Will Self continues to bewitch, bewilder and beguile me with his cultural commentary.
It’s not that I especially agree with him or think that he’s any more insightful than other critics.
It’s his delivery.
There’s his voice (a basso-profondo monotone that is comforting to the point of hypnotic) and his vocabulary. The man is a walking thesaurus and a one-man dictionary of ideas.
Here he is being interviewed on radio (interview, mind you; not a ‘talk’ from notes) about the German novellist W G Sebald:
“Humanism is a synchronic belief about history. It’s a belief in progress. Sebald is a writer who believes in full temporal simultaneity. He is a self-confessed metaphysician. I think he’s almost a Kantian trascendental idealist.”
Just say that last phrase aloud: ‘a Kantian transcendental idealist’. And imagine the mind that can weave it into spontaneous speech.
From Self, that doesn’t sound like showing off. It’s just the way he speaks. They are the perfect words to deliver his thought – and if we, the audience, don’t understand, well we’d better do some work for once to raise ourselves to his level.
Will Self doesn’t “dumb down” – indeed, to even suggest such a tautological idea will have him snarl at you with contempt: Is is possible to dumb up?
It’s a common criticism of the English that we don’t like intellectuals. If Self was French, he’d be a national hero, with his own late night talk show, interviewing Derridian deconstructionists and Lacan structuralists.
Here, he goes on Vic & Bob’s “Shooting Stars”.
That probably says more about us than it does about him.
Popularity: 9% [?]
An overheard life story:
“She always loved the flute, right from an early age. She practiced and practiced and practiced – went through the grades like a knife through butter. She was a natural. Then she had the chance to try out for 2nd flute with the Liverpool Philharmonic.
“So she went up for the audition, and there were two hundred others who’d turned up. She didn’t even play; she just turned around and came straight back home. And from that day she never picked up the flute again.
“She’s happy enough now (this happened several years ago). But we’re still not allowed to talk about what happened that day.”
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A rather youthful Willie Bain has just won Glasgow North East for Labour.
Is there more to his Party roots than officials are letting on?
I think we should be told.
Popularity: 61% [?]
On a visit to my local coffee shop to grab some lunch I ran into Ivor, one of the neighbourhood eccentrics.
There’s something of a garden gnome about him; he’s quite small, very crumpled and has a face that’s been sculpted in clay. Like Robin Cook, without the beard.
‘Hello Ivor,’ I hailed.
“Hello. I know you, don’t I?” In truth, most people avoid Ivor, so he’s always grateful for a conversation. “You’re the man with cats.”
My brow furrowed. ‘No Ivor. You’re getting me confused with someone else.’
“You’re the one with cats. You’ve got two cats.”
‘No I haven’t.’
“Yeeees you have. A tabby and a ginger.”
‘No Ivor really, I don’t have cats. Not at all.’
He stared at me, blankly, trying to reconcile his version of the truth with my strenuous denial.
“Are they dead, then? Well, you didn’t look after them very well, did you?”
He stood up, adjusted his cap, thrust his hands into his pockets and strode out of the shop, passing two old dears on their way in, who sat at the next table to me.
Ivor turned and hollered: “You wanna watch out, you know. The cat protection people will be after you. Killing cats.”
I spent the next ten minutes avoiding eye contact with a couple of Medusa’s great aunts.
Popularity: 3% [?]
How many times have you crossed to the other side and failed to help a fellow citizen in need?
How many times have you ignored the plight of the poor, the lame and the destitute?
Today, we’re offering you a chance to make good on that; an opportunity to put something back into society and to help a group who have suffered long enough.
This is an appeal for the Organisation for Refined, Gentlemanly And Sensitive Management.
With full backing of the Football Association, the Samaritans, MIND and the KJFOOOG Foundation (Keep Johnny Foreigner Out of Our Game) we are launching a fund to help those deeply wounded by offensive body language.
* * * * *
This is Sam.
Sam has given his life to football, and has enjoyed an illustrious career. His trophy cabinet is full of the League of Ireland First Division Cup (1991-92).
He is selfless in his approach to the game. As recently as 2007, the Stevens Enquiry highlighted how Sam was using his position and influence to look after others – especially his son, Craig.
Sam deserves respect.
And yet on Saturday 11 April he was the victim of a viscious attack by a Spanish assailant who, for legal reasons, we will refer to as ‘Snr B’.
It is testimony to Sam’s bravery that he is willing to speak publicly about the trauma it has caused. (Readers of a nervous disposition might want turn away.)
“He opened his arms out and then crossed them over.”
Tears well in Sam’s eyes as he relives the horror:
“The game is hard enough as it is without a fellow manager doing what seemed to be an undermining gesture.”
It has left him deeply injured:
“In terms of respect, you don’t expect those sort of things to happen in a game of football. I was very, very upset by it.”
The attack was witnessed by 43,366 people, but it is a sad reflection on our society that no one came forward to report it. Until now.
This is Alex.
He watched it on TV a few days later. At first, he hid away, unwilling to speak about this blight affecting Britain. But after hearing of Sam’s case, he came forward to offer his considered version of events:
“To get that sort of contempt…is beyond the pale”
Alex is obviously very angry at what he saw. His face is very red.
“Arrogance is one thing. You cannot forgive contempt, which is what he showed last weekend.”
So there we have it; independent corroboration of blatant arm crossing and lack of respect towards one of the most vulnerable members of the community.
We must protect people like Sam.
Please give generously.
Next week: Pudsey Bear will appeal on behalf of Sports Writers in Need (of a Story)
Popularity: 16% [?]
Roy Castle, Greg Norman, Murray Perahia and Anthony Trollope: apart from being a surprising back four in my Fantasy Football team, writing about them yesterday really struck a chord. After a week of whinging, they gave me a reason to be positive.
Which set me thinking: in addition to the challenge of writing a blog every day, is it possible to extend a run of entries that are positive? Being cynical, being sarcastic, pouring scorn and generally complaining is easy, especially in these times.
But being upbeat? How long can I keep up that pretence?
Actually, it may start as a pretence, but it can become self-fulfilling. I enjoy writing, and an hour or so at the keyboard, creating and shaping, is very rewarding. But yesterday was different; yesterday, writing about people who had committed their all and become best-in-class was, well, invigorating. Indeed, I feel a frisson of energy again just thinking about them.
So while getting a complaint or a rant off my chest is quite therapeutic, it’s not enough. It cleans out the stable, but doesn’t put in any new straw.
Time to make hay. In this time of economic downturn, financial uncertainty and general malaise, I am determined to look for the positive, and hopefully start some on-line conversations about what, in troubled times, makes a good person and a good life.
ON KINDNESS
Driving home this evening, I listened to a recent podcast of ‘Start The Week’, on which psychoanalyst Adam Phillips spoke about his new book “On Kindness”. If I understood correctly, his thesis is short and to the point: kindness is very rewarding, yet despite that we prevent ourselves from acting kindly. This is for two main reasons:
- it leads to a level of intimacy that we’re not comfortable with;
- we are afraid that if we show this side of our nature too much, others will take advantage of us.
Put another way, I don’t have time to be everyone’s friend, and in a dog-eat-dog world, you can’t afford to let down your guard.
(I remember a few years ago, on a ‘Leadership’ course with my then employer one of the managers summed up this dilemma with a very graphic aphorism: “We’re all acting like foxes, and you (the company) want us to behave like rabbits. Which is great, and I support it in principle – but I don’t want to be the first rabbit.”)
Yet we all know that ‘what goes around, comes around’, that ‘you reap what you sow’ and that you ‘have to give to get’. So why do we find that so hard?
GREED IS GOOD
It’s a very timely question, given that we are awash with bi-centennial celebrations of Charles Darwin’s birth. After all, while his theory may have evolved (excuse the pun) in others’ hands, there’s one undeniable truth about it: survival of the fittest, right? Every man for himself. Winner takes all.
That’s one pillar of the anti-kindness environment. The other is capitalism. In an open market, where each individual is rewarded for efforts and results, the system encourages selfish behaviour. ‘I am paid to win’. ‘Greed is good’. We are encouraged to compete, which in turn encourages hostility.
(Before we go any further, let me reassure you that this is not about to descend into an anti-banker / capitalist / globalisation rant. There are enough of those in the blogosphere generating heat and very little light. That is not my purpose here. I’m looking to find what I can do within my circle of influence, rather than my circle of concern).
Even if we are not paid in this way, the signals we receive constantly from the media reinforce the individual-as-conqueror motif: the CEO who lead the turnaround and is now worth xx hundred million, the sports person who ‘took’ the title, the politician who ‘destroyed’ his/her opponent at the despatch box.
KINDNESS HEROES
Very few win plaudits or awards for giving – but that is not surprising, because genuine giving does not expect anything in return, least of all public acknowledgement. Kindness gives for its own sake.
There is an inherent humility within kindness that seems to sit better with an earlier age. The most vivid example is to hear the stories of Victoria Cross recipients; almost to a man (and they are mostly men), these heroes are extremely reluctant speak of their actions. When they can be persuaded to recount their experiences, the theme that comes through is one of detachment: “the ‘person’ who saved the lives of others wasn’t really ‘me’, and I’m rather embarrassed by the fact that you associate ‘me’ with the bravery.”
The humility of those individuals is as moving as their bravery. But while it’s inspiring to hear about the potential perfection of the human condition, their testing of limits hardly helps me negotiate an average day with any real meaning.
So I look for someone closer to home: and soon arrive at Aunt Mary.
DUE NORTH
Aunt Mary came from hardy stock. Born in Country Durham into a mining family, she grew up helping her mother feed and clothe six (I think) brothers who worked down the pits during the 1930s and ’40s. I’m not sure how she met Uncle Bob, an engineer from Greenock in Scotland, but they married and headed for work in Southampton Docks. She was great friends with my mother and eventually became my Godmother.
Several years after retiring, Uncle Bob had a yearning to go back north to his beloved Scotland, like a salmon swimming upstream. While they had enjoyed a ‘comfortable’ life together, they weren’t rich, so ended up moving into a council block near the Clyde with a view of the former shipyards where Bob had served his apprenticeship.
Bob had found his resting place; the ever-industrious Mary was less settled.
She had always been a keen gardener, with the greenest of fingers that could cultivate orchids on ski slope. So moving into a tenement flat was very difficult for her. But growing up in the North East in pre-war years prepares you for anything.
Soon Mary was growing some pots outside her front door; a few red geraniums, a couple of chrysanthemums. Nothing fancy, but a splash of colour. The elderly gentlemen next door remarked upon this one day, so Mary took a cutting, potted it, and set it outside his front door too. She did the same for the widow on the other side. Soon, three front doors were framed with a splash or red and orange.
FLOWER POWER
The postman mentioned this to housebound woman on another floor of the block, who sent him to Mary with a message asking if she’d pot a couple for her. Of course, she obliged, and while on her deliveries, deposited a couple of spare plants to the house next door.
She repeated those random acts of kindness many times over the ensuing months, then began to notice that other pots were appearing, on landings and stairwells that weren’t on her ’rounds’.
The punch-line of this little family tale is that after three years that tenement block made it to the Scottish finals of Britain in Bloom, competing against some of the finest formal gardens north of the border. It didn’t win (this is real life, not a Hollywood script), but that didn’t matter. The competition was no more than recognition for a wonderful woman who brightened the lives of hundreds of friends, neighbours and strangers, expecting nothing in return for her kindness.
Looking back, I think Mary is the closest I ever came to meeting a saint. She gave constantly, and radiated a permanent glee in doing so. Her laughter was infectious, her love for others seemed boundless.
And she was the best personal example I have of why kindness in not only mutually beneficial, but is also a way of living meaningfully.
In an attempt to keep heads up in these turbulent times, following her example seems as good a place to start.
Popularity: 3% [?]
As a lad, one of my heroes was Roy Castle. Back when the entire world was a sunny place (before my cynicism hormones kicked in), I could tell that the terpsichorean trumpeter was a bit special.
Part of his appeal to me were the glasses. As a spec-wearer – and recipient of the playground taunts – I’d seen Roy in one of the ‘Carry On’ films. with a pair of jam jars strapped to his face: myopics could make it in the movies, even if he didn’t get the girl.
Drumming, tap-dancing, singing, the world’s best impression of Stan Laurel – Castle was a human Tigger, a one-man advert for Duracell who was forever ‘on’. Even at the end of his life, during his treatment for cancer, and having lost all his hair, he undertook a ‘Tour of Hope’ to raise funds for the study of Lung Cancer and the building of a specialist centre.
But his greatest mark on the psyche of my generation was, of course, ‘Record Breakers’, a TV version of the Guinness Book of World Records. Each week, Castle and the McWhirter twins (editors of the book) would host a variety of the weird and wonderful, the brilliant and the bizarre. Fastest, tallest, smallest, slowest, richest, poorest, bravest, strongest – all human life was here, at least from the extreme ends of the spectrum.
(Not content with just hosting, Castle also broke three records himself: fastest tap dancer, longest wing walk, and most instruments played in a single piece of music.)
More than anything else, it’s the closing song that sticks with me from that childhood viewing: “Dedication, dedication, that’s what you need/ If you want to beat the rest/ If you want to be the best/ Dedication’s what you need.”
Castle’s lyrics came up in conversation over dinner on Saturday (my, what lofty intellectual circles I inhabit). One of our fellow diners had been to see pianist Murray Perahia at the Barbican, and was overcome by the quality of his playing:
“Almost two hours, Paul, of the most beautiful playing I’ve ever heard. I’m usually hypercritical, but he was perfect; didn’t play a wrong note all night. No sheet music, no faults. Can you imagine the time and the dedication to practice to be THAT good?”
The comment prompted thoughts about others who have excelled in their fields:
The artist James Whistler who when asked to draw a sketch on a napkin, produced a beautiful image then asked for payment. “It only took few a few moments!” exclaimed the incredulous subject. “A few moments to draw; a lifetime to learn”;
The golfer Greg Norman, whose coach once told me that he practiced putting in the following way: at the end of a coaching session, Norman would take a bucket of 30 balls, place them 10 feet from a putting hole, and sink the lot. He’d them move to 20ft, and repeat. Then 30ft. And if he missed a single ball, he’d go back to the beginning of the practice – and wouldn’t go home until he’d sunk all 90;
Writer Anthony Trollope, who wrote for three hours everyday. After he’s finished his work as a civil servant at the Post Office, he would sit for his allotted time to ‘write as much as a man ought to write’. What was incredible about his practice was that even if he finished a novel in the middle of his 180 minutes, he would just turn the page and start the next one.
At a time when fame no longer lasts 15 minutes, but takes just 15 minutes to achieve, I find these stories – and other examples of dedication – to be joyous. That a fellow human being can give that much to perfecting his/her craft in order to build something that will last. There are plenty of examples in Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book ‘The Outliers’ to illustrate his 10,000 hour rule – that’s what it takes to be any good.
So why am I blogging about this today? Well, aside from the dinner at conversation, after a week of whinging about the standards in public discourse, I just needed to remind myself that it’s not all bad.
Indeed, excellence is all around us. We just need to dedicate ourselves to finding it.
Popularity: 17% [?]
According to the BBC website Schools Minister Jim Knight “has urged pupils to pay more attention to proof reading their work – admitting his own blog was strewn with errors.”
It’s a relief to know that the mantra of ‘education, education, education’ is in such good hands.
A lot has been ritten by people in the media who have people who check their riting for them about my blog. I have been critisised for my spelling, and, punctuation.
I want to put the record strait and deal with the acheivments of this goverment in raising standards and the amount of work that we has done investing in raising standards and ensuring that the quality of standards in education in this country are raised and is as high as anywhere else is given the resorces which we inherited after 10 year’s of Tory mis-management and underinvestment.
ME UNVAILING A PLARK
But let me adress the personal critisisms first which I have come in for. Noone is more committed to numerasy and litterasy than me. They are sentral plank’s to building a sucessful korea, especialy in politics. Words count. A lot. In getting the messige a cross. (Alistair Cambell tort me that).
Unfortunately (and rather sadly to), errers are made. The fact is my blog’s are ritten on the moov; my texts is sent from a blackbury. Like this one is being.
When your a busy politician like I am, there are a lot of things to do all at the same time, and sometimes things happen that can take you’re eye off the things that were happening because you have to pay attension to the things that has just happened. Like having you’re picture taken.
Im sure you no that sometimes mistakes creep in ocassionally.
But I am not looking for excuses for this. I am not an excuse for a goverment minister. I am a minister who is determinned to see through our policies. Im sure you can to.
Let me finnish by saying that many other people in Public life are offen critisiced for not apolugising when their wrong. That does not aply to me. I dont find it dificult to apolugise for other people at all. So, theirfor, sorry for the time you have waisted reading this and all the pointless coveridge that has appeered in various medias about me.
Like me, they shuld be ashamed, but arent.
Popularity: 25% [?]
If you have never seen “Noises Off” – Michael Frayn’s farce-within-a farce – then you have missed one of the funniest nights ever spent in the theatre. (Don’t bother with the film; it’s deadly.)
You have also missed the start of a slippery slope that ends up at ‘The X Factor‘.
Frayn’s premise is simple: on stage, what happens behind the scenes is funnier than what’s performed front of house. So he created the first Act of a non-existent play (called ‘Nothing On’), showed it in rehearsal then revolved the set to show what was happening backstage while it was being performed. The climax of “Noises Off” is seeing the first act of ‘Nothing On’ performed for a third time, but full of gaffes caused by the tensions and rivalries of the cast.
The comedy is builds because the audience has seen what’s happening out of view, and understands that the animosity between the characters is putting the people on stage in jeopardy.
(If ever you want proof that analysing comedy isn’t funny, read the previous two paragraphs again.)
Frayn showed us things that until then we hadn’t seen – indeed, weren’t supposed to see: The horror when a prop is in the wrong place, the panic when a door won’t open, the quick grope with the leading lady while her partner is on stage. He broke the spell – the border between reality and performance - but his brilliance was to substitute this imaginary fence with a series of stacking Russian dolls; a fake reality in a fake reality in a fake reality.
Which, some 30 years later, brings us to Simon Cowell.
Cowell makes no pretence about being anywhere near as clever as Frayn. In his press interviews, the high-waisted one always makes the point that he is a man of simple tastes, pleasures and a very grounded individual. He’s a fish-and-chip man, a pop song man, a give-the-people-what-they-want man, and to hell with the critics.
But in one way, he’s as clever – no, as brilliant – as Frayn. Because he saw that what happens behind the scenes, what happens before the performance, is as compelling, as dramatic, as funny as what happens ‘on the night’. Indeed, by making it visible, it enriches the actual performance. We know what his contestants have been through, we’ve shared their pain. Even further, we start to root for them. We’re bought in, even before Mr Cowell and his Syco company have released the winner’s first recording. We’re hooked.
And there’s one further twist to the process that should make Cowell the envy of every business leader in the land: he turned a major cost into a revenue stream.
Talent spotting is an expensive business. It takes a lot of time, a lot of travel, a lot of wasted evenings and a lot of disappointments. In short, you have to kiss a lot of frogs. X-Factor, Pop Idol, Britain’s Got Talent all take that cost, and not only make it part of the purchase, but make it the purchase itself.
We don’t just see how a finalist got to the final – we see dozens of would-be’s and no-hopers (or, according to Ben Elton, “Singers, Blingers and Mingers”) go through the process. That would usually be a cost to Cowell; he’s turned it into revenue.
Of course, the by-product of this is that Cowell (along with his fellow judges) come out from behind that invisible wall. They become centre stage. They become as much of the act as the winning singer.
That wasn’t true of Billy Marsh. Never heard of him? No – me neither. And that’s the point.
He was featured on Radio 4’s ‘Great Lives’, which is usually about one of the more obvious great-and-good. However in this particular edition, TV producer William G Stewart and ITV Chief Executive Michael Grade put forward the case for Marsh, a post-war theatrical agent.
Even taking show-business ‘luvviness’ into consideration, it was a warm, heart-felt tribute to a man who had touched both their lives: he taught Grade the ropes of agency life, and gave Stewart the backing he needed to start own production company.
However, the core of their argument was that Marsh had actually touched the lives of millions. As agent and spotter, he ‘discovered’ Norman Wisdom, Bruce Forsythe, Harry Worth and Morecombe & Wise.
It’s easy to be cynical about these names, but at their peak (the 1950s to the 80s), these acts were the giants of UK light entertainment. Indeed, Forsythe is still fronting #1 rated TV shows. All of them discovered, developed and managed by one quiet man, who never went in front of the curtain, who never signed a contract with his artists (his word was his bond) and who gained vicarious pleasure by seeing others succeed.
Performers can be notoriously difficult to handle. The stage/screen persona is not the reality; even the most successful can be deeply insecure. Marsh didn’t seek to eclipse his acts; he didn’t look for the limelight or his fifteen minutes of fame. His contribution was to help others be the best they could possibly be.
What better measure of a great life?
In a time of 24-hour media, of OK and Chat and Hello, of Ozzy-and-Sharon and Katie-and-Peter ‘documentaries’, Marsh’s discretion has become deeply unfashionable. You’re no-one unless you have profile – whatever the personal cost.
Of course, Frayn’s play isn’t responsible for all this – but it was the first time that I was aware of the curtain being pulled all the way back to show warts and all; to show the mechanics of how the trick was done.
Now, the mechanics have become the show itself. There is no longer any mystery; everything is exposed.
Perhaps it’s time to reconsider our collective hunger for transparency, and to put some things backstage, where they belong – unseen and unsaid?
Popularity: 2% [?]
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