Friday, May 16, 2008
Public Leaning Post
I have spent almost my entire life, believing that on the whole what the BBC reports is pretty much the way it is. I look on most accusations of bias by the Beeb as being biased themselves, seemingly just the author's own dislike of the truth. In general this is still the case. Auntie does not speculate that much - for the sake of not prejudicing legal actions, the more grisly byways of criminal happenings are reported in a simple, matter-of-fact manner so as not to wind up de judge.
However, I have noticed in recent years that the BBC news is beginning to attract a certain pinkish tinge in it's headlines and reporting, a scream of red-top sensationalism here - a bit of editorial idiocy there. It's all so saddening.
The trigger for my ire today was the rather intrusive reporting on the Chinese earthquake which seemed to involve cameras in the faces of the bereaved and long, lingering shots of body parts in the rubble. The reporter in the spot - James Reynolds - is Damien Day from Drop The Dead Donkey. I note that he has form for fake reporting as well. It's all so saddening but of course maybe it is me that has changed - it just all seems different from my early memories of TV news. Driving to work today I almost turned over from Radio 4, thinking that we would all be better off for not hearing as much about what happens in the rest of the world but that would be a cop-out. The world is rapidly returning to black and white after a brief period when it seemed that people were beginning to understand shade. Maybe this predicts the resurgence of extreme right and left in the country.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Cyclotrons And Random Possibilities.
Faithbased and failing falls a Friday fair of face and frit of widdershins, the black dog pacing lordly round the church like smoke and deals of end of life. The mourning edges of the papers tell of single deaths in screams; contrasted with not many dead, disastering in voyeurism for the masses led to deep anxiety by all the rich and famous. Civility, they say is fading and then report like sewer rats on flaws - of skin - of character - of mind - shouting out the news of latest crackings - latest hospital admissions, latest affairs of heart and business -scream out the deaths of fifty in revenge for Government decisions and ignore the indecision killing millions. Money is a god, a deity, inactive like a beloved royal, beyond the leader columns, not to be reported on in case we slow the growth of factories that pump out misery and idleness disguised as productivity, as value added, as marketing. The ideas of children taken to our baby-timer adults, a mind to shout above the rest, to flash and grate and and scratch your way ahead by always being there, watching one way, shouting back the other through the telescreens, the slow pace gone for ever in the lack of silence. I wait for the climb of birds this spring, the lark, an old friend, in spirals, chaotic dives against the random currents put up by sun on field. And all the rest of this world swallows the distant sounds of commerce, the hum of traffic repeating the same old routes to market and to workplace. This is a call for idleness, a call for slowing growth for sake of stable minds. And all the saints make hospitals by magic, create silence for eternity, a part of universe blocked off with research and billion dollar cyclotrons. Maybe the world will disappear into this vortex, this mass of particles annihilating in the magnets we burn our coal to power. Sum over history stops all that's gone and all that is to come from being real and turns us to observers only. All that's to come runs in.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Psykko Rain Dance
I have just finished reading Deaf Sentence by David Lodge. As usual, this latest in the stream of books that David Lodge has written about various academics, uses a mix of styles and tenses to suggest an unconstructed narrative without actually descending into the realms of the usual heuristics of the modern novel. And yet deep down, while it seems to move towards a tidy conclusion, it ends up being just a window on a wider world. Of course (and I have to use this phrase in any review of a Lodge Novel) there is nothing outside the text so my sudden realisation of what was going on and what the conclusion would be, remained just a thought in my head for that bombshell was left undropped - indeed not mentioned again.
The Guardian Digested Read of Deaf Sentence laments the lame puns of the misunderstandings created by mishearings but I have to say that my request for "Deaf Sentence" in the bookshop resulted in a computer search for "Death Sentence" (though not on the "Death Menu") before I corrected the assistant. There is deep satisfaction in the fact that a profound and clever academic seems so able to pick out the details of modern life without seeming a distant and unavailable observer. It is possible to pick out many layers from any David Lodge book, to see a straight story, allusions to older, literary classics (Knobsticks!) and beautiful examples of deep areas of academia that us mortals can't really hope to understand fully.
Oh - and it is quite funny as well.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
A Review Of Something Old And Something New For You
(Not Gérard Depardieu)
A battle between the narrative and the poetic - the pre-meditated and the heuristic - the Subtleties of light jazz oratorio-style musical and scratchy, sample driven post-post-post Trip Hop. With Tell Me On A Sunday we have a collaboration between Don Black and LLW of the double crown - a story which starts without explanation and rides up and down the various highways of a woman's journey across America - a woman foregoing the low-life darkness of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriaty for the crystal-lined malls of air-conditioned, muzaked high life with various "creative types". Sounds horrible doesn't it? I bet you'll cry somewhere along the line. Somewhere in the years between this record coming out and now, the technology has swallowed the feeling that good old vinyl used to paste over everything - or at the very least allowed to shine through. And despite TMOAS only being available on MP3 (or CD if you have fifty quid to spare on eBay), the emotion really does come through, managing to avoid the mauling that mp3 hands out as the penalty for fitting 3000 CD's on something that you might throw away by accident.
This story has no absolute start - it drops our heroine in New York, already in anguish at some proto-yuppy having done the dirty on her. What is obviously clear is that whatever traumas happen to this woman, her girlfriends are bitches, nasty gossiping harpies with drink problems and accounts with the plastic surgeon. You wonder why she stays in the country when it is so obvious that the solution to all her problems lies back home with mum and possibly with Neville Braithwaite as well. Still -- nothing ventured - a relationship with a high roller - however much it is pre-destined to last about as long as a mayfly - is still an adventure compared to a life of boredom and the pub on Sunday back in Muswell Hill. And a flight home would end the beauty and crime that is this record.
We drop in to this world-as-a-stage - it is much like the strange set-based drama of One From The Heart - without any idea of why our nameless narrator has decided to leave Neville and camp out on fifth avenue with Joe. But immediately we find out that Joe is a git - a businessman at large - I cannot help feeling that the relationship might have been saved by judicious use of the higher-numbers on the hotel TV service - and that there are plenty of unfulfilled women itching to reveal how much of a git he actually is. So Joe goes the way of all Joes and we learn a little too much about the pseudo-intellectual that is Sheldon Bloom and of course the one thing about pseudo-intellectualism is that it rubs off. Not sure why but this part of the story is the most likable for me precisely because of the LA Story atmosphere. The outsider's analysis of the empty life of film people is both a beautiful and emotional song - a passionate reaction to the ever-sunny days and lives of the empty-heads of Sunset Boulevard. And as added beauty and comedy we have Elaine Stritch as Mr Stigwood's secretary - almost but not quite as iconic as Martin Amis' appearance in one of his own novels - or have I got the wrong Mr Stigwood? And of course this relationship fails - we need no reason - it is destiny.
And who next? We are not sure. And we do not need to know. About now we lose track of the men - it all becomes a blur of happy mania, shocked and violent discovery of infidelity, and the lament to herself as our demi-ingenue rants and raves about how it is all her fault. She just picks herself up and carries on - all the time writing to her mum in the happy mode of Sylvia Plath writing home. It ends in a blur of all three modes - like there is no real beginning there is no ending either. This commentator can only hope that the final misery is brought on by jet lag as she waits in some East Coast airport for her connection home. Did you cry?
And now we have Third by Portishead - a ten-years-after album that before relase hung on the cusp of the graph of catastrophe theory - it could be nothing other than a pointless re-hash of the past glories of Trip Hop or a triumphant parade down the lesser-travelled byways of alternative music. Portishead are one of the few bands to handle both life in the main-stream and the byways of such organs as Wire - indeed as has been mentioned in many-a-derisory review, they were the soundtrack to many a wibbling-classes dinner party - but let's not let that colour our opinion. Not having been to many such dinner parties, the associations of albums one and two are not brought down to tedious cliches.
There is no story here - I admit freely that the words of this record have not yet had time to seep in - and unlike TMOAS they have no chance to because they are incidental to the greater good of the music. The album opens with a sample of radio which immediately reminds me of Mr Kadali by Sing Sing, but any comparison stops there - we have a throbbing lo-fi intro which drops suddenly to the water-treading that allows Beth to moan over the top of the track. It is obvious that this is no Dummy and you will probably agree that this is a good thing. This track finishes as if the needle had been lifted off the vinyl. And now we pulse into seemingly random hits of deep and distant drums again waiting for Beth to sing.
There is no overall theme - though the voice is a constant - instantly obvious as Portishead and yet completely different from anything that goes before. Depressives should avoid - or maybe it would actually be therapy - isn't that the purpose of all music? The middle tracks (rip especially) sound dangerously, though not unhappily, like Goldfrapp to the extent that I was beginning to wonder whether Alison and Beth had ever been seen together. There are stand-out tracks - some with medals for the voice and some that win on looping strangeness that seeps in while you aren't looking.
It is obvious that there is no comparison between the two above records. Or is it? Like every human programmed to look for faces everywhere, we love it when we see connections that are not obvious and there are many here. Infinitesimal droplets of emotion sharing both musical and emotional scales are all around, artificial they may be simply because these two records are important - maybe constants in the ever-changing list of favourites that I am compelled to construct by my daughter. I realise that Third needs more listens to pick out the real nuggets but sometimes many listens leave you with simply an overwritten palimpsest of crayoned impressions. Both are great records and need no stars to reinforce how great they actually are.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Flags Of All Nations - Especially Mexico
Does not compute but will give you a vague impression.All my world-exploding thoughts came back to me yesterday and of course in reality would have trouble getting the lid off a jar of pasta sauce. One of them was about the slight (and as far as I was aware unheralded) change to the BBC News set and branding. My thought was about how the impression of an increase in detail might look good for such a set but does it actually detract from the contents of the news that is being presented. The first news programmes I watched started with a mono-tone jingle and a set of wavy lines which vanished with the music leaving the newsreader in front of a plain background maybe with a still photo illustrating the story in progress when the technology allowed. The contents were the thing - not the wonderful sci-fi environment that the presenters had to play in - Peter Snow was the only person allowed to play with graphics in those days. Now I can't help being distracted by the wonderfully-proportioned and tastefully-blurred backgrounds that look like something out of a catalogue of Constructivist art. Is El Lissitzky working in the BBC art department now? (rather apt as I am listening to Kraftwerk). It would all be wonderful on The Culture Show I suppose. Let's have Huw Edwards in a louche pose at the bar talking to Mark Kermode while Lauren Laverne "does serious" and tells it straight in the newsroom. Oh dear! That sounds like the mad colonel who tried to persuade Sue Lawley to demonstrate a condom on a banana.
I've just discovered that Mark Kermode is married to a Professor of film studies - Linda Ruth Williams. I bet it''s difficult to sit through a whole DVD in their house on a Saturday night.
Notes/Rants for this morning
Interests in common - talk about anything - Zellig. printing neatly gives a good impression - my Fs are not like Fs. The Bloomin(g) Heather kills me again and again - but it makes me feel like they have all gone out there for a last-gasp frolic in the face of the end of the world. Self-awareness - is this a sign of depression. It's catastrophe theory - not chaos - sudden tipping over into the tingling and the tears.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
There Is At Least One Sheep, One Side Of Which ...
The Kitchen Dalek is getting agitated. It appears to have lost its ability to fly - or perhaps it is an early Stair-Phobic model. It wheels around the table but comes to the edge and rocks back and forth as if contemplating leaping to its end on the floor. Several times last night, while I sat rapt (or maybe vegetating) in front of the telly, I thought of really big things that certainly needed writing down. If only I could be bothered to traipse all the way upstairs to get the notebook. Look at me - saving the world - if only I could remember how it went. I did manage to write something down this morning though I am not sure it really counts as anything that important. I was daydreaming about living happily without having to worry about loads of interactions with society. I don't mean being anti-social in a sit-at-home sort-of-a-way but just not having to worry about the ups and downs of day-to-day living. The trouble with this daydream is that the only way it can come about is by being sectioned and locked away in some horrible psychiatric hospital which is not something I would want to experience. I would also suspect that the criteria used to decide who gets so incarcerated are different from the days when you could be locked up for simply having loose morals - and quite rightly so - that they are different I mean - not being locked up for looseness. Maybe it is an irony that now society is so complicated that mental illness in the form of stress and depression is so much more common, that the chances of getting put somewhere to get away from these triggers are so much lower.
Of course what really should happen is that society should be made less pressurising. Kids should grow up in blissful ignorance of things like league tables and income tax (though not maybe rice pudding) and yet these days they end up getting the shakes at simple maths tests. At primary school I only ever got homework in the form of a project to be completed during the summer holidays. Now my daughter gets an hour a week, often on something the class has been tested on blind beforehand. I suspect that the red-tops image of the partying teenager may be a myth. Kids have been going through school pushed and pushed into doing dry tasks to achieve Government targets using a curriculum that seems to have less variety than a book of log tables and they end up gibbering adults, determined to work hard and get on for the sake of getting on.
All this "trying not to look at what I was trying to remember" has made me recall what I was thinking about that I should have written down. It was nothing at all really - just a simple restatement of the realisation that Extremism on both left and right is the joining up of the two ends of a big political circle. I suppose the only difference between Fascism and Communism is that one allows its torture to be outsourced while the other sets up a cooperative to do it. Having said this, the largest Communist country has realised that it needs to control its free-market - or it doesn't ... or ... err ... not sure what it believes in now - just keeping itself in power I suppose. So we have a free vote in the west and in this country most people can't be bothered to use it - do you know where your voting cards are? - while there are people being killed in other countries for the right to vote.
I've just had a further thought about China. I do seem to remember that they do have some limited democracy at the local level - whether any decision that falls outside of state edicts would be allowed to stand is another matter. Isn't China just too big to have any chance of full democracy working? Then again it works after a fashion in India. I'm not sure what the turnout is but I bet they appreciate the right more than we do. All of this is of course a wasted distillation of the disparate fragments I have managed to read regarding the various democracies and other political systems. Actually, it's a pointless exercise in filling up, a thought I also had about yesterday's entry but I suppose it helps to unravel my own thoughts.
There does seem to be a big gap between what I am able to express and what I actually think. I have felt superior to many people commenting on various news stories because it seems that they are unaware of how big the world actually is. People seem to think that one example of something they agree with or wish to propagate in society is enough to prove that it is right. I repeat a favourite phrase of the minute - The plural of anecdote is not data. However, I have also seen this phrase used by people as an introduction to something that they then go on to rant about as if data was indeed the plural of anecdote. Like saying - "I don't mean to be rude ... " or "with respect". This may all be part of the idea of "Enlightened Ignorance". Don't get dragged into the arguments because they are often only conducted by the extreme supporters of either side. I recently read about a debate on the death penalty where the participants were simply allocated to either camp - pro or anti, and it made me growl that is was thought that any reasoned argument could come out of this. Indeed the narrator's own argument consisted of simple statements of facts about death penalties in various historical and geographical contexts followed by a blurry non-sequitor that seemed to suggest that his heart was not in the argument he had been forced to defend. Indeed there was no indication whether he actually was pro or anti.
All this leaves me in my own blurry state, but isn't that the way of all but the most confident of people? I tried to be like de Bono for a while and to state that I was right and everybody else was wrong - but that is impossible and makes one out to be a total jerk.
This hat is really snug - not too tight mind - just right. An ideal hat - a superior hat - a hat one could grow old with.
Monday, April 21, 2008
A real Mencken manque
Nowhere did today say it was going to be like this. But no day announces itself with any level of accuracy. Indeed there is no proof that a day will begin at all. I suppose that the split second of the start and that of the corresponding end will always occur even if the machinery of the solar system -the mechanism that determines what a day actually is - simply vanishes in a bizarre accident involving some undiscovered (and remaining undiscovered) sub-atomic particle (perhaps the charmed schmo or a top dork). Actually nothing happened out of the ordinary today - I wasn't thinking that it would and of course there is still a good portion of today remaining in which something strange might happen. Somewhere in the world someone dreamed of something - probably quite ordinary - and then it happened in real life but that was only strange within its context - when compared with the billions and trillions of events around the world, there must be billions and trillions of these incidents. In fact there must be billions and trillions of these incidents that never manage to bubble to the surface and gain entry into any one's consciousness. They probably keep bubbling up like matter-anti-matter particle pairs, annihilating each other most of the time, occasionally one making its way into someones head and becoming real. My neighbour at this desk is probably related to me within six generations and yet neither of us have any definite knowledge of the fact. Shall we see what happens in the rest of the day? It must be pretty big to get past my boredom threshold. See you in tomorrow (which is an Adverb by the way).
