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Month: July 2009

Fighting the Praise (Kate Bush, Wow)

30 July is Kate Bush’s birthday. You can wish her happy birthday on this MySpace page; view her MySpace channel; read a Wiki bio; track the tracks on Last.fm; catch up on the news; surf Gaffaweb; and, above all, visit her official website. The photo on the right was found on Last.fm.

I have really discovered Bush’s music around 2006, partly thanks to YouTube. Some of the songs you have to like or love: Wuthering Heights, Babooshka, Cloudbursting… I suppose we choose books and songs as “favourites” when they resonate with us or when they open us up to something. And although I could single out Moving and Them Heavy People as favourites, I chose Wow for this post. Why? Because, God knows, “we’d give you a part, my love, but you’d have to play the fool” sounds unbelievably familiar. I’m not complaining really; it’s all a part of life experience. Many of us find ourselves in the situation when someone draws you in their circle – or simply adds you to it. They appear to be genuinely “wowed” and nice. Then before long you discover that you’re a court jester or savant in the kingdom too small that secretly loathes your presence.

I remember reading the passage in The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi about a black actor: talented, he was kept in the background and not given much support, and in the end he broke down and committed a suicide. Sure, this is not the fate of every ethnic, unprivileged or otherwise “different” artist; but it takes to have some unfathomable inner resources to keep one’s cool amidst a lot of noise and niceties that often conceal the indifference (that often covers something else). Is it hard? Wow! Unbelievably so. This is partly why this poem by Kipling has long guided me. The good thing is when you identify the problem because then you’re in for a chance to do something about it.

We’re all alone on the stage tonight.
We’ve been told we’re not afraid of you.
We know all our lines so well, uh-huh.
We’ve said them so many times:
Time and time again,
Line and line again.

Ooh, yeah, you’re amazing!
We think you’re incredible.
You say we’re fantastic,
But still we don’t head the bill.

Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Unbelievable!
Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Unbelievable!

When the actor reaches his death,
You know it’s not for real. He just holds his breath.
But he always dives too soon, too fast to save himself.

He’ll never make the screen.
He’ll never make the ‘Sweeney’,
Be that movie queen.
He’s too busy hitting the vaseline.

Ooh, yeah, you’re amazing!
We think you are really cool.
We’d give you a part, my love,
But you’d have to play the fool.

Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Unbelievable!
Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Unbelievable!

We’re all alone on the stage tonight.
We’re all alone,
On the stage,
Tonight.

The song appeared on the album Lionheart, and a great article by Debi Withers explores performance and queer subjectivities on the album. This is what Wither particularly says about Wow:

The most obvious example of these strategies can be found in the single released from the album, ‘Wow.’ Based in the ruthless world of show-business, the song contains a teasing critique of the entertainment industry, its routines and the roles people have to play in order to get anywhere within it. Equally, the song can be referring to the roles we play in everyday life that often fall, when we begin to learn them, into predictable forms. […] The song also gently plays upon the hypocrisy of the industry and glamorises failure in the face of flattery and dissimulation. […] The chorus of the song with the repeated ‘Wows’ communicate the wonder and magic of showbiz, while the ambivalent ‘unbelievable’ at the end of the chorus points to the tension between fantasy and reality, that theatre and performance straddle. The chorus also demonstrates the vocal cross-dressing that Wood describes in ‘Sapphonics,’ as the ‘Wows’ oscillate through a scale in their repetitions, beginning the middle register before soaring impossibly high before going low again and then finishing astoundingly with the high release of the final ‘unbelievable.’ The song is also a comment on the very obvious artificial nature of acting, as if to assure those credulous viewers and listeners that what they see before them is not real, that it is rather, artifice. This of course relies on Bush’s audience being absolutely intoxicated by the magic of performance and points to a will that hovers between wanting and not wanting the spell to be broken…

Picture on Los Cuadernos de Don Rigoberto (Henry Gervex, Rolla)

I noted that someone was looking for “picture on The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto
“. There are various editions of the book, so the covers differ accordingly. The novel itself is woven around the work of Egon Schiele, the Austrian painter, and some of his works are used to illustrate the 1999 Faber&Faber edition.

Henri Gervex, Rolla, 1878

The cover of this edition, however, features a different work: it is Rolla (1878), by the French painter Henri Gervex (left). It is an illustration of a scene from the long poem under the same name by the enfant terrible of the French literature, Alfred de Musset (1810-1857). Rolla is the story of a bourgeois, Jacques Rolla, whose self-ruin and bankruptcy come as the consequence of his ennui with his social status. Unlike what may be deduced from Gervex’s painting, de Musset’s Rolla ended his life in a romantic but noble way: he came to visit Marion to tell her of his state of affairs, drank poison, and died in her arms.

The painting went public 20 years after de Musset’s death and 45 years after Rolla was composed. It was rejected by the Salon, and Gervex went on to display the painting in the shop window, attracting the crowds of onlookers and producing the furore. The public was not altogether unfamiliar with the portraits of courtesans or the depiction of the “gallant scenes“; the latter were particularly popular throughout the 18th c. On the left is Venus and Mars by Botticelli that dates back to 1483; and on the right is Manet’s Olympia (1863), a hommage to Giorgione (Sleeping Venus) and Titian (Venus of Urbino), as far as the pose of the model is concerned. All those paintings, Manet’s included, preceded the work of Gervex. His other contemporaries, including Ingres and Degas, were producing numerous studies of the nude, so the naked form, however ‘indecent’, wasn’t necessarily the reason for a public outcry.

The entire “problem” the public would have with Gervex’s painting is literally dumped in the bottom right corner of the canvas. The protruding walking stick is, of course, a phallic symbol, but it is buried almost entirely under female clothes. The top hat rests on this heap of fabric, overturned. The walking stick and the top hat were both the symbols of a bourgeois. Rolla the painting was scandalous not because of nudity, the relaxed pose of the sleeping courtesan, or as the illustration to the work of a no less scandalous author. The outrage was provoked by the depiction of the corrupt state of the gentilshommes who in the heat of passion were bringing the entire social class into submission to a prostitute. Compared to Gervex’s work, the engraving from the edition of de Musset’s collected work looks almost impossibly demure, giving us a Shakespearean-style scene (right).

As to why this painting was chosen for Los Cuadernos de Don Rigoberto‘s cover, my guess is that Gervex’s Rolla would bode well for the novel’s focus on sexual fantasy and desire, often forbidden.

The Question of Privacy

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At work we moved offices. I am now taking a bus in the morning and in the evening. And so the next day after we moved I went to GMPTE Travel shop in Piccadilly Gardens to buy myself a weekly bus pass.

The pass has to go with a special bus card that has to have my picture on it. The form I had to fill in asked for my title, my full name, my address, and date of birth. And then it also asked for my email and my mobile number, so that GMPTE could keep me updated.

My perspective was that I’d rather not give out my date of birth and address – but this is mandatory. Filling out the mobile number and email address wasn’t a problem; nobody ever bombarded me with random calls, and as for spam email messages, they sometimes make a good lunchtime reading. But the first thing the gentleman behind the counter did upon glancing at my form was this: he vigorously started crossing out my email address and phone number.

– Don’t write there what you don’t need! – he was shouting rather excitedly. – They’ll be sending you things, you don’t need them!

– Well, I was actually interested in those things, – I tried to explain, while wondering what they would think at the GMPTE office when they saw my form.

– No, you don’t need them! Or you’ll be like one of those, they check their email all the time, “Oh, let’s see if I’ve got something!” – and he showed me exactly what those people looked like: their faces are all excitement, fingers dancing all over the keyboard.

– That’s OK with me, – I replied. – This is what I do for work all the time.

– Well, maybe you do but I don’t, – he replied.

As a result, I will not be receiving either email or phone updates from GMPTE.

Love Imposes Impossible Tasks…

I say about nearly every place I visit that “I’ve long wanted to go there”. Be it York, the Welsh castles, or even London, I’d long wanted to go there by the time I finally went. I should probably stop saying this because I want to go to so many places that it’s only natural that by the time I do I will have been wanting to go for some time.

Speaking of Scarborough, I was obviously aware of it as a medieval landmark and also as the place commemorated in the famous song, “Scarborough Fair“. The song was popularised by the American singers/songwriters, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, and appeared on their 1966 album. We may imagine that for some listeners this is a Simon&Garfunkel song, but in fact this is an “authentic” medieval song.

The video below is again produced with my own photos. Over at Yahoo! Geocities page by Bert you can read a lot about “Scarborough Fair”, with some interesting conclusions. If you’re a German reader, then this is the page for you, which also contains the known interpretations of the song. On either page you will find a short history of Scarborough and its famous fair, of Simon&Garfunkel version, and the full text of the song with the short analysis of the lyrics and its meaning. Particular attention is paid to the meaning of the herbs: parsley (soothing power), sage (strength), rosemary (faithfulness), and thime (courage). One thing I will say, is that I’d not be misled by the fact that

the singer is asking his love to do the impossible, and then come back to him and ask for his hand. This is a highly unusual suggestion, because in those days it was a grave faux-pas to people from all walks of life for a lady to ask for a man’s hand.

If we suppose that the lover is offended by his beloved, then getting her to do the impossible is a rather natural way of taking the revenge. The last two lines seem to support this reading: the lover asks for the impossible as the way to prove to himself and to his beloved that she is indeed his true love.

Love imposes impossible tasks
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Though not more than any heart asks
And I must know she’s a true love of mine.

Dear, when thou has finished thy task
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Come to me, my hand for to ask
For thou then art a true love of mine.

British Seaside and Holidays by Polnareff

It is absolutely true: my first ever sea was the Irish Sea. I saw it in 2002. When I told one of my friends about it, he pitied me. Indeed, how sad is that: to see your first sea in Blackpool?

This was in 2002. Between then and the late 2007 I visited Blackpool a few times. I rode past Conwy Bay in North Wales once or twice. But it was at the turn of 2007-2008 that I spent almost two weeks in North Wales. I was staying in Llandudno and taking day trips to Conwy, Caernarfon, Beaumaris. Most importantly, each day I was walking by the sea, breathing sea air and watching seagulls. Little did I know that the memories of staying in North Wales would be so strong that I would want to go to the seaside more and more often.

This is what has been happening since March 2009: whenever I had the chance, I tried to go and spend a day by the water. I visited Southport for the first time; then I went to Blackpool after a 3-year pause; and finally I visited Scarborough. I figured out that Scarborough would be the closest to Manchester town on the eastern coast which was unknown to me.

From all those trips I brough back some photos, and the most recent ones from Blackpool and Scarborough are still in the process of being uploaded to Flickr. But, looking at them recently, I realised that they can illustrate “Holidays” by Michel Polnareff. I have already written a post about this song in December 2006, although I include the English translation here again now. I arranged some of the photos to the “story” of Polnareff’s song; the photos were taken in places like Llandudno, Conwy, and Deganwy (North Wales), Blackpool and Southport (English west coast), and Scarborough (English east coast). Mr Polnareff is web-savvy, so I hope he likes my attempt at spreading the word about his work, if he sees this post or the video.

Holidays, oh holidays
It’s a plane that comes down from the sky
And the shadow of its wing
Covers a city below
How close is the ground
Holidays…

Holidays, oh holidays
Churches and council flats,
What is their beloved God doing?
He who lives in the space
How close is the ground
Holidays…

Holidays, oh holidays
The plane’s shadow covers the sea
The sea is like a preface
To the desert
How close is the sea
Holidays…

Holidays, oh holidays
So much sky and so many clouds
At your age you don’t know
That life is boring
How close is death
Holidays…

Holidays, oh holidays
It’s a plane that lives in the sky
You’re so beautiful, but don’t forget
That planes crash
And that the ground is close
Holidays…

Feeling Greek

Scarborough 21, originally uploaded by loscuadernosdejulia.

I remember walking up the hill on which the Scarborough castle rests, thinking that this entire place strangely reminds me of Greece. Perhaps it has to do with the general image of Greece, or even the Mediterranean: historic rocks, lush hills, deep-blue sea, beautiful leafy trees, and a clear sky with a few white clouds. When I was trying to find the angle and to “frame” the photo, I was attempting to convey this Mediterranean feel.

Omar Khayyam on Wine


Sobriety doth dry up all delight,
And drunkenness doth drown my sense outright;
There is a middle state, it is my life –
Not altogether drunk, nor sober quite.

Now with its joyful prime my age is rife,
I quaff enchanting wine, and list to fife;
Chide not at wine for all its bitter taste,
Its bitterness sorts well with human life!

So many cups of wine will I consume,
Its bouquet shall exhale from out my tomb,
And every one that passes by shall halt,
And reel and stagger with that mighty fume.

When I am dead, with wine my body lave,
For obit chant a bacchanalian stave,
And, if you need me at the day of doom,
Beneath the tavern threshold seek my grave.

From The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam translated by Edward Henry Whinfield (1883). The image is the portrair of Khayyam at his Mausoleum in Nishapur (Iran), courtesy of Wikipedia.

How to Scrape Skies (Nicolas Bentley Illustrations)

How to Scrape Skies
To scrape the skies in Manchester, you may want to go to Cloud 23 – a chic bar at the Hilton Hotel in the Beetham Tower in Deansgate. The image I took last weekend during the walk around town isn’t original in its idea: arguably, this is the way (or one of the definitive ways) to photograph a skyscraper in all its glory. It was one of those snaps you make to document a fleeting sensation.

The title of the photo isn’t original either: it is the title of the 1948 book by George Mikes. How To Scrape Skies: The United States Explored, Rediscovered, and Explained was published on the back of the astounding success of Mikes’s best-seller, How To Be An Alien (1946). Like How To Be An Alien, and similar to a few other “how-to” books published subsequently, How To Scrape Skies documented the American peculiarities, comparing them to what could be seen in Europe or Britain. But perhaps the reason why How To Be An Alien was so successful was that it dwelt on Mikes’s own life in England as a Hungarian emigrant, whereas in subsequent books Mikes couldn’t rely on such a vast personal experience, and also was evidently trapped by his own success.

But over at GoofButton there is a page with the illustrations to How To Scrape Skies: these were made by Nicolas Bentley, a British author and cartoonist. The site is created by Jeffrey Meyer. As Jeffrey correctly notes, the reason why this Mikes’s book was “not for sale in the U.S.” is that the illustrations were arguably even more inflammatory than the text. Below are a few examples. To see them all, visit GoofButton.

Zizek: Berlusconi As Kung Fu Panda, And the Future of Democracy

I have just read a very good article by Slavoj Žižek in the London Review of Books: Berlusconi in Tehran. By “very good” I mean that he, as usual, displays an astounding amount knowledge to illustrate the problems our modern societies face today – but the fluidity of this text and the argumentative power is impressive. If you ever had problems reading and understanding Žižek, try again: with this article, you are in for a good chance to catch his flight of thought.

Although starting out by comparing the recent upheavals in Tehran to those of 1979 Khomeini revolution, Žižek doesn’t stop there. To him, the events in Iran is but a part of the major trend characterised by the breach between capitalism and democracy: “the virus of authoritarian capitalism is slowly but surely spreading around the globe“. Moreover, democracy today is handicapped by its inability to produce an “omni-competent citizen”:

…in a democracy, the ordinary citizen is effectively a king, but a king in a constitutional democracy, a king whose decisions are merely formal, whose function is to sign measures proposed by the executive. The problem of democratic legitimacy is homologous to the problem of constitutional democracy: how to protect the dignity of the king? How to make it seem that the king effectively decides, when we all know this is not true? What we call the ‘crisis of democracy’ isn’t something that happens when people stop believing in their own power but, on the contrary, when they stop trusting the elites, when they perceive that the throne is empty, that the decision is now theirs. ‘Free elections’ involve a minimal show of politeness when those in power pretend that they do not really hold the power, and ask us to decide freely if we want to grant it to them.

“It is democracy’s authentic potential that is losing ground with the rise of authoritarian capitalism, whose tentacles are coming closer and closer to the West“, Žižek concludes. This again is illustrated by Berlusconi’s public image: as obscene as it may be, to the average Italian Berlusconi is the man next door, with money, police, and women problems. “Berlusconi is a significant figure, and Italy an experimental laboratory where our future is being worked out. If our political choice is between permissive-liberal technocratism and fundamentalist populism, Berlusconi’s great achievement has been to reconcile the two, to embody both at the same time. It is arguably this combination which makes him unbeatable, at least in the near future“.

As he often does, Žižek uses Kung Fu Panda (2008) to elaborate on the conundrum at hand:

The fat panda dreams of becoming a kung fu warrior. He is chosen by blind chance (beneath which lurks the hand of destiny, of course), to be the hero to save his city, and succeeds. But the film’s pseudo-Oriental spiritualism is constantly undermined by a cynical humour. The surprise is that this continuous making-fun-of-itself makes it no less spiritual: the film ultimately takes the butt of its endless jokes seriously. […] This is how ideology functions today: nobody takes democracy or justice seriously, we are all aware that they are corrupt, but we practise them anyway because we assume they work even if we don’t believe in them.

In practice, the capitalist authoritarian state begins to function in the state of emergency: it is always on the alert against one or another intruder. In Berlusconi’s Italy these are immigrants and ‘communists’ (the latter is a dangerously vague, collective term), and, as the case with the trial against the fishermen in Sicily in 2007 demonstrates, “Agamben’s notion of homo sacer – the figure excluded from the civil order, who can be killed with impunity – is being realised not only in the US war on terror, but also in Europe, the supposed bastion of human rights and humanitarianism“.

Leaving you with enough teasers to go to read the full article, I want to say that this is one of Žižek‘s best texts I’ve read recently: very coherent, erudite, fluent, and, as a result, very powerful.

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