I knew Don Pasquale as a Cambridge restaurant

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12 August

* Contains spoilers *

I went to that restaurant for the first time with a friend long since lost - the Varsity Handbook of the time said, deliberately cruelly, that it was about as Italian as Watney's (itself rather an anachronism).

By utter contrast, Donizetti's Don P., relayed live from Glyndebourne (a place that my rather more well-heeled friend would know - I know that he knows), was not anything like a tepid ale, but magnificent, piece and production.

Excellent high-definition relay of Donizetti's Don Pasquale from @glyndebourne at @CamPicturehouse - beautiful writing for vocal quartet !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 6, 2013

With what little I know of opera buffa, principally from a Haydn caper (with another man led into a delusion, that time that he had been transported to the moon), I was expecting something...

Interesting stage-business in Donizetti at @glyndebourne via @picturehouses : skull turns to oysters, Harry-Potter-type pictures as doors...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 6, 2013

Here, the craziness was introduced step by step into the action proper, though signalled by the doctor (Dr Malatesta*) climbing in and out of secret passages during the overture - he could, equally, have been a behavioural scientist, and the others rats in his Skinner box, because he knew their world better than they did, and, more or less, pulled all the strings. (A rocking-horse soon after carried by the Don onto the part of the set that represented his (adult) nephew's bedroom hints at absurdity - no one knows the true meaning of Dada (as in Dadaism), but it is the French term for such a creature.)

Danielle de Niese is stealing the show at @glyndebourne in Donizetti via @picturehouses - beautiful voice, wonderful and confident manner !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 6, 2013

I say, more or less, because de Niese (as Norina) is his essential collaborator, and she really throws herself into it, more assiduous than even Malatesta 'to teach Pasquale a lesson' ! Echoes, in that objective, of The Madness of King George (1994), Twelfth Night, or even the framing-device of The Taming of the Shrew. Notions of moral worth and not having a swollen head, which give us the term shrink (from head-shrink). (The oysters referred to above (and all that they imply) appear when Pasquale flips a hinged painting over, hiding a contemplative skull as memento mori, showing where his libido is now seeking to lead him.)

Malatesta is as focused on ends not means as Norina is, hence her not being averse to taking a bubble-bath whilst he is around, or to his getting into it... Surely not in the libretto, but pointing up what's in it for him in all this !

Likewise, Pasquale's retainer cum nurse, who is both clearly jealous when Norina in disguise comes on the scene (or curious when Malatesta shuts her out), and part of the notion that what is 'wrong with' him is his miserly and stiff-necked attitude. As Pasquale, Alessandro Corbelli showed his experience, and brought out the comedy both of his folly before 'marrying', and when his 'wife' has revealed himself in her true colours : de Niese wonderfully went to town, and Corbelli was her perfect foil.

Nice use of a revolving-stage in Donizetti's Don Pasquale at @glyndebourne via @CamPicturehouse - quick-change moves between scenes, vibrant

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 6, 2013

Malatesta, creeping around the place at night like some over-sized Borrower, has been mentioned above, and this is where the stage's potential first became apparent - he would slip through one aperture, and, as the scenes moved right to left, appear somewhere else. All creating a pretty creepy, almost delusional feeling, of someone unseen on manoeuvres when one is unawares, and a very convincing (and two-faced) portrayal from Nikolay Borchev - according to one person leaving a comment on the Glyndebourne web-site, Malatesta is supposed to be 'the moral fulcrum of the tale', not a 'self interested puppet master', but, equally, de Niese was 'miscast'.

I cannot see myself ever researching this matter far enough to know what the plain text says about Malatesta, but, quite apart from anything else, Borchev sang well, and my recollection is clear enough that, unless passages have been deleted, interpolated or simply added, morality only seemed the doctor's part in the sense of Shakespearean 'problem' plays, such as All's Well That Ends Well or Measure for Measure.

Nephew Ernesto, played by Alek Schrader, did seem to have been miscast by contrast, because, for me, his voice needed to be blended with that of other singers, but otherwise seemed reedy and exposed when he had a solo line. As to Donizetti's music, de Niese seemed to have a fine sense for delivering recitative, and the harmonies created with four voices were quite enchanting.


End-notes

* The name appears literally to mean 'bad in the head', but we need not worry, because Donizetti is drawing on figures from the Commedia dell'Arte.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Russian dolls : the Western understanding of Pussy Riot

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22 August (updated 23 November - see asterisked paragraph)

I knew enough to make sure that I was accompanied by a native Russian when I saw Pussy Riot : A Punk Prayer (2013), if only because I wanted to hear whether the subtitles were both accurate and caught the essence.

However, it has to be said that the extensive perspectives shared afterwards by my sleeper-agent friend (we'll call her Agent Y) make me think that, without her there, I would have felt that I understood what was going on in this documentary, but have missed almost everything that, had I but known it, would have caused me to question the first-blush impression.

Starting with one thing, the three young women who were caught and put on trial after the events of 21 February 2012 (Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (Nadia), ‎Maria Alyokhina (Masha), and ‎Yekaterina Samutsevich (Katia)), one might have thought that there was a gross over-reaction in their ending up with two years each in a labour camp*. My point of comparison, probably, would have been the protest around a decade ago that sought to disrupt a live broadcast from Canterbury Cathedral - it must have been on the issue of gay clergy in the Church of England**.

What I, in trying to be worthy, may have been overlooking was the simple possibility that these women, however deeply held their beliefs, also just wanted to be somebody - after all, Maria's (?) mother did tell us that she had been very keen on The Spice Girls, in particular Victoria Beckham. Whatever girl power had really ever been about, it had never conflicted with self-advancement, it must be said.

Contrast their situation with that of people put away for sentences five times longer for being 'guilty' just by association with Mikhail Khodorkovskiy, and one could not help realizing that the plight of the rioting trio had to be looked at in the round. From what Agent Y said, which reminded me of things that I had heard before, there is more than a strong hint that Khodorkovskiy's continued and lengthening incarceration is Putin locking up a significant political rival.

Which leads on to another take on the trio : there seemed to be very free access to high-quality filming of all three girls' statements, both immediately prior to deliberation, conviction and sentencing, and for the appeal. They all spoke - as far as I could tell - with great assurance, and with clear articulation of the arguments and points that they wished to make, and nothing (except not being a Russian) got in the way of hearing every word of what they had to say.

* At Aldeburgh Documentary Festival last weekend, Nick Fraser, editor for the BBC for its Storyville series, commented on the footage of the trial : according to what he said in conversation with journalist Mary Ann Sieghart, after a screening of Rafea (2012), when it came to light, there was surprise that it existed, and no one quite knew how it had been obtained (and what the implications of using it might be). *

The attention of the world's media and press was on all this - we were shown part of an RT interview, and I recognized, for example, the initials on a microphone of Westdeutscher Rundfunk - but what, actually, was all this in relation to the other issues of Putin's Russia from which, maybe not wholly inconveniently, this served as a high-capacity sideshow ?

Couple this with some facts about the Cathedral that we were shown, outside and in (including in the infamous 30-second protest), and, however sincerely Pussy Riot's members on that day were seeking to further feminism and challenge sexism, one has to question what all this was about other than skin deep.

We were told that the Cathedral of Christ The Saviour was built in 1812, demolished (as we were dramatically shown) in the Soviet era, became the site of a swimming-pool, and rebuilt following Gorbachev - even if it could have been shown that there was a real heritage attaching to this place (despite simply not having existed for decades), Agent Y tells me that this so-called Cathedral is more in the political ceremonial arena, about as much a place of religious veneration as The Palace of Westminster.

Yes, one of the matters that the rioters listed as their issues (we did not really hear much from any of the other members of Pussy Riot, although it is clear that they are not, as perceived, the three who were on trial, plus those who managed to escape) was the lack of separation between Church and State, but this - for all its associations - seems to be as little a holy place per se as The Cenotaph. No one wants people to be disrespectful to The Cenotaph by association with the war dead, but to claim that it is a holy place is far fetched. Apparently, the Cathedral of Christ The Saviour is more of a civic memorial, less a spiritual one.

If, as is often said, The Church of England is, variously, the Conservative Party or The Establishment at prayer, a protest in The General Synod would have a religious element to it, but not seem blasphemous or desecrating a shrine in the way that was claimed by and for the Russian protectors of the Faith, who seemed quick enough to want to say (and without clearly distancing themselves from the perception)that Islam would have beheaded Pussy Riot for similar actions in a mosque (a double whammy of claiming another's intolerance, whilst being one slightly less hard line oneself).


Back at the film, we were left feeling that this was a holy of holies, rather than a perfect symbol of the Church being the reactionary servant of Putin's government - the status of this Cathedral is at the centre of our appreciation of what significance the members' action had. However, we were, at best, shown the Cathedral's congregation called to public prayer, with nothing, other than the police trying to move them on and a spat when tensions ran high, to say that they were not the unforgiving extremists whom they appeared. By which I mean that it was claimed that, because of how they appeared and what they did, the women must have been 'possessed' (a view shared by a host of a t.v. show of which we saw a clip), and there generally seemed - other than rather mechanistic waving of icons of The Virgin and Child - very little other than a human reaction to 'the offence' (real or perceived), and not a Divine one (or a mention of this saviour).

I forget who, but someone observed that no one would have derived any meaning, from the brief moments before the security guards stepped in, from the protest in the Cathedral - Pussy Riot proudly circulated footage of it, but, at face value, a few disarrayed seconds were never going to change the world, let alone put what was (apparently misleadingly) translated as It's God shit in context. Agent Y tells me that the actual phrase conveys a sense of going through the motions, of faking a faith : perhaps appropriate for people so offended, as six present were, that they had to complain to the prosecutor about how hurt they were.

We saw Pussy Riot's filming of three other demonstrations - at best, we were told that those taking part had received 'administrative fines', but no one could explain how their actions had not been known to Putin before. Then again, Agent Y says that, contrary to the assertion made by those close to the group that conceptual / performance art and staging a happening are not understood in Russia, such things are hardly new in Moscow, and, thus, that a man used to behave like a dog to the extent of excreting in the street.

In essence, one could sympathize with the Pussy Riot group in wanting to oppose sexism, and promote feminism, in the arena of Putin's politics. How effectual their protest had been before they chose a more high-profile target must be questioned, and what they expected from it, but so also must the film's complicity in presenting the Cathedral as more than a token religious place. If they have taken heat off Putin's other actions, allowing such free access to the court proceedings and to the women's relatives might have been a price well worth someone paying.


End-notes

* One, Katia (?), was released on appeal - unlikely though it seemed, an argument on a technicality was accepted to free her.

However, one must admit that things can be seen differently : Agent Y interpreted using an argument to get out of jail as saying that Katia did not really support her fellow members of Pussy Riot, whereas I observed that, even with the case of those who make or attempted to make mass-murder with explosive devices, the accused terrorists never say We are terrorists and proud of it - we did these things, but expect their guilt to be shown.

As to Katia's father, Agent Y perceived him as having been privileged with a good wage and a dacha before perestroika. That may have been so, but that was no reason to think that his proudly giving out photos of his imprisoned daughter was not genuine pride in her and what she was fighting for, rather than clutching at importance on her coat-tails.

** In fact, it was as far back as 12 April 1998 (Easter Sunday), when Peter Tatchell and six other members of OutRage! made a protest : as a man of good character, Tatchell received a small fine, was ordered to pay costs, and was told that a custodial sentence had not been in issue.


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Navigating a labyrinth

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21 August

Looking for Hortense* (2012) is engaged with its characters, rather than driven by a plot, and Kristin Scott Thomas, for all that she is a striking woman as Iva, is not a primary player in this film (perhaps even less so than in In the House (201?) – towards the end, she is not on the screen, and we hear her activities narrated. It is not for me to know whether Damien has always been suspicious of her, and Iva always held back from her desires by duty, but, if we felt that we wanted to know, there is enough to guess by.

What emerges more slowly, shown unfolding in Damien’s attempts to speak to his father (Sébastien Hauer, an important judge) to ask him to bend the ear of an authority, is what intervenes, in him, between action and execution, what impedes**. The connection of the matter with Judge Hauer, which is indirect at his end, is tenuous at the other, and when the couple known to Iva and him have sex in their bathroom, she, unlike he, is able to pass it off as being in love (as well, probably, as a natural way of celebrating what they believe that he has achieved).

Jean-Pierre Bacri plays Damien beautifully well, and, whether in the apartment, about the streets of Paris, or giving his lecture course in two post-modern confections of architecture, always feels in place. Set him, however, in relation to his father and to the man whom he finally and momentarily gets to meet (expertly played by, respectively, Claude Rich and Philippe Duclos), and it is clear that the latter two are of a kind, and from a different mould from the sort of man who he is : when the former calmly says that he is self centred and apologizes for any way in which he may have hurt Damien, it costs him nothing any more than it does for him to be candid and amaze his son, over a hasty lunch, by his attitudes to sex***.

When, eventually, Damien challenges Sébastien, as a passenger on the vehicle of life, to get off and make way for others to get on, all that shocks the judge is the fact that a weapon has got through security, and he then straightforwardly rejects, as if it were the most natural suggestion in the world to be invited to consider, anyone else saying how and when he might choose to end his life. For those with a bent for Kafka’s writing, this sense of obstacles, of getting to the impossible appointment and then being distracted not to make use of the time, will be familiar : more on that here.

Only in relation to Iva does Damien seem to stand his ground, in a like manner to that of his father with him, by rejecting her manipulative analysis that what has happened between them is what he wants, or that what she wanted changes having to address what is. The teenager Noé (Marin Orcand Tourrès) creeps to the door and listens. There is nothing to say, but I have a sense that maybe he was not Iva’s child, but came from a previous relationship. (If IMDb can be trusted thus far, he has Damien’s surname.)

A dazed Sébastien seems energized by what happened, although clearly upset by it, and we go with him as he appears to find more of who he really is and what matters to him. Not for nothing, surely, has Zorica sought to put the French at their ease (and not attract attention) by calling herself Aurore, dawn, and Isabelle Carré has captured the essence of this vital, if naive, younger woman****.

Yes, she shares characteristics with that idealized type of woman who is suddenly there, but she has an ease of manner, a breadth of emotional intelligence, and her heart appears to be in the right place. Perpetually keeping us guessing, the film leaves us with a vision of leaves on a tree, transformed as if into a painting made with a Chinese brush, perhaps an image of evanescence such as Damien first strove to find in the sky as a boy…


End-notes

* The original French title, Cherchez Hortense, takes the form of an instruction (or command) (Find Hortense !), not a present participle. If, as I do, one goes into films blind, one was early wondering whether Iva’s actor Antoine was going to be the last person who saw her (and she was Hortense).

** IMDb tries to summarize in one sentence : A wife pressures her husband to solicit work papers from his civil servant father, but they are a couple, not married, and judges probably are civil servants in France, but one doubts that IMDb realizes.

*** Unconsciously or not, Damien later seems to set out to test his own attitudes (and risk missing a nine o’clock appointment into the bargain) by drunkenly placing himself near one of his father’s favourites.

**** Dare I say it (and risk detracting from my own thesis), but Carré has been put in a potentially perilously equivalent position to that in Romantics Anonymous (2010), a chocolate morsel so lacking in substance that my interest soon collapsed.

 

 

 

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In a pear-tree ? : A review of Alan Partridge : Alpha Papa (2013)

This is a review of Alan Partridge : Alpha Papa (2013)

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20 August

This is a review of Alan Partridge : Alpha Papa (2013)

Alan Partridge : Alpha Papa (2013) is a tremendously enjoyable film. If one knew the subject-matter or some of the scenes, one might not be able to imagine that laughs would come (and so consistently), but it comfortably runs to 90 mins without outliving its welcome. (I doubt - never having subjected myself to it - that one could say the same for Steve Coogan in The Parole Officer (2001)...)

That is not meant to knock long-standing Partridge collaborators Armando Iannucci and Coogan down, but rather to say that they (and the others who co-wrote) know what they are doing with the character, and how far to bend him - in the other film, Coogan is credited as authoring it just with Henry Normal (a producer on Alpha Papa), and it must have been a shock that enough people did not seem to trouble themselves to see it (even though, on a low budget, it grossed respectably enough.)

If one looks at the Wikipedia® page for Partridge, it is written in a curious amalgam of fact and pseudo-biography, almost as it was not known where to place this would-be child of Norfolk (though Coogan neither attempts to sound as though he is one, nor does much other than mask his Mancunian heritage), and it reveals that we have had more than twenty years of Partridgeisms on radio, and not far short since he first appeared on t.v. Again, in the nicest way, it had seemed like longer, and I had hoped against hope that Partridge had not been made into a feature for the sake of doing it.

Those whose judgements I trusted assured me that it would be a safe ride, and now I see that Coogan had had a half-feature-length t.v. outing with Alan Partridge: Welcome to the Places of My Life (2012). Alpha Papa loses nothing from seeing the trailer (a feat of avoidance that is almost impossible to achieve), keeps the gags, by and large, safe with Coogan, and he delightfully (in character) loses his dignity (in various different ways) whilst trying to play each situation for his advantage.

I am not sure that one likes Partridge any more than one ever does, because he is always on the make, but he does get our resect - momentarily - in some of the scenes that he has to face. However, he really does not irritate in this nicely structured scenario.


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Tussling with Tibet

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16 August

Many years ago, a friend strongly urged me to read a book about the 14th Dalai Lama and how China had overrun Tibet. It was a small book, I liked my friend, so I did. I felt anger, and hurt for the Tibetan people and what had become of their culture

Nothing I have learnt, then or since*, prepared me for the level of content portrayed in When the Dragon Swallowed the Sun (2010**) : the politics of whether the Tibetan Government in Exile should still be seeking independence, or, as the Dalai Lama announced in Strasbourg in 1989, autonomy, alone are complex.

Dragon succinctly shows, by choice of speaker and judicious interviewing and editing,  how the stances operate not merely to create division between those advocating each aim, but differences of approach in how best to achieve them. Some say that one should claim independence in the hope of being granted autonomy, others that, in accord with the constitution of the People's Republic of China, there is a right to autonomy. Others still say that independence had always been fought for, but had not achieved anything, or that those who claim autonomy have not a single lawyer amongst them to argue for it.

Before Dragon, it had been tempting to believe that everyone (except the Chinese government) accepts that the forces of occupation had not, apart from in some bogus sort of way, been invited in to liberate the Tibetans from serfdom. However, we even hear some Han Chinese in dispute with protesters in San Francisco, who are campaigning for a free Tibet, and hoping to embarrass the Chinese government on the world stage at the time of the Olympic Torch, prior to Beijing 2008.

The Han Chinese want to challenge Tibetans as to whether they have ever been to China or Tibet (the Dalai Lama had left in 1959, and others had left whilst they still could), and so whether they have a right to a voice (an argument used both for and against, as far as I could tell). None of this stopped Bishop Desmond Tutu from making a personal appeal for how the Dalai Lama deserves respect as a great human-being, or Richard Gere from endorsing the justness of the cause, but the Chinese wanted to say that the Tibetans do not pay tax, and that, unlike the Tibetans, they can only have one child.

Looking beyond the issues, there are gorgeous views, some in stunning time-lapse, of Tibet (the mountain and the monasteries), shots of its people, and scenes on the street in Tibet and in China, and of protests in Delhi, again at the time of the Olympic flame. (We likewise see Beijing and its Olympic buildings and new shopping centres / malls, and there is a contrast with the 2008 Tibetan Olympics (presumably held in northern India).)

Again, there is disagreement about how the protests had been mounted, and whether it would have been possible (and, if so, why it did not happen) to register an incident, by extinguishing the torch, to bring international attention and pressure to bear on Tibet.

Inevitably, with a subject where genocide is alleged, there are shots of corpses and wounds and footage of people being hurt or telling how they had been tortured. As this is a complete view of the Chinese occupation, we are in doubt how difficult it is for people to envisage change, not least those who are settled in India and, between marches and commemorating dates such as 10 March, have to get on with their lives. Some spoke of being accepted in India.

Amongst other things, dance, music, chant, Buddhist tradition and garb, and lovingly composed shots, for example water streaming off the edge of a roof, make for a richness of feel to this thought-provoking documentary. It does not tell you what to think, but makes clear how many people are thinking in different ways about Tibet under Chinese rule.



End-notes

* In more recent times, I have also seen folks such as Michael Palin visiting Lhasa, and meeting the Dalai Lama in Dharmsala, India (and also heard Palin narrating his own book of Himalaya).

** Though the credits say 2011...


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Faber & Faber's [Film Director x] on x series

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15 August

After a special screening of Time Bandits (1981) the other night, I have sought out Gilliam on Gilliam (edited by Ian Christie).

I did so, because these books are an excellent sourcebook of what, in interview with a suitable person from the world of film (in some way), directors have to say about their works, almost invariably grouping comments by film (or period) - I cannot commend them more warmly, and would certainly not be where I am without Woody Allen on Woody Allen (edited by Stig Björkman).


In the chapter that deals with Bandits, I have learnt, for example, how :

* Connery helped Gilliam with filming in Morocco, when there was more to do with shooting the fight than two days allowed, and the older man simplified his task for him

* Sir Ralph put Gilliam through various tests, both before accepting being God, and then in God-like mode, but was still a trouper

* The scene where the mirror / boundary that separates the Bandits from the fortress had not been originally written (and, if it were conceivable, more screen business, this time with Edwardian spiderwomen, had bridged from escaping the giant to getting to the fortress), but had arisen from David Rappaport's aloofness from the rest of his team

* The ending would have been different, if Connery had first not used up his fourteen days in the UK (and so it could not be shot as planned), and, because Gilliam then nabbed Connery when he came to the UK to see his accountant

* Palin had written the role of Robin Hood for himself, but had accepted that Cleese would be fine when billing / financial reasons had required

* The scene in Holy Grail where the animals are thrown over the castle walls was done (as this information impinges on effects in this film), and also the cage scene in Bandits

* Gilliam says that he had never read C. S. Lewis (or known of his use of wardrobes*)


As I hope that I may have demonstrated, a way of learning about films from the inside, and a book in which I shall next be reading about Brazil (1987)...



NB The British Film Institute (@BFI) now has an interview with Gilliam on its web-site...



End-notes

* I think that Christe errs, in his end-notes, in considering The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe first of the books(though the ordering and publication history scarcely make matters clear).


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'Cutting out' blogging

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14 August

Was the word 'blog' really cut out by a fan of Merz - or did Daniel Defoe coin it in his A Journal of the Plague Year ? Soon on the trail...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 14, 2013

Bogus Derivations 'r' Us ?

In other words, the Internet being what it is (a dustbin with ~0.005 % reliable content), don't take seriously the etymologies that you read there, founded on the scholarship that led to The Hitler Diaries (and that fairly amusing film Schtonk ! (1992))...

So we are told that blog is short for web-log / weblog, but - I have to ask - who in the heck, other than some would-be Captain Kirk, would call such a thing such a thing ?


Captain's log, Stardate 45 point 78 point 69 B theta minus Cosine ABC


It's less whether we can establish that there is any truth in the assertion (which, of course - for a suitable Jim-Rockford-type daily rate plus expenses - one could look into) than choosing to swallow it. For me, I don't, because it sounds like a crap guess dressed up as Fact :

To my ear, blog sounds far more like the sound that a woodpecker sort of bird might make*, which - in its typical formulation - is what blogging is, the knock knock knock of sense out of our heads by the endless repetition of tired arguments, debateable points of view, and assorted nonsense that supposedly sounds good just for the saying.


Going back to Hitler and 'that whole endorsement thing' (as some would style it), possibly it is no more schocking than Ossian / Macpherson (in 1760), or what Wikipedia® calls the free-wheeling translations by Edward FitzGerald (I like that description) in the following century, but plus ça change is a bit of a cop-out, is it not ?

Anyway, my guns and pump are primed, so Anything could happen - all in the Best Possible Taste, Cupid !


As they say, Watch this space...



End-notes

* I need to check, in that facsimile of what T. S. Eliot really wrote (before Ezra Pound got his hands/ pen on it - no wonder Eliot states / quotes 'For Ezra Pound : Il miglior fabbro' at the front (in 1925) !), whether that bird-noise was notated in 'The Waste Land'.


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Bowie cuts a dash - or Leave 'em wanting more, Ziggy

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13 August

I am not so sure that the (V&A) Victoria and Albert Museum has always been - or given the impression of being - a museum of art, design and performance. No matter.

If it is one, then why not David Bowie is, and, one wonders, what will be next when this has been the most successful exhibition ever ?* I had not endeavoured to catch it in the flesh (even if that had been possible). However, perhaps I had not been given enough idea how ambitious and adventurous it was, until two of the curators (or it may just have been a co-curator who was shown on film), Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh, presented the live relay to-night.

David Bowie from @V_and_A at @CamPicturehouse brought back memories of the Apollo missions, Starman, Let's Dance, Warhol, Ashes to Ashes...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 13, 2013

Popular exhibitions are often quite a lot more choked than we were given an impression of, and, for that reason, I tend to avoid the irritation of unwanted bodily contact, the neck-craning, and the sheer exhaustion that builds up when one has to look at it all in one go, so this was an ideal glimpse. Glimpse, because one's not going to see everything, and maybe makes a mental date with Paris in 2015 to look at it then.

I speak quite personally, but costumes without anyone in them say little to me, whereas The American Museum's display of Marilyn Monroe gowns and other objects that she had come close to or owned had the advantage of stills and clips from films - I am not saying that this one did not, but I was left cold by seeing the outfit that Bowie had worn to perform 'Starman' on t.v. Partly because, as with that for it and for 'Ashes to Ashes' and others (I was cheated of any more than hearing 'Let's Dance'), I remembered seeing it, partly because the handiwork looked faded, jaded, unreal, a bit like a sloughed-off skin, it said nothing much to me, whereas we dwelt on it and enthused.

If this was truly a thematic approach to presenting different aspects of Bowie, then the inter-titles really did not signal very well that it was being taken, and so I could not fathom why we suddenly jumped forward to the Union Flag frock-coat from Earthling (an album from 1997 that I admire, so it was a shame to get so little sense of it). Then we jumped back, and hardly came anywhere near until footage from Glastonbury in 2000.

#DavidBowieis that guy strangely talked of in the past tense - and, as one member of the public said, he's not even dead !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 13, 2013

Curiously, too, we spent a few minutes on how the cover of the album 'The Next Day', but - as I do not yet know it - I had no notion whether I was being played any of it. In one breath, decades of a career as performer**, song-writer, actor were being celebrated, but it felt as though the last decade and a bit were, by omission, being written off. I do not know if that is a fair impression, but it was the one that I got - if others felt at any level that recent projects or work were not being endorsed by this event (whatever the exhibition might do), at least that balance was redressed to an extent by the guests whom Marsh and Broackes brought to the Nineteen Eighty-Four podium, complete with 'breaking the rules' quotation along the front edge.

Of these, Jarvis Cocker was most persuasive, whereas Kansai Yamamoto seemed to wander into a forest of incoherence of his own making, whence we could barely hear his voice. Christopher Frayling commended most highly Bowie's acting in The Man who Fell to Earth (1976), which again unfortunately suggests that he might as well have spared his efforts since, as that is a while ago (at least, though, he did not mention Absolute Beginners (1986), whose source had been waved at us...). Much more than this, the enthusiasm of talking heads from what seemed to me members of the public (against an uncrowded display) was telling.

I wonder when Bowie, who played Warhol (I hadn't known that fact, @V_and_A), first came to know him and his approach, @CamPicturehouse...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 13, 2013

Overall, I was very pleased to have seen this very high-quality relay. What did lessen my enjoyment of many of the videos was the V&A branding, with banners either side, and a compression of the image into a square (in one case, maybe to the detriment of the aspect ratio), for what I love best about film is that it seems to disappear into nothing at the edges, and this treatment made it less than immersive. Bowie's ambition and self-belief were strongly stated, but we had no evaluation at all of that beautifully distinctive quality to his singing voice.

Still, maybe there was too much to say in 90 minutes, although I would have thought that the concentration on his handwriting, writing techniques and skill could have tempered by mentioning the delivery of the lyrics (or the strength of his music (against his words), or how it has been variously realized...).

Now out of David Bowie is... happening now via relay from @V_and_A at @CamPicturehouse: a kaleidoscopic tour through a shape-changing career
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 13, 2013

End-notes

* Yet I remember that there had been timed tickets when the tapestries from St Peter's that had been made from the Raphael Cartoons came to London, and also that I could not get into the William Morris show.

** At some point early on, he seemed to have played tenor sax - at least, was photographed holding one. What could his sax tone have been like, and do people rate him as a guitarist (again, no comment to-night) ?


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Frances Aha !

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10 August

So, why did I write what I did as a footnote to my review of Frances Ha (2012) ?


These are my clues (in roughly chronological order) :

* Colleen (Charlotte D'Amboise) is a figure of huge importance in Frances' life. (No reason why she should not be.)

* However, although Colleen several times indicates to Frances that she does not have time to talk at the moment*, but will have later, Frances persists, seemingly unaware of the (social) cues

* Frances, just before Colleen makes clear - in a nice way that acknowledges Frances, but asserts her need - that she has to get on with the wadge of correspondence, Frances blurts out that she is pleased that she asked Colleen about classes, and, in fact, she is more pleased that she felt able to ask than disappointed that, as it turns out, Colleen does not (think that she can) offer her any work

* At the flat, when she has moved in with Benjy and Lev, Frances says that she has plans for Sunday when offered a bacon-and-egg roll - and is then shown, having stayed and eating such a roll

* When Colleen tells Frances that she will not be able to use her for the Christmas show, Frances is busy with the things that have come from her bag (a small rucksack that is almost always with her), and apologetically says that 'leaving' is a problem for her

* In framing what she has to say to Frances, Colleen says that she has told her with a few days' warning so that Frances will have a chance to process the information

* Colleen knows that it is bad news for Frances (indeed, Frances has to move out from sharing with Lev and Benjy, and - it is unclear for how long - goes to her parents' house)

* However, Colleen is quick to make sure that the door is not felt to be shut on Frances, by saying that they will talk about the future when things resume in February


* The impulsive trip to Paris :

** The cost, put on a credit card that came through the post, and which, at the time, Frances is happy with (she meets Benjy and his girlfriend (?) in the street just after she has made the decision and explains her plan), though later has to agree with her parents that it had been a mistake

** Wanting to see Abby (one of the old gang of which Sophie and she were part, and whose 'politics' Frances had been talking about at the dinner table), she nevertheless goes to Paris without knowing that Abby is there and free to see her, and persists in efforts to make contact

** The assumption that the meeting with Colleen is so important that it cannot be moved to allow her longer in Paris (perhaps Frances dare not ask this time ?)



The film had affected me when I reviewed it, but I found Frances' relation to life more moving still the second time around, and felt particularly keenly for her when she :

* Has left her parents at Sacramento airport (and, symbolically, re-ascended the escalator)

* Realizes that she has said too much - and why - after the account that she gives of herself after dinner at the party

* Is at the table outside the café, both before Sophie rings, and when and how Frances signs off

* Realizes that Sophie has gone after she crashed with Frances in the dormitory, and desperately hurries outside to call out to the departing taxi


The film is not completely about this, but the themes of abandonment are strong


End-notes

* As a dancer who has to do management work, as Colleen ironically comments.


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Article in The Guardian as popular as Crocodile Dundee's snake in a lucky dip ?

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10 August

To my mind, such of the mental-health community as has been lashing out at Giles Fraser's article Taking pills for unhappiness reinforces the idea that being sad is not human has missed the point :


Typical comment on Twitter says that Fraser does not know what depression is, whereas I believe that those readers have not troubled themselves to understand what he is saying, and, therefore, he is just as misconstrued as those who experience / have experienced depression often are.

Far be it from me to defend Thatcher, whose beliefs and policies I despise, but I no more believe that her There is no such thing as society speech was given a fair press* than this article :


1. Fraser's first two paragraphs, i.e. setting the context for the rest of what he talks of, are about his behaviour at school, how children who behave like that now may be diagnosed with ADHD, and may even be prescribed ritalin.

2. Anyone who has watched the documentary Bombay Beach (2011) will have seen Benny prescribed with anti-psychotics, which I find even more horrifying.

3. The third paragraph I come back to, though the effective point is that, just as diagnoses of ADHD and prescriptions have risen sharply (there are nearly four times as many in just eleven years), so have prescriptions for anti-depressants.

I do not read what Fraser says here as saying that his experience amounts to depression, but the opposite, i.e. that it does not.

4. The fourth paragraph talks about how chlorpromazine (thorazine in the States) and other medications came to be used for the purpose of altering mood in psychiatry, and were originally used for treating infections.

I see nothing much wrong in inferring that, if a medication can be licensed, manufactured and prescribed for some other purpose, then the pharmaceutical industries have a motive for promoting them.

5. Fraser does not report them, but some recent studies have been quoted where it has been shown that the effect of anti-depressants is no better than a placebo. If true, that not only casts doubt on why the NHS spends money on them (or we take them), but also strengthens what Fraser is actually saying.

6. In his final two paragraphs, he brings together the industries' desire to make and market products with that of GPs to do something for patients (either because the patients are distressed and ask, or because, in any practice, there will be GPs who are 'more interested in' the physical side of health, and who maybe do not know better than prescribing when others would not).

7. Fraser has been demonized as if he does not know what depression is, whereas I follow him as saying that maybe things that are not depression are treated as if they are.

No one who knows how little training GPs (primary health, as it is called) are required to have in mental health would :

(a) Go to his or her surgery without establishing which doctors lean towards it, or

(b) Believe that the fact a doctor has prescribed means that it was appropriate, or that a referral to secondary mental health services, pressed as they are, would even be accepted.


To suggest that Fraser's article is really of a Pull yourself together kind is, I think, a hasty and ill-judged reading, stemming from anger and disappointment at believing depression to have been written off.

However, he would have done well to make clear that he is not disputing that depression exists, only that treating people as if they have clinical depression (i.e. without their having symptoms such as anxiety, waking too early or sleeping too much, not feeling much - or anything - emotionally, etc.) is not really doing them a favour.


End-notes

* Since I gather that she meant just the opposite of what people claimed - still, it all helped remove her.


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My PhD in Appliex Matricus pays off ?

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9 August

Theory : Dawkins is like Agent Smith, and just absorbs more power from all the attacks on him. Experiment : Send him into Outer Space.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 9, 2013

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Fancy tickled : A rough cut of my delayed review of Kathryn Tickell and The Side

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9 August

A report from the finale of this year’s Cambridge Summer Music Festival, a gig held at Childerley Hall, near Dry Drayton (Cambridgeshire), on 4 August 2013

Any event that begins with Bartók played at a suitable level over the PA system, followed by what I take for a legato performance of a rag (maybe Joplin, maybe Mayerl), promises well. This festival, which embraces not only the worlds of Northumbrian piper Kathryn Tickell and The Side, but also those of jazz, early music, modern composition, chamber recital, choral concerts, and the classical concerto repertoire, to name but a few, is where one would expect what is conventionally called eclecticism or variety – breadth, perhaps.

The breadth, indeed, that Kathryn Tickell herself represents, not just as an instrumentalist on Northumbrian pipes and fiddle, but also as composer, raconteuse, solo performer, arranger, teacher, vocalist, and band-leader, to name but a few of her roles or skills.

All images by kind courtesy of Reed Ingram Weir Photography

I was not wrong in writing the above : a very appreciative audience of some 500 listened to music of, indeed, breadth, and which was played with great feeling, in the beautiful venue of The Long Barn at Childerley Hall, one of the hidden secrets in the close locality of Cambridge.
Along with trio The Side (about whom more in a minute), Tickell gave a full evening’s worth of music, dancing and, above all, expressiveness – of her love of Northumbria and its people, landscape and fauna, of music, words, and other musicians, including – on stage with her – Amy Thatcher (accordionist, clog-dancer, and vocalist), Louisa Tuck (cellist), and Ruth Wall (lever-harpist).

The two-set gig ranged from a hornpipe (pipes and clogs) to Tickell’s wonderful (in its full sense) and instructive introductions, even to a Beethoven piano sonata* transposed and altered for brass quintet and then refigured further in the dance form of a strathspey, such that she hoped – in the nicest way – that there might be no trace left of the original at which she had hinted ! (Apparently, the score is saved on her PC as Beetstrath…)

Hardly surprising, though maybe he did not often go that far, that she named Percy Grainger as a leading favourite of hers, and that, with Thatcher, she had been involved in a 2009 Prom dedicated to his music – we had a taste of that night and of the collaboration as we were given first straight Grainger, and then a piece that had been reconstructed from one of his arrangements back to an idiom more akin to that of ‘Molly on the Shore’, the starting-tune.


Interlude

If Clive, one of the very genial owners of Childerley, had not spoken to me after the gig and when I was about to pursue getting the bulk of this review laid down, I would have more detail of which of the four played in what, when and what it was, but that may be lost to the mists of time… What I can say, from this visit and previous ones with the Summer Festival, is that the property is a delightful one for a picnic in the weaving – confusing, even – laid and other grounds. (There is a map, but some of us like to explore – even at the risk of getting lost.)

Thus I have seen it before, prior to the unusual experience of being in The Long Barn for jazz (big band, and also Jacqui Dankworth with smaller forces), which is very long (almost as if it had been not a barn, but a locomotive-shed), and very nicely appointed. One may need a compass and a good sense of direction to find Childerley Hall (that phrase about beaten tracks directly applies), and to go about the grounds, but it is all worth the trouble !


Back to work

As I checked after close of play, I knew that had seen Wall play before : indeed, she had had two other harps with her (at Kettle’s Yard, in Cambridge), and had played a fascinating programme (which included some pieces composed or arranged by Graham Fitkin, her husband). She told me (because I asked) that around 10% (maybe sometimes 20%) of what she had been playing was improvised (during the performance, I could see that she was moving sheets around between numbers at the base of her harp, and, without studying them, they seemed to set out the chordal structure.)

Tickell told us that she had worked with Thatcher on projects such as the Prom, plus the pair has a history of profile public music, such as a composition with delightful saxophonist Andy Sheppard for the millennium, Music for A New Crossing. Before we heard it, we were advised that this bridge is in Gateshead – and does not wobble !

All images by kind courtesy of Reed Ingram Weir Photography

Other than that she started leading the cello section of Royal Northern Sinfonia six years ago, the programme said relatively little about what Tuck has played (or where) as an orchestral or chamber soloist (but there is more here). No matter, since her playing said it all – crisply executed pizzicati, lovely resonant bass-notes, and a wholly sonorous accord in the ensemble.

Those comments, as to quality (if not to the detail), apply to all of the group : the tone of Wall’s harp had a real sparkle to it in the bright, upper range, as well as adding to the lower textures of the whole. From time to time, when there were radiant lead-notes for the harp in the harmony, I was put in mind of the musical discourse and style of The Poozies (thinking, especially, of their Infinite Blue album).

Maybe not when Wall really expected it, she was invited to take a solo, and, as with everything that we heard this night, it was met with immense enthusiasm. (In fact, when first welcomed to the stage, Tickell joked, with her typical well-judged timing, and with warm-hearted understatement, You haven’t heard us yet….)

Thatcher, one conceived, maybe could have had a chance to dazzle us more on accordion, but, of course, this was always billed as being headlined by Tickell, and, just as a matter of programming, it would actually have felt contrived to give all four a solo spot.

In fact, Thatcher almost had one (twice) on accompanied clogs, and the virtuosity that otherwise could not come so much to the fore alongside the pipes, because the reedy, shining upper part of the range would not fit so well (e.g. in the set of tunes with ‘The Wedding’), she exploited more when Tickell played violin, which she did in roughly equal measure, and with the same feeling and assurance.

Having cello and harp with their wonderful range (not least that warm, singing upper register of the former, for which so many have written with matchless beauty), as well as contributions from accordion and the drone part of the pipes, meant that there was a very full texture available, which some would call richness of sound, and this is where my point of comparison is with that of The Poozies. To my ears, everyone was also pitch perfect, and Tickell and Thatcher maintained a good tuning between numbers.

I have no doubt that many, as I was, were drawn by Tickell’s name and recordings, but, with a first outing together on stage such as this, it is important to stress what a good match for each other The Side and she are. When Tickell began the second set with two tunes, she played them with great expressiveness, with an almost keening quality in the second, drawing out the notes as if our heart-strings, and playing the music so sensuously that it felt akin to arousal.

Her skill, of course, is immense, and that is because the music, where it comes from and what it means to her are so deeply experienced, as she communicated to beautifully in her introductions, but in particular to that of ‘Yearing’ (? a title, taken from a place, that I cannot confirm), with the depiction of the morning air and the sound of the curlew.

This collaboration, with the gifted members of the trio and ranging from Thatcher’s or Tickell’s compositions to ‘Lads of Alnwick’, does not merely deserve to do well, it will do well – staid Cambridgeshire tapping its feet, whooping, and dancing in the aisles testifies to that !


Quite a number of months on, Ruth Wall had agreed to do an interview with #UCFF, where she tells us how it was for her, as a performer, being at Childerley for the first time in public in this line-up, and what she liked about this and other venues on the tour


End-notes

* The slow movement of an unspecified one. No one had the courage to guess which, although they guessed other challenges.

** As Tickell explained, they are pitch variable to accord with the key in which the chanter is being played.


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A comment on a criticism of Will Self

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9 August

In a reply to an article by Will Self in The Guardian's Review, Max Dunbar wrote this piece, which I now quote at the beginning of my comment :


It’s by the novelist Will Self, who makes several big assertions: first that ‘no fixed correlation has been established, despite intensive study, between levels of serotonin in the brain and depression.’


If this is 'a big assertion', which usually means that someone is claiming something unreasonable, something that cannot be proved, then, in reply to Self, there is nothing that addresses this point that he makes :

Much hangs on his assertion, because low levels of serotonin (and hence wanting to inhibit serotonin's re-uptake in the brain (or parts of it) with Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors, so that it is around for longer) might be cause or effect, and I understand it to be correct that decades of work have not established which.

The corollary is that, if low serotonin is the effect of someone being in depression, and that their response to their life and what is happening in it is the cause, then questions arise not in relation to clinical depression, but to conditions such as bi-polar disorder, where there is supposed to be a chemical imbalance.

We could be looking at low levels of serotonin (depression), or high ones of dopamine (high mood) : do life-events make someone's mood high, and then high levels of dopamine result, or vice versa, and why, if that is still a question, does the pharmaceutical business still not know the answer ?

Maybe not such a big assertion after all... ?


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The politics of grooming

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8 August

The word 'grooming', applied to gorillas, means someone taking one's nits and bits out

Applied to dogs (and so-called parlours), it becomes something more decorative, more trivial

In the phrase He was patently groomed for promotion, the social hierarchy of the first usage (whom grooms - and is allowed to groom - whom) and the conspicuous results of the grooming come together : everyone knows who has been groomed for promotion, because they see it, and they know what it means - beautified, he or she can use the executive toilet, and do no wrong


But God knows, except that the favouritism is sinisterly preferring someone when others might have more ability, etc., and / or be better able to perform the role, grooming now just seems to mean preying on clients, vulnerable adults, teenagers for sex


A strange journey, possibly not much thought about by those who happily adopt the latest usage... ?


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