pier, The Dancing Wu Li Masters or Lady Windermere's Fan.
Yes, they identify something, and not always exclusively: for example, film convention is to write Psycho (1960), not least as it was re-made**.
Do titles / names do any more than identify***? Only, I feel, if they are apt, rather than arbitrary (remember the times when no one knew what counselling was, and everyone had to explain that they weren't seeing a counsellor to get advice?): as my footnote says, the titles that Breton gave to Gorky's paintings seem apt, as does The Canterbury Tales.
Contrast that with The Merchant of Venice, because many people (we have probably all still heard of Shylock) would be pressed to say who the person is to whom the title relates. Do we want that sort of confusion, if we are talking about the very real effects that other people's attitudes (not always conscious) have on almost every detail of the lives of people with an experience of mental ill-health?
For those attitudes get translated into a behaviour with as many points on it as most spectra, from which, maybe:
* funny looks
* crossing the road to avoid
* suddenly halting a lively conversation
* name-calling
* telling stories to councils, the Department for Work and Pensions, social services, TV Licensing, the RSPCA, etc.
* excrement on the car / through the door / over the fence
* damage to property, pets, plants, etc.
* putting burning paper through the door
* personal physical attack
* arson (burning paper through the door that 'works')
* murder (where death is not the result of the arson)
That's for the home-life of that person - home, or feeling that one has one, being much of what is left. Since the chances are that, if he or she had a job, an enforced hospital stay led to another spectrum of behaviours, ending in dismissal or resignation. (Home, that is, if an arsonist - or a violent partner - left any home remaining, other than the streets.)
A grim picture? Not an exaggerated one, though, because all of these things do happen, and one thing can lead to another - after all, who is an expert in responding non-provocatively to that sort of attack on who one is and what one has?
No worse considering it than the fact that the mental-health community shudders every time some violent or fatal crime is associated with the perpetrator's mental ill-health, because a backlash is feared. I come back to that phrase:
Who one is and what one has
That is what we want to protect****:
Who one is can so easily and so subtly be under attack, a stealthy attrition that is upon one before one is aware of it, just as is what one has, mentally or, in physical / emotional terms, the little that one calls a home, family, or friends, all of which have a tendency to slip away, if they did not already at whatever breakdown is (the Peer Support Workers call it psychiatric challenge).
Stopping a world continuing to exist where these things happen and are casually - or callously - taken for granted is what combating stigma should work for:
The verbs to traumatize and to stigmatize (both from Greek, so they have a similar ring) are closer than we realize, and using the word 'stigma' - to me - says not nearly as much.
We are stigmatizing people for things that they did not choose to happen. They are not weak, they do not deserve it - if it meant anything to our society any more to say it, we would know that There (but for the grace of God) go I.
This is the significance of talking about one in four people - not that one gets into a four where there already 'a mad person', so that one is magically safe, but that the former slogan of The National Lottery applies: it's not you yet, but how do you know that it won't be?
We must not traumatize people further for what has already left them traumatized - if we were human beings in any real sense, we would stay with them while they seek to tell their stories, weep with them over what has happened already, and help them to heal, and to feel healed, not judged, criticized, abused, spat out and scapegoated.
And, above all, we would burn that stupid slogan out of our hearts, Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
End-notes
* Or whatever one's preferred term, as, sadly (in a way), there is no agreement even on that: e.g. mental distress (Mind), mental health difficulty (One in Four magazine), mental illness (NHS), etc., etc.
** Re-made, apparently, unhelpfully faithfully, according to one person who could not see the point of re-enacting the old screenplay.
*** Hesitating to dilate on what is added (or lost) when a visual artist calls every work Untitled, although I will recount how a symbiosis occurred between a painter and a poet:
André Breton, spokesman for the Surrealist movement and a poet and novelist, came to know Arshile Gorky and his works. The two men had a good relationship, such that Breton wrote about and gave rise to titles of many of Gorky's later works
With a good (i.e. apt) title (like The Canterbury Tales), can it be separated from the work, because it is now part of it (and of its meaning)?
**** Even if the dismissive (and damning) ways of some consultant psychiatrists can make the job harder, right at the outset, of that person believing that he or she will not always be like this, always need medication, never get back to work, because it is too stressful.
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25 July
These are some further thoughts about what meaningful message, if any, is given to the public by talking about the stigma of mental ill-health*.
I suspect little more (and who judges a book by its cover - don't we all?) than titles of texts such as, being quite random, The Tao of Pooh, The Road to Wigan Pier, The Dancing Wu Li Masters or Lady Windermere's Fan.
Yes, they identify something, and not always exclusively: for example, film convention is to write Psycho (1960), not least as it was re-made**.
Do titles / names do any more than identify***? Only, I feel, if they are apt, rather than arbitrary (remember the times when no one knew what counselling was, and everyone had to explain that they weren't seeing a counsellor to get advice?): as my footnote says, the titles that Breton gave to Gorky's paintings seem apt, as does The Canterbury Tales.
Contrast that with The Merchant of Venice, because many people (we have probably all still heard of Shylock) would be pressed to say who the person is to whom the title relates. Do we want that sort of confusion, if we are talking about the very real effects that other people's attitudes (not always conscious) have on almost every detail of the lives of people with an experience of mental ill-health?
For those attitudes get translated into a behaviour with as many points on it as most spectra, from which, maybe:
* funny looks
* crossing the road to avoid
* suddenly halting a lively conversation
* name-calling
* telling stories to councils, the Department for Work and Pensions, social services, TV Licensing, the RSPCA, etc.
* excrement on the car / through the door / over the fence
* damage to property, pets, plants, etc.
* putting burning paper through the door
* personal physical attack
* arson (burning paper through the door that 'works')
* murder (where death is not the result of the arson)
That's for the home-life of that person - home, or feeling that one has one, being much of what is left. Since the chances are that, if he or she had a job, an enforced hospital stay led to another spectrum of behaviours, ending in dismissal or resignation. (Home, that is, if an arsonist - or a violent partner - left any home remaining, other than the streets.)
A grim picture? Not an exaggerated one, though, because all of these things do happen, and one thing can lead to another - after all, who is an expert in responding non-provocatively to that sort of attack on who one is and what one has?
No worse considering it than the fact that the mental-health community shudders every time some violent or fatal crime is associated with the perpetrator's mental ill-health, because a backlash is feared. I come back to that phrase:
Who one is and what one has
That is what we want to protect****:
Who one is can so easily and so subtly be under attack, a stealthy attrition that is upon one before one is aware of it, just as is what one has, mentally or, in physical / emotional terms, the little that one calls a home, family, or friends, all of which have a tendency to slip away, if they did not already at whatever breakdown is (the Peer Support Workers call it psychiatric challenge).
Stopping a world continuing to exist where these things happen and are casually - or callously - taken for granted is what combating stigma should work for:
The verbs to traumatize and to stigmatize (both from Greek, so they have a similar ring) are closer than we realize, and using the word 'stigma' - to me - says not nearly as much.
We are stigmatizing people for things that they did not choose to happen. They are not weak, they do not deserve it - if it meant anything to our society any more to say it, we would know that There (but for the grace of God) go I.
This is the significance of talking about one in four people - not that one gets into a four where there already 'a mad person', so that one is magically safe, but that the former slogan of The National Lottery applies: it's not you yet, but how do you know that it won't be?
We must not traumatize people further for what has already left them traumatized - if we were human beings in any real sense, we would stay with them while they seek to tell their stories, weep with them over what has happened already, and help them to heal, and to feel healed, not judged, criticized, abused, spat out and scapegoated.
And, above all, we would burn that stupid slogan out of our hearts, Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
End-notes
* Or whatever one's preferred term, as, sadly (in a way), there is no agreement even on that: e.g. mental distress (Mind), mental health difficulty (One in Four magazine), mental illness (NHS), etc., etc.
** Re-made, apparently, unhelpfully faithfully, according to one person who could not see the point of re-enacting the old screenplay.
*** Hesitating to dilate on what is added (or lost) when a visual artist calls every work Untitled, although I will recount how a symbiosis occurred between a painter and a poet:
André Breton, spokesman for the Surrealist movement and a poet and novelist, came to know Arshile Gorky and his works. The two men had a good relationship, such that Breton wrote about and gave rise to titles of many of Gorky's later works
With a good (i.e. apt) title (like The Canterbury Tales), can it be separated from the work, because it is now part of it (and of its meaning)?
**** Even if the dismissive (and damning) ways of some consultant psychiatrists can make the job harder, right at the outset, of that person believing that he or she will not always be like this, always need medication, never get back to work, because it is too stressful.
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