stormzy at glastonbury…

The ability to convey powerful messages that resonate in these hugely difficult times - when the current world of politics, war and greed seems SO different from so many of our own desires and expectations – is an amazing gift.  
I found watching Stormzy at Glastonbury (on the tv!) utterly mesmerising.
Compelling music, charismatic performance, stunning staging and infectious energy. But what I found most forceful and impressive was the ability for music and words to convey massively important messages to the people-in-power… to condemn the issues that allowed Grenfell to happen (and shaming those responsible for allowing them to happen)… for the London Bridge victims (and those who failed to spot the warnings)… for the Windrush shaming farce… speak out about the injustice of young black kids being criminalised in a biased and disproportionate justice systemto speak out about the "injustice of young black kids being criminalised and disproportionate justice system" (in David Lammy’s words)… and so it continues.
A rapper who has become an icon.
An amazing example of someone who was a self-confessed “very naughty child, on the verge of being expelled from school”, but who found he could do well in exams… and discovered that A Levels showed him that in life “you need work ethic”. He’s intelligent, hugely articulate and has become the voice of so many people who feel that they don’t have a voice… (and, as a bonus, it seems that he’s a really nice bloke… and a man of faith).
Are you listening UK politicians?
Are you listening world?
PS: He also got the crowd to advise the world what they thought of Boris Johnson!
PPS: Check this out: “Blinded by your Grace: Part 2”

 

diego maradona...

I went along to the Watershed this afternoon to see Asif Kapadia’s film “Diego Maradona”. It wasn’t that I was particularly motivated to see a film about a famous footballer, more about avoiding UK politics for a couple of hours…
Obviously, I knew the ‘story’ – brilliant, charismatic, star footballer (we’ll ignore the ‘Hand of God’!) emerging from background of poverty… goes on to captain the Argentine World Cup-winning team and also inspire an ailing Italian football team (Napoli) into becoming league champions (twice)… and, of course, in the process of his growing fame and fortune, he also developed a reputation for being a womaniser, for links with the local ‘mafia’ gang and for hard drugs (which, it seems, the club knew about but ridiculously managed to get other players to donate urine samples on his behalf)(the drug-monitoring rules were obviously pretty ‘basic’ in the 1980s!).
There’s absolutely no doubt that Maradona was an incredibly gifted footballer and much of the football footage shows him at his most mesmerising. He joined Naples football club in 1984; although they had fanatical support, they had massively underachieved and had never won a major trophy. Naples itself was an utterly dysfunctional city. Amazingly, Maradona quickly led the club to their first ever title. The man was duly hailed as a hero… there’s a wonderful clip in the film when Napoli won the league and the fans in the city went wild with delight: someone had hung a large banner outside one of cemeteries, saying (in Italian, obviously!): “You Don’t Know What You Missed!”. However, as the magic later faded, he became a virtual prisoner in the city as he lapsed into drug-taking and despair. His ultimate humiliation probably came when Argentina knocked Italy out of the 1990 World Cup (on penalties) in, of all places, Napoli – and, before the match, Maradona had pleaded with the Napoli supporters to back Argentina!
It felt a bit like watching a documentary about George Best – a hugely-gifted footballer who was readily knocked off the rails by the lure of money, sex, drugs and alcohol.
It was rather depressing to watch images of this footballing idol change from lithe athlete to an over-weight, bloated, incoherent has-been (ok, he’s endeavoured to ‘repair’ himself over recent years, but not altogether successfully).
If you have a fascination in football, I feel sure you’ll find this an interesting film (although I think the bloke sitting behind me actually fell asleep!).
Towards the end of the film, someone described Maradona thus:
“Rebel. Cheat. Hero. God.”
I can’t improve on that.

more june 2019 books…

Thin Air (Ann Cleeves): I’m fast running out of ‘Shetland’ stories (this is the sixth – which means I’ve only got two more to go!). As usual, despite the books being nearly 400 pages in length, I gobbled it up in less than three days. Yes, some might regard such crime novels as ‘escapist’ reading material, but I really do love the books – the storylines, the landscape, the culture and the characters (especially Jimmy Perez). This book was no exception - another intriguing plot (a wedding guest from London disappears without trace or explanation and various references to stories about the ghost of a 10 year-old girl who died in 1930) and I love the linking narratives that run throughout the series. Excellent.
Conversations With Friends (Sally Rooney): This is my second Rooney novel (it’s actually HER first one, but I always seem to read stuff out of order). It’s about relationships – specifically between four ‘friends’ (some more intimate than others) – seen through the eyes of a 21 year-old woman (bright/student/poetry-performer). Of course, these relationships are somewhat complicated (it would have been a pretty boring book otherwise): misunderstandings, vulnerabilities, misinterpreted remarks, nuanced glances (are there such things?), witty conversations, sex (I’m getting old!), disintegrating friendships, self-destructive actions, walking on eggshells… you get the general idea. Actually, I didn’t really warm to any of the main protagonists, but Rooney’s writing style is quite brilliant (sharp, clever and wonderfully observed)… and I found the story surprisingly compelling. Very impressive.    
Washington Black (Esi Edugyan): This is our local bookshop’s Book Group’s latest book (my second since I joined). The novel tells the story of 11-year-old slave (Washington Black) on a Barbados sugar plantation in the 19th century. The plot is bizarre (to put it mildly): Black’s English master is obsessed with developing a machine that can fly; a man gets killed; the master and Black flee to the Arctic (as you do) - with Black then travelling to Nova Scotia, London, Amsterdam and Morocco… oh, and there’s also family history, hideous injuries, art, a woman, a bounty-hunter, zoology… and lots of stuff about racism and slavery. Although the book doesn’t say so, Edugyan (in an interview) indicated that she’d come across the story of a Victorian Englishman who’d been shipwrecked, presumed dead, off the coast of South America; his mother refused to believe he was dead (rumours about him turning up in Australia) so she sent a member of her household (a former slave) off to try and find him… and that had been the inspiration of this book. The novel was shortlisted the 2018 Man Booker Prize and so I was full of high expectations. Frankly, I was pretty disappointed. Although Edugyan is an excellent writer, I found the twists and turns in the storyline (as well as the ‘plot’ itself) ridiculously absurd, irritatingly fanciful, hugely unconvincing and, to my mind, with far, far too many strands. The book felt a bit like a cross between Jules Verne, Robinson Crusoe, Indiana Jones and Roots. Having subsequently read all the words of praise from a multitude of critics (eg. “astonishing”, “magnificent”, “terrifically exciting”, “nothing short of a masterpiece”), I realise that I’m probably the only person in the world who wasn’t completely captivated by the book… and that I’ll probably be given a hard time by my book group friends in due course!    
The Vegetarian (Han Kang): Talking of somewhat strange books… It’s difficult to categorise this short novel (Ian McEwan described it as a ‘novel of sexuality and madness”). Perhaps something along the lines of: compelling, disturbing, strange, extraordinary and defiant? It explores the life of a young South Korean woman and it challenges the strict value system that demands devotion to the family and conformism (and, while we’re about it, the denial of erotic freedom). It starts with the woman announcing (after a dream) that she’s become a vegetarian (for goodness sake!). Her family is horrified and tries to force-feed her meat; her father beats her in front of the whole family; and she’s sent to a psychiatric hospital. It’s in three parts: the first narrator is woman’s husband (a businessman - who thought he had chosen a spouse with an “insignificant personality” – and who is gradually horrified to discover her radical spirit which threatens his career and status!); part two focuses on the explicit, sexually-charged relationship between the woman and her brother in law; part three is told by the woman’s sister, who ultimately becomes her sole carer. Haunting, hugely challenging and darkly beautiful.
The Peregrine (JA Baker): First published 50 years ago, this book is being used by a few of us ‘blokes’ at church as a ‘try out’ for an occasional book group. It was compiled over a ten year period, from 1954 until 1964, by (in Robert Macfarland’s words) a ‘myopic, arthritis office-worker from Essex’ who tracked the peregrine falcons that hunted over the Essex landscape (over an area of some 200sq miles) on bicycle and on foot, watching through binoculars (his wife made him sandwiches and flasks of tea!). I’m not someone who’s particularly fascinated by birds, but this is a quite remarkable book. Baker (1926-87) seems to have an uncanny and incredible ability to detect a peregrine in flight or at rest as a matter of second-nature. It’s almost as if he trained himself to think like a peregrine. I think I’m someone who is pretty good at ‘looking’, but this book made me realise just how much (certainly as far as nature is concerned) I miss. The bulk of the book takes the form of a winter diary (including the savage winter of 1962-63) - describing the pergerine’s ‘kills’, its habitat, its prey, its need for daily bathing, its flight and Baker’s determination and devotion to follow individual peregrines over prolonged periods (none of your GPS devices or drones here!). His descriptions are incredibly detailed; at times, almost unbelievable in their clarity – accounts of things happening more than half a mile away. Indeed, I frequently found myself questioning whether or not it was what he saw or just what he thought he saw! I found myself reading the book in half-dozen page snatches - that is in no way a criticism, simply the best way I found to absorb the text as fully as possible. Baker is obsessed by the bird; he appreciates and understands that the peregrine overcomes its prey “by exploitation of weaknesses rather than superior power”. His painstaking observations, his detailed knowledge of the area’s geography and its wildlife are quite magical… and the language is lyrical, uncompromising, energetic and quite extraordinary. Despite the passion of his descriptions, one gets the impression that Baker was very much a ‘loner’ and not someone taken to making ‘wild gestures’ in public… so I was very taken by this diary note: “She drifted idly; remote, inimical. She balanced in the wind, two thousand feet above, while the white cloud passed beyond her and went across the estuary to the south. Slowly her wings curved back. She slipped smoothly through the wind, as though she were moving forward on a wire. This mastery of the roaring wind, this majesty and noble power of flight, made me shout aloud and dance up and down with excitement…”! A truly beautiful book in every sense.

“visual arts that have influenced my life and faith”…

I was asked to be one of three panel members at the next Resonate evening (the brilliant bi-monthly Tuesday evening gathering in Saint Stephen’s ‘Secret Café’, Bristol). The subject was to ‘present and discuss visual arts that have influenced our lives and our faith’…
No pressure then!
Coming up with examples of visual arts that have influenced my life was relatively straightforward (although ‘influenced’ is perhaps too strong a word?) – except that, of course, my ‘selection’ one week would be entirely different to my choices the following week! I duly started to add examples to a folder on my desktop… easy peasy. The problem was merely ‘when to stop’!
But then I received a message from one of the lovely organisers, suggesting that each of us panel members just come up with two examples. Just TWO! Blimey… how on earth will I be able to limit my choice to two, for goodness sake?

Image #1: Visual arts that have influenced my life?

So, of ALL the images I’d amassed, I had to pick just one. It’s ridiculously difficult and, like anyone’s ‘Desert Island Disc’ selections, the top-pick would change all the time:
FALLING WATER/FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT:
This sketch (by Wright, 1935) encapsulates my growing interest (and awareness) in architecture when I was still at school. It hasn’t influenced my faith (I wasn’t a Christian until I was 24)… but it started me off on a journey…
I was just starting A level Art, aged 15 (because I was in the ‘fast stream’ at school, I’d been forced to drop Art at the end of first year - but managed to persuade the powers-that-be to allow me to take O level Art in my final pre-sixth form year), and decided to take the ‘history of architecture’ option (for no special reason). I subsequently became fascinated by the likes of Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Frank Lloyd Wright… and also found myself REPEATEDLY taking out a book of architectural illustrations by Helmut Jacoby from our local public library (I swear I was the only person who EVER borrowed the book – and it felt as though it was really ‘mine’!). I later went on to study Architecture at university and, subsequently (in the days before computer-aided design etc!), tried to emulate the skills of Wright(!) and Jacoby in my own architectural practice – well, my work did include quite a few sketch perspectives for clients. So, it seems entirely appropriate for Image #1 to be an architectural illustration by Frank Lloyd Wright.

And then of course was the ‘other’ question: ‘visual arts that have influenced my FAITH’?

Well, the straight answer is: I can’t think of ANY art that has specifically influenced my faith… I REALLY can’t. I’ve attended talks by artists who have waxed lyrical on similar subjects but who, frankly, merely managed to wind me up by their somewhat gushing views (or maybe I was just simply jealous?)!

Image #2: Visual arts that have influenced my faith?

A couple of weeks ago, I came across this comment by a writer from Yale University’s Divinity School: “The urgent needs of the world force artists of faith to ask what truly matters in each note, paint stroke, or stanza”.
Whilst I’m sure this is true for some artists, this DEFINITELY doesn’t apply to me…
The trouble is that I simply draw what I see.
I’m NOT trying to send any sort of message out to the wider world. I don’t try to produce ironic (or iconic!), meaningful, passionate images conveying subliminal statements.
I do admit that taking photographs is somewhat different – frequently trying to ‘capture the moment’ (people, action, clouds, sunrises, sunsets …) – stuff that has gone forever within milliseconds or minutes.

It might be more relevant to ask: “is what I draw or photograph influenced by my faith?”. Perhaps the nearest I come to combining visual art with faith is encapsulated in Mary Oliver’s poem ‘Upstream’, when she writes: “attention is the beginning of devotion” (the poem issues a warning about “looking without noticing” – which has been my mantra for perhaps the last 25 years).

I found it incredibly difficult to come up with an appropriate image… but this piece of work perhaps comes close:
ANOTHER PLACE, ANTONY GORMLEY, CROSBY, 2005:
100 cast iron identical figures on Crosby beach.
It hasn’t influenced my faith, but it feels like something of a metaphor for my spiritual journey… All the figures look out to sea; there’s a sense of awareness, of looking, of seeing; something about man’s relationship with nature and the world; the challenges; the ebb+flow of the tide; things constantly changing (weather, night+day, water levels, barnacles, grafitti etc).
Gormley said this about his ‘Another Place’ artwork and I think it fits in with my own perception of the work: “I want to see whether it’s possible for art to be everyone’s, in the same way that the sky is and it still seems to me, that that is the most exciting challenge in art. Can you make the conditions that surround us all the time, into an arena for a kind of awareness that wouldn’t exist before, and I guess Another Place is a good example of this, where we have a beach, we have tide, we have changing conditions of weather and night and day and into that you insert these works, but adequately spaced, to allow for people to walk between them and in fact it’s the space between that is critical always in the work.”

Has my appreciation of the visual arts changed as a result of becoming a Christian? I’m not sure. What is true perhaps is that my faith has helped shape the way I see the world – its beauty, design, colour, creativity, tolerance, wonder, simplicity, peace, connectedness and humanity.

For me, the visual arts play an important role in stimulating imagination and creativity, reflection and perception; they open one’s eyes to new possibilities, they question and they reveal… and those are also the characteristics that I want my faith to have.
PS: The images I’d originally ‘highlighted’ included work from the following: Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Charles Rennie MacKintosh, Joseph Southall, Grayson Perry, Turner, Pre-Raphaelites, Stanley Spencer, Bauhaus, David Hockney, The Bloomsbury Group, Habitat, Modigliani, Richard Long, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Helmut Jacoby, Antony Gormley, Hugh Casson, Eric Ravilious, Tirzah Garwood, Don McCullin, Eric Gill, Fred Taylor, Frida Kahlo, Laura Knight, Michelangelo, Raphael, Jane Bown, Albrecht Dürer, 2001 Space Odyssey, Twiggy/Ronald Traeger, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Si Smith… but it could easily have been DOZENS more.

sunset…

I went to the Watershed this morning along with lovely friends Jeanette, Jeff and Ed to see Laszlo Nemes’s “Sunset”. It’s set in Budapest in 1913, in the death-throes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and on the eve of WW1. A young woman (Irisz Leiter, brilliantly played by Juli Jakab)(who looks a lot like Emma Watson to me) returns to the city, after being fostered at the age of two under mysterious circumstances. She hopes to work as a milliner at the famous Leiter store that once belonged to her parents (who died in a fire on the premises after which the store was rebuilt and re-established as a lucrative concern). The new owner clearly doesn’t want her there and buys her a first class ticket to leave. However, the intrepid Irisz refuses to obey and is drawn into the city’s dark turmoil and the uncertainty about her past.

 

It’s a long, mesmerising film (142 minutes); beautifully shot (with slightly washed-out colour)(ok, I’m no good at the technical stuff!) and featuring LOTS of excellent hats! It’s not always clear what is happening - but that, to my mind, felt perfectly acceptable and in keeping with the film’s mystery. There’s a sense of Irisz wanting to claim back a place in the family business; there’s uncertainty about the existence of her brother (and even that he might have caused the fire that killed his parents); and there’s a distinctly threatening undercurrent throughout the film… almost a metaphor for the events that were about emerge in 1914.

I felt totally absorbed throughout and was hugely impressed.
PS: It seems that not everyone was quite as enthusiastic about the film as me… I noticed one postcard on the Watershed’s ‘feedback board’ simply asking: “What was that all about then?!”

may-june 2019 books…

Dead Water (Ann Cleeves): This is the fifth Ann Cleeves’ Shetland book I’ve read and I’ve just ordered number six! I think(?) there are only eight in the series and am already beginning to panic at the thought of the Shetland book ‘wilderness’ yet to come!  Detective Perez is gradually returning to work after been given ‘compassionate sick leave’ after his last crime-solving adventure (*nospoilers*!). A young detective inspector is drafted in to investigate… she’s young and keen to prove her worth and is a little in awe of (and somewhat frustrated by) Perez’s quiet reputation. Another beautifully constructed, elegant and very satisfying story. As usual, I consumed it in a couple of days!
Letters To A Friend (Diana Athill): I’ve loved reading Athill’s books (she died earlier this year, age 91). For nearly five decades, she acted as editor for some of the most celebrated writers in the English language. This is a book of letters (1981-2007!) belonging to Athill’s dear friend Edward Field, an American poet, to whom they were written. They started the correspondence when he’d asked for her help in reviving the reputation of his friend, Alfred Chester, who had died in 1971. Athill is wonderfully eloquent, self-deprecating, funny and delightfully crude! It’s almost as if you can hear her talking when reading her books. During the course of her eighties, she refers to her absolute dependency on her car to get herself from A to B while, at the same time, makes endless references to her poor eyesight (she refused cataract operations for years). Somewhat alarming that, following eye surgery, she suddenly exclaimed that she could actually SEE to drive! She was clearly an absolute liability on the road and would never have passed the sight test! Again through her eighties, there are regular references to her having receiving court summonses for failing to pay parking fines (because she’d forgotten) and for driving for a year without having renewed her road tax! For years, quite understandably, she refused to be tempted by computers and emails (handwriting everything)… but the last quarter of the book is dominated (setting aside health issues) by hilarious references to her battles with technology (when she did finally decide to change her ways). For example: ”For the last three days when I’ve tried to see what e-mails have come in, it has said that it is about to access seven new ones, and that little arrow which starts pouring into a box has got to work, but nothing has appeared, and when it reaches four of seven it has just gone on and on and on saying that it is doing that one, for as much as twenty minutes, and still nothing appears!”. Hugely entertaining. A rather extraordinary lady. 
Normal People (Sally Rooney): This is Rooney’s second novel; I haven’t read the first, but I will. Rooney is in her mid-twenties and, it seems, is a born writer who has the apparently effortless ability to write sparse, mesmerising dialogue that is uplifting, tense, tender and insightful all at the same time. I absolutely loved her writing style. The book is set in the student world of Dublin and focuses on two friends – both brilliant students, coming from different social classes – who see the world through similar eyes (with one or two exceptions), but who frequently fail to communicate with each other effectively… which, of course, is often the way it is with young love (although I’m probably too old to remember!). I read it in a day and a half and really enjoyed it.
We Have Always Lived In The Castle (Shirley Jackson): This short novel, first published in 1962, is a strange, haunting, menacing story (it almost gives a sense of being a fairy tale?) told through the eyes of an eighteen year-old female, Merricat. She lives in a large, isolated family house with her older sister Constance and her ill, wheelchair-bound uncle (and her cat) in an unspecified village. According to Merricat, people in the village had always hated them and the family’s interaction is limited to stubborn, twice-weekly shopping trips undertaken by Merricat herself. Six years before, their entire family was poisoned. One of the sisters must surely have been responsible for their deaths, but Constance was duly acquitted and, of course, Merricat was just a child. Merricat is ‘domesticated’ by only person, Constance; we learn of several household tasks that the younger sister isn’t allowed to do (food preparation and handling knives, for example); there’s a sense of ritualistic, poetic ‘madness’ and a quiet, rather scary, sense of horror. It’s a chilling, disturbing and unsettling story – and quite brilliantly written.
Where Shall We Run To? (Alan Garner): I can recall reading (or at least starting to read) Garner’s “The Moon of Gomrath” to our daughters when they were young… but I don’t think I was ever captivated by his world of myth and magic. Garner was born in 1934 and his childhood was spent in Alderley Edge, Cheshire and this book is about his wartime childhood. Written in the first person, in the past tense, it is a charming, funny, gentle recollection of his rural, working class childhood encounters (despite having suffered several life-threatening illnesses which left him bed-ridden for much of the time). People sometimes refer to how childhood memories become vivid again in old age and, certainly, Garner is a bewildering example of such a phenomena (I, on the other hand, seem to have gone through my entire childhood with only a vague recall of events… and very little detail!). Garner is able to remember events, people and words in ridiculous detail (something to do with being a born story-teller perhaps?)… describing all his teachers and his individual classrooms with enormous precision; detailing every house, every carved stone, mysterious well and perilously steep cliff-edge; recalling precise phrases uttered by individuals; and even remembering the names of all his father’s work colleagues(!). At times, I felt Garner was just making things up and showing off – but, deep down, I suspect everything was utterly true… and that I’m just feeling jealous that he has such an amazing memory! A gentle, enjoyable, evocative memoir.