Experiences Archives - Page 9 of 10 - Los Cuadernos de Julia

Carmarthen Cameos – 9: Childhood Memories of Dinefwr

When I sat down to narrate my journey and stay in Carmarthenshire in June, I wasn’t sure how this would go. As I said in the very first post under Carmarthen Cameos label, I didn’t know how to approach Carmarthen. It would seem occasionally that medieval ballads and lullabies were still heard across Carmarthenshire, and my visit to Llandeilo and Dinefwr only confirmed to me that there are still places very near to us that haven’t lost their original charm.

However, my impressions were largely my own, and I didn’t intend to make them particularly entertaining or objective. I must admit, though, going to Dinefwr Castle was like fulfilling a child’s dream for me. That post on Dinefwr attracted some comments, but little did I know that a couple of months later I would receive a letter from Jeremy Thomas, who grew up in Llandeilo in the 60s and 70s and now lives in the States. The letter in which he narrated his memories of Dinefwr is the one that you’d write about something that suddenly visited you and is very precious. It also documents that part of history of Dinefwr and Llandeilo area which is only known to someone who lived there, and, with Jeremy’s permission, you can now read what it was like to be a kid in Llandeilo:

“Your words brought back the memories of the many weekends of my youth when my cohorts and I would trespass on the castle grounds.

Yes, trespass. In those days the castle was not open to the public at all. There were no signposts, no pathways, and no history lessons. The castle was as raw as if it had been left untouched for centuries. To get there we would pretend we were entering guarded territory (back then the threat came in the shape of the dreaded local farmers). We’d scale the hillsides and thrash through the wooded areas to get to our reward–a veritable time-wrap.

The novelty never wore off. Each and every time inside the castle we would be transported to medieval times–an eerie but irresistible connection to the voices and bodies of the past. We all had ancestors going back centuries in the Llandeilo area, so the connection was plausibly familial.

At the end of the day we would always scare the living daylights out of each other, making up ghost stories as we sat in one tower room that I remember still had a parquet-type floor. I don’t know if you saw that same tower room, but I used to think it was some fair maiden’s boudoir.

There were never any other people at the castle which made the experience so personal. With dusk upon us and with our imagination running wild, the flight back to Llandeilo was always at full speed. I remember once getting in trouble with one of my friend’s mothers for having frightened my poor pal out of his skin with one of my ghost stories.”

I didn’t see the floor, but if I am totally honest, I didn’t even look on the ground where I walked. The walls and the views from them were so much more captivating for me. And considering that to walk up the hill to the castle is quite a feat, it probably doesn’t see too many visitors, in spite of being open to the public.

Jeremy also mentions the church (that I also missed), “Llandyfeusant, tucked under one of the hillsides on the way to the castle. We would also stop off there when we were kids to get our adrenaline flowing (it was always too dark on the way back, of course). The church hadn’t seen a service for decades back then and was always cloaked in such a creepy silence. Some of the tombstones were even open so you can just imagine what dares we subjected each other to. Life went along at a steady pace in those days and the days were definitely longer.“

I must admit, reading Jeremy’s story almost made me jealous. As a child, I lived in the capital city of concrete, brick and glass, and I had no such luxury of visiting a derelict church with half-open tombs, or of sitting in a cold medieval castle, pressing my back against the 13th-14th c. stones, listening to the movement of bats’ wings and to the scary tales of my friends. I had to exploit the books and my imagination to fulfil the void, but, God knows, I wish I had spent at least a couple of days in Llandeilo, visiting Dinefwr. Thanks to Jeremy, however, I did just that.

If you have your own memories of visiting Dinefwr, or any other castle, especially when you were a child, and don’t mind sharing your stories with us, please leave a comment.

– D([“mb”,”\u003c/div\>\u003cdiv\>\u003cbr\>\u003c/div\>\u003cdiv\>It feels so far away now.\u003c/div\>\u003cdiv\>\u003cbr\>\u003c/div\>\u003cdiv\>Like you, I am a linguist. I have lived in Russia (as Soviet Union), Geneva, Seville and France. I have been in the States for seventeen years now, but my family still lives in and around Llandeilo.\n\u003c/div\>\u003cdiv\>\u003cbr\>\u003c/div\>\u003cdiv\>Sincerely,\u003c/div\>\u003cdiv\>\u003cbr\>\u003c/div\>\u003cdiv\>Jeremy Thomas\u003c/div\>\u003cdiv\>\u003cbr\>\u003c/div\>\u003cdiv\>\u003cbr clear\u003d\”all\”\>\u003cbr\>– \n\u003cbr\>Jeremy Thomas | Partner / Director of Account Planning | Collaborate | work: 415.651.1218 cell: 415.425.2802\n\u003c/div\>\n”,0] ); D([“mi”,10,2,”11499b57fd73fa05″,0,”0″,”Julia Shuvalova”,”Julia”,”julia.shuvalova@gmail.com”,[[[“jeremyt”,”jeremyt@collaboratesf.com”,”11499b57fd73fa05″] ] ,[] ,[] ] ,”24-Aug (4 days ago)”,[“jeremyt@collaboratesf.com”] ,[] ,[] ,[] ,”24-Aug-2007 22:09″,”Re: Dinefwr musings”,”Hi Jeremy, I hope you are OK. I’m very sorry for not replying earlier, I’m af…”,[] ,1,,,”24 August 2007_22:09″,”On 24/08/07, Julia Shuvalova \u003cjulia.shuvalova@gmail.com\> wrote:”,”On 24/08/07, \u003cb class\u003dgmail_sendername\>Julia Shuvalova\u003c/b\> wrote:”,”gmail.com”,,,””,””,0,,”\u003c4d7733f50708241409y43d05bc1o7749d12e370bdbc3@mail.gmail.com\>”,0,,0,”In reply to \”Dinefwr musings\””,0] ); //

The Story of Discobolus

Imagine this: you’ve been waiting to take a picture of something. You found a perfect angle, even conjured a title for your photo, but your precious sight is an object of adoration for too many people, mainly tourists. They keep coming up to it, their figures exuding admiration, and their eyes lit with fever of connoisseurship. They don’t notice you. Worse still, they sometimes appear in front of your camera at the exact moment of your pressing the button.

Let’s not be dismayed by tourists – for all I know, I may be just as inconsiderate. Occasionally, though, this inconsideration becomes a blessing in disguise, as I found out when I visited London this April.
I went to the British Museum, and I couldn’t resist taking a picture of Discobolus. I saw this statue in the books before, and I had previously visited the British Museum and taken a picture of it. But for me, it is a historic statue in more than one sense.

When I was in my first year at the University in 1997, we had a course in Art History and had to pass an exam. The task was to list all (or as many) monuments (sculptures, edifices, paintings) from a particular period in Art History within 40 min. After 40 min. the (now late) examiner collected our papers, checked them immediately and told us, whether we passed or not. I sat next to a girl who had a question about Ancient Greek art and knew it very poorly. This is when Discobolus appears. This statue was made by Myron during the classical period of Greek art (in the 5th cc. BC). The lecturer also touched on Homer whose lifetime – between 8th-7th cc. BC – is seen to have initiated the entire Classical Antiquity.

I vividly remember the girl asking me, if Discobolus was made by Myron or by Homer. I confidently whispered ‘Myron’. Nonetheless, the girl ended up writing that Discobolus was sculptured by Homer during the Myronian period. This true story became one of the best-loved anecdotes of the Faculty of History at the Moscow State University.

This time in London, when I first tried to take a picture of Discobolus, a group of visitors with children was around the statue. The parents did move, but a child, being a child, couldn’t stand still, and eventually I wasn’t satisfied with my first attempt. I decided to wait, but the visitors kept walking up and down the staircase, not even intending to disappear. I decided to wait out and took this picture – I thought it sent an interesting message (right).

Just as the staircase emptied, a couple appeared out of the blue. The woman struck a pose beside Discobolus, the man took a photo of her, and then the woman walked to the man, and they froze at the top of the stairs looking at the pictures they’ve taken. I stood several steps below, clutching my mobile phone and wondering, if they would possibly move elsewhere, so I could have a clear view. The speciality of the moment was in that there were only us three on the staircase, so providing they’d moved I could take a decent shot of Discobolus.

But no, they didn’t move. They were totally oblivious to the fact that the British Museum is one of London’s principal attractions and is visited by thousands of people each day, who may fancy taking a picture of Discobolus. I put it down to the special feelings they shared. Me, I was alone, and my despair was beyond imagination.

I was released from despair by my own roguish spirit. To paraphrase the well-known saying, if Discobolus couldn’t show its unspoilt angle to me, I was going to find an unspoilt angle of Discobolus. I suddenly realised that the majority of pictures of the statue were taken from the staircase. But what about the actual frontal view? Well, here was one.

What a sense of liberation that was! Nothing could stop me now. Another staircase was behind me, which was decorated with a vase. There was something intriguing about a composition involving Discobolus and the vase (left). And then I went as far as to almost lie on the stairs, to take the picture on the right.

So, waiting and not getting to snap Discobolus from a conventional point of view was entirely worth the trouble. Even for me, for whom Discobolus was anything but unknown, to see this sculpture in so many different compositions was a great way to enjoy it again. I know for a fact that next time I’m at the museum, I’ll be looking for something unusual in the objects I might photograph. And so should you – who knows what story you may be able to tell?

Bad Language: The Involuntary Swearing

At work, I am currently being perturbed by a task I never even dreamt of performing. I need to compile a list of negative keywords in Russian. I have an English list in front of my eyes, which includes about two dozens of swearing words, and what perplexes me is that for many of the words there will be more than one Russian equivalent.

The conundrum is further complicated by the fact that, although I know all these words, I don’t say or write them. I’ve always thought that, no matter how annoyed I am by a situation, if I can express my annoyance without using “bad language”, then that’s how I’m expressing it.

With writing, I don’t have any particular prejudice against any of those words, but again I’m thinking in terms of why I would need to use them. I object to using “bad language” merely for the sake of it.

Recently, I read the musings of one seasoned romantic, who explained at length that a decent girl/woman wouldn’t even know such words. Although his musings had a lot of common sense, myself and a few other readers found them overall cynical. One could substantially broaden their awareness of bad language by just using public transport regularly, which I’ve been doing all my life. If you’re an avid reader like me and have read, say, Henry Miller, your awareness has grown further. And even if you never said or wrote (or intended to say or write) words of this kind, your job may eventually compel you.

The whole situation reminds me of the time when I was trying to read 120 Days of Sodom by de Sade. I couldn’t progress in reading one of the chapters, until I realised that I was reading it passively. Once I put myself in the place of an active figure, I found the chapter quite entertaining. So, I’ll have to adjust my frame of mind, to clutch my teeth, and to approach the task professionally. And when it’s completed, I’ll sit back and marvel at how good I really know my native language.

Having said it all, bad language isn’t exactly bad. My personal rejection of Russian swearing words stems not only from their meaning, but from how they sound – I really find them awful to the ear. Surprisingly, it’s different in English or French, which I haven’t really tried to explain, but would be struggling, for sure. A lot of swearing phrases in Russian that I don’t like are either too crude or totally devoid of meaning, although the word-building is always mesmerising.

I suppose this qualifies me as an incorrigible aesthete, who even wants to swear in style.

Those who have thicker skin pursue their passion for Language Studies in the field of scatolinguistics. A very enlightening article from the BBC, The Origins and Common Usage of British Swearing Words, which I highly recommend, will give you more insight into the findings of scatolinguists. As the authors state,

One of the things which becomes clear is that usage varies widely from country to country, and within countries. In one place a word may be a term of affection, in another a clear and direct term of abuse. And these words provide a potted social history of the speakers of the English Language. However, used appropriately and with panache, many people feel that these words actually add depth, colour and a sense of regional variation to the English language.
If you’re interested further, you may visit Swearaurus, which will be your very first search result on Google. You can browse categories by language.

And a couple of funny real-life stories. One I read in someone’s LiveJournal. A person, originally Russian, went to live in America. By the time he returned, French Connection UK has opened a few outlets in Moscow. Going past one of the shops and noticing “FCUK”, the person thought: ‘Now the world has definitely come to an end – they can’t even spell ‘f**k’ without an error’. He was later enlightened by his female friends that there was no error at all.

Another story I read on Linda Jones’s blog. Linda blogs about twins, triplets etc. on You’ve Got Your Hands Full, which can teach you a plenty about kids even if you don’t yet have children or have only one child. She also writes about journalism for a few other resources. Once Linda went to an Ann Summers party, where they were offered to play a “rude alphabet” game. The task was to name a swearing word on each letter of the alphabet. I must admit – as I admitted to Linda in the past – if I was in her place, this would be my story.

In fact, I think this is already my story.

Barbra Streisand in Manchester (M.E.N. Arena, July 10, 2007)

And so, Manchester has finally joined the cities on the route of Barbra Streisand’s first European tour. Some reports prior to Manchester concert expressed fears that the night might fall through because of high ticket prices. Admittedly, pleasure of seeing Streisand on stage wasn’t cheap: add a program’s price (£25) to your cheapest ticket (£75), and you’ll get quite a sum. Looking from my seat in the stalls down on those who sat in the first row in the box did bring certain thoughts to mind. But as the show went on, I realised that with my £75 ticket I bought myself much more than just a lifetime experience.

Like with quite a few other things, it started thanks to my mother. I said before that my mum has got this tremendous ability to discover things – and once Russia has opened her arms to the West after 1991, there was (and still is) a lot to discover. I believe that the discovery of Barbra in my family has started with the song Woman in Love, which was in an audio cassette collection. Around 1996-97 the articles about Streisand have really flooded our first Russian editions of Harper’s Bazaar and ELLE. They wrote about her youth, her romances, her music, but, being an adolescent, I was most interested in her portraits. As terrible as it sounds, before I saw those photos, I thought I would never look good in front of the camera. Studying them, thankfully, changed me in many ways. I still haven’t seen a lot of Streisand’s films, but Funny Girl, The Mirror Has Two Faces, and The Way We Were have entered my memory forever. I would watch The Way We Were anyway because of Robert Redford, but the first two we watched because of Barbra. So, it was only natural that when I saw an email about the release of her tickets I knew I had to go. I wanted to surprise my mother, but in the end we had this conversation on Sunday night:

I: Mum, do you want to be jealous?
Mum: Why?
I: Do you know where I’m going on 10th July?
Mum (anticipating pause)
I: I’m going to Barbra Streisand’s concert
Mum (after a long pause, and with a sigh): Yes, I’m very jealous.

Although I’ve been living in Manchester since 2003, July 10th was the first time I went to a concert at the M.E.N. Arena. Contrary to all fears and misgivings, the hall was full: at 7pm people were coming in tides, and by 7.40 there was virtually no room to move in the foyer. The audience’s rapture was palpable; and how could it not be if the man with a black-and-grey scarf around his neck was one of the first to rise from his seat when Barbra appeared on stage for the first time? I cannot say I’ve been to many concerts, but I’m certain I won’t see such frequent standing ovations any time soon. Where I sat, people behind me were humming and singing along with the performer who – we all hope – celebrates the 50th anniversary of her stage career in three years’ time.

As you can guess, from photos on Flickr and from videos on YouTube, the organisers’ appeal against taking pictures wasn’t acknowledged, and we shouldn’t blame the fans for many of whom this was once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see and hear their favourite performer. In the audience there were Mancunians, Liverpudlians, Geordie, as well as Italian and Spanish fans whom Streisand greeted in their native language. When answering questions, she admitted that of all three – singing, acting, and directing – she enjoyed directing more because of what she called ‘inclusiveness’, and this show may very well be the proof of her directorial hold. Alas, we were not introduced to Samantha; instead we saw Streisand putting on glasses and demonstrating her – quite good – piano technique.

The importance of seeing an “old league” performer cannot be underestimated. A rather simply decorated stage was a perfect backdrop for the stunning costumes (designed by Streisand and Donna Karan), a warm smile, and the beautiful, powerful voice of the world’s first showbiz diva. I must admit, after reading several fans’ reviews, that I couldn’t put my feelings about the evening into words better than John Grundeken from the Netherlands did, which is why I hope a lot of you will follow through to Barbra’s Archives to read his heartfelt story of the night at Bercy in Paris. Moreover, John is travelling to London’s concert, as well. What I must absolutely agree with John about is the incredible power of Streisand’s voice: ‘”Starting here, starting now”, her voice sounded so warm and rich. I realised this was the first time ever I wasn’t listening to a recording of her voice, this was the real thing’. And one more fact about John: I am used to seeing people wearing T-shirts with John Lennon’s or Che Guevara’s face, and I made myself a T-shirt with the print of the Beatles’s Let It Be cover. But, upon my word, this was the first time I saw someone decorating a tie with their favourite artist’s portrait. I’ve got a feeling that the world of fashion has already been there, but this tie is special for its colour, design, and image. Above all, the whole work glows with admiration for Barbra Streisand, which makes it really impressive, and this is why I asked John for permission to use the image in my post. Thank you, John.

I have a confession to make. As I mentioned above, my mother is a huge fan of Barbra Streisand. I haven’t been back to Russia since I came to Manchester, which makes almost four years. So as a present for her I recorded several songs from the concert, which are strictly for private use and will not be put up anywhere. However, I noticed that there are many videos on the web, which probably warrants my action: I cut and put together two extracts from the concert. The first extract is a great proof of cordial atmosphere at the M.E.N. Arena, not without a few funny moments. The second is the song Unusual Way from the second half of the concert. Please note that the audio, like all the content of this site, is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution – Noncommercial – Non-Derivative Works 3.0. If you wish to cite it, please do so accordingly.

[To be reuploaded soon – JD]

The songs may very well be the ones that people older than me have already heard Streisand singing live before. Yet, as Paul Vallely from The Independent puts it, ‘she progressed from one song to the next in a way which was not autobiographical so much as the story of the lives of those who listened. She was singing the soundtrack to their joys and sorrows, triumphs and failures’. In spite of my age, Smile, Unusual Way, Papa Can You Hear Me resonate in me deeply, while People and Somewhere fully correspond to the views and ideas I behold dearly and often express in writing and here, in Los Cuadernos, for which you can certainly call me a Cockeyed Optimist.

The peak of the performance for me was when Streisand run and danced barefoot on stage. And it was most lovely to see the audience standing and greeting Barbra with several rounds of ovation. In Russia, it was a part of nearly every performance experience: to call actors or singers come back on stage several times. In four years here, attending theatre and cinema many times, I almost got used to people giving a few claps, standing up and leaving, so seeing this “Russian” reaction felt incredibly warm.

It is evident that I, like many others, enjoyed every minute of two-and-a-half hours of Streisand’s concert, including the interval, when I took the photos of the Arena’s hall that are now scattered throughout this post. And I feel I should comment on a criticism that the show was scripted. Where I sat, on the side, was the perfect place to see both the stage and the screens with running scripts. First, the lines run fast, so unless everyone (Barbra and the Broadway guys) knows what they are to say, they won’t be on time with the script. Most importantly, though, is that they didn’t actually follow the script word for word. Yes, maybe it’s bad to direct your own show, but as a spectator I think it would be worse to listen to an artist, who sounds and looks like a sheep, not knowing what to say. From my own experience of writing scripts or watching written scripts going live I can only say that it’s essential to know where your carriage (be that a play, a radio or TV show, or a performance) is going at any given minute. To ensure that it runs naturally is up to a performer, and for Barbra Streisand it was a piece of cake.

“Barbra – was she worth the money?” – a sly question that has left many a reviewer’s pens. Someone cynical may say a performer like Streisand is used to the crowd’s adoration, but no matter how used you get to people praising you, there are always new people, and every performer needs them, not only because ‘people need people’, but because people need art, and a performer is the mediator between art and the world. This entire contemplation on worthiness reminds me of Maugham’s Theatre, one of my favourite novels. In one chapter, the heroine’s son reproaches her for being “false”. He fails to understand how one minute Julia Lambert can be all emotion on stage, then have a go at the technician during a short interval, and then immediately regain the altitude and power of her performance once again. She feels disturbed, but in the very final passages of the book she realises that the actors give substance and meaning to the lives of people in the audience: ‘… out of them we create beauty, and their significance in that they form the audience we must have to fulfill ourselves… We are the symbols of all this confused, aimless struggle that they call life, and it’s only the symbol which is real. They say acting is make-believe. That make-believe is the only reality’.

You may cue in Vallely’s review or Gogard’s musings on image and reality in Notre Musique. Or you can read the review of one of the concert’s attendees, who (though not without some inner struggle) has taken from this single night something precious and indelible. One thing is certain: art transforms life, and ever since coming out on stage 47 years ago Barbra Streisand has been doing just that.

Links:

Barbra Streisand official website

Manchester reviews: BBC and Manchester Evening News

Paul Valley, Broadway Diva Lives up to Her Billing, The Independent, 11 July 2007

Set list, photos, press and fan reviews at Barbra Archives.

Barbra Streisand group on Flickr

John Grundeken

The Cotton Mill Blog

Barbra Streisand in Manchester set on Flickr

About images:

All images used in this post are copyrighted. The details for the booklet illustrations can be found in the captions to the pictures here. ‘The Tie’ is designed and produced by John Grundeken.

The Politics of Art: After the Debate

As I said in the previous post, I tend to dislike generic questions. With regards to this debate, as a lady in the audience pointed out, both we and speakers seemed to have confounded the verbs. Whilst the name of the debate was ‘do art and politics mix?‘, the debate itself would better go under the question ‘should art and politics mix?‘ The nuance is pivotal: although the connection between art and politics is irrefutable, the problem that often perplexes us has to do with the limits of this connection, rather than with the very fact of such.

I decided to record the debate on a rather simple digital recorder, and I’m glad that I did. The panel consisted of Ruth Mackenzie (Chair and the Festival Director), Peter Sellars, Jonathan Harris, Heather Ackroyd, and David Aaronovitch. First, Jonathan Harris attempted to illustrate that great works of art, although originating in a certain political context, nevertheless go beyond this context and may ultimately lose any connection with it. This brought to my mind a Chinese aphorism about poetry that I quoted previously in the blog: that poetry, when conveying a feeling through a “thing”, should be precise about the “thing” and reticent about the feeling, so that through the experience of the thing the feeling could be captured.

Heather Ackroyd spoke, first, about etymology and definitions of politics, and state, and art (not always convincingly, in my opinion), and then moved on to give various examples of modern art reacting to and challenging political regimes. David Aaronovitch, who came next, honestly admitted that, while listening to Jonathan and Heather, he forgot to think of what to say for himself. In the light of which he started by taking an issue with Heather and continued and ended up speaking more about politics than any kind of art. And then came Peter Sellars and, thankfully, saved the debate by getting back to where it all started: the crossroads of art and politics.

It is here that I can utter that I’m very happy to have recorded the debate because Peter’s talk is a great example of public talk. Someone may say this is no wonder that a famous theatre director should also be a good speaker, but, as we all know, talents for art and for speech don’t always complement each other.

It was Sellars who touched on the question I raised at the end of my previous post. Art and politics always mix, but to what end? A few people told me I was a dreamer, which I accept because it is true. I’ve always believed in peace, so for me the goal of both art and politics is to promote peace by the means of peace. Again, previously on this blog I quoted Picasso who said that ‘painting is the instrument of war‘. This phrase, however, shouldn’t be construed as Picasso’s advocating the war: Guernica is one of the most powerful anti-war statements in the world’s art. Rather Picasso was acknowledging the fact that art could be and was being used to wage and propagate wars. Yet he was also arguing that, since an artist is a political being, whose biggest political act consists of the ability to take interest in another human being, then painting, as art in general, was the instrument of bringing peace.

This theme of an artist’s empathy lies at the heart of Sellars’s talk. To accord a human status to a human being is a great political act, and art therefore teaches people the skill of inclusiveness, the ability to ‘get outside of your head‘ and to put yourself in other people’s shoes. It is also art, not the media, that provides a new level of information, as ‘uninformed democracy is worse than a tyranny‘. The lack of information and empathy leads to violence which is ‘the collapse of communication‘, the ultimate manifestation of the lack of knowledge and understanding. This is the theme that rises in Gus Van Sant’s Elephant: at certain point during the film you realise that the tragedy that is about to happen has to do not only with the “dangerous minds”, but with the conflict between craving for inclusion and alienation. In Sellars’s words, today’s violence originates from one’s desire to ignore and another’s desire to be acknowledged, whereby the latter plants a bomb in the former’s car.

War is the consequence of this lack of communication and violence, and the purpose of art is to teach us see both reasons and consequences of violence. There is only one way to prevent wars, and that is through deepening people’s listening and looking capacities. At the same time, art continues to be a category beyond all categories, a land that doesn’t exist, and it’s this non-existence that draws us to art. In this, art is akin to culture, and culture, in the words of J.-P. Sartre, neither saves, nor justifies anyone; but it is a man’s creation, a critical mirror in which he can see and recognise himself (The Words).

Ultimately, man always wants to possess something he doesn’t have, and that is Beauty. The myth of Pygmalion is about the fundamental craving for the Beautiful, it is about the desire to have that which is unattainable and yet so close. The pleasure of finding and experiencing the Beautiful is what we should read in the well-known ‘beauty saves the world‘. It is not Beauty as such that saves the world, it is our full and open experience of it that does. Sellars utters this at the end of his talk: ‘world is going to be transformed through pleasure, not through accusation‘.

I suppose it is easy to see, whose side I am on, which I personally acknowledged to Peter. I uploaded his speech, and I still apologise for some technical imperfections and coughing sounds – there is little you can do at the live event of this kind. But I feel that we need speakers like Peter Sellars who encourages the new generation of artists to complexify things exactly when politicians are simplifying them. He calls on the artists’ sophistication, humility and empathy, to bring deeper understanding and pleasure to people. Listen to his talk, think about it, pass it on. For my part, this was one of the occasions when I was thrilled and proud to be living in Manchester.

The Politics of Art (Manchester International Festival, Art and Politics Debate)

As I’m planning to attend MIF’s Arts and Politics Debate at the Town Hall, I’ve been looking for what the visitors to the official website of the festival had to say on the matter. I don’t know what I expected, but the numbers of posts and visitors to each of the forum’s categories are telling.

And then I went to Debates and Discussions section, and there was a selection of questions put up by The Guardian Debates:

is religion a force for good in modern times?
do art and politics mix?
is London bad for Britain?

These are said to be the issues that are to be debated by ‘some of the world’s finest minds‘. I’d especially love to hear their views on the third question, considering how important capital cities are in the development of most of the careers. As far as the first question goes, I’ll gladly quote Mr Tony Blair, ‘I’m certainly not bothered about that‘. Arts and politics is, however, a different subject, and before I go to the debate this afternoon I’ll jot down some of my views here.

Before I do, however, may I say that these generic questions often enrage me. They are usually asked in order to coax the audience into a “debate”, in which any common ground cannot be found by definition. Seriously, how many definitions of art do you know? They say that truth is born of an argument, which is true, providing we know exactly what we’re arguing about.

I had a short-period email correspondence with my compatriot, in which we were talking comfortably about globalisation, Europe, Heidegger, etc. All was fine, until I noticed that he wasn’t actually reading my letters. He was sieving through them, picking up certain phrases out of context, which led to various degrees of misunderstanding. When I finally expressed my concerns, he reproached me: ‘This is the beauty of an argument – soar freely, exchanging ideas, leaving them behind. Disagreements are what I find beautiful, and you don’t‘. I replied that there was nothing beautiful about losing my time.

Let us get back to our sheep. Do art and politics mix? Questions like this force on a thinker a suggestion that art and politics are two completely different, unconnected spheres of life. Whether or not this is possible, each of us can decide for themselves. As far as George Orwell was concerned, one of the four reasons why writers write was ‘political purpose – using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude‘ (Why I Write).

This must be second or third time I’m quoting this passage from Why I Write in my blog, which should unambiguously suggest where I stand. This blog is not about politics, although I expressed my opinion on certain political issues. However, there’s another reason, why I avoid writing about politics in my blog.

There is today what I would call “the politics of art“, which comprises absolutely everything: from language to the themes of your art. The very fact that political correctness is now fully integrated in the process of making or discussing art manifests that art possesses (or is developing) its own political culture. I personally experienced this during Brokeback Mountain release, when even the most humble critical opinion of the film was decried as a homophobic propaganda. I put the word “film” in bold because the whole BM-gate showed the inability of some faithful followers to distinguish between nasty anti-gay comments and a careful critique of the film as a work of art. The art scene thus came across as even less democratic than politics.

So, art and politics not only mix, they’re always entwined to the extent when you can no longer say exactly what feeds from what, art from politics or politics from art. This occasionally leads to confusion. One such on my memory was calling the monumental architecture and sculpture of the 1930s “totalitarian” because the author analysed it on the examples of Italy, Germany and Soviet Russia, failing to notice the examples of similarly “totalitarian” structures on the other side of the Atlantics. Had this been done, the 1930s monumentalism in art would have had to be placed in the context of industrialisation and the world economic crisis. But objectivity wasn’t the author’s political purpose.

I’ll be writing more on the subject after this afternoon’s debate. Since I don’t see the reason to refute the exchange and connection between politics and art, I think the fundamental question to ask is where the two are heading. How do politics and art see progress and mankind? I’ll wait to see if today’s panellists bring this question up.

Carmarthen Cameos – 8 (Dinefwr Castle, Llandeilo)

As you read in the previous post, I’ve only visited three medieval castles, in spite of having studied Medieval History for a while. As you could also gather, I found that both Conwy Castle and Carmarthen Castle have lost to a certain degree the air that we expect castles to possess. They may be impressive, but hardly awe-inspiring. However, this was very different in the case of Dinefwr Castle (pronounced as ‘Dee-ne-foo-r‘), and I can’t help but to try and replicate my journey in this post.

To go to Dinefwr Castle, you take a bus from the stop outside St Peter’s Church. For about 40 minutes you are going past the sumptuous hills, breathtaking views of the fields and the cattle, but occasionally, as you may see on the photo on the right, there will be a small hill, on top of which – a castle’s ruins. When inquiring at the tourist centre about castles in the close distance from Carmarthen, I’ve been told there were three: Dinefwr Castle at Llandeilo, Dryslwyn Castle at Dryslwyn, and Carreg Cennen Castle at Trapp. I’ve chosen to go to Dinefwr Castle, and this proved to be the right choice. As a matter of fact, the booklet I’ve been given says that you’re charged for admission to Dinefwr. This is not true: if you’re only going to the castle, it’s free. If you also want to go to Newton Hall, to have a cup of tea, and to buy some souvenirs, then indeed you have to pay for admission.

When you enter Dinefwr Park for the first time, you walk for a while without having a slightest idea of where to go. It is, I may argue, the perfect state of mind when you’re about to encounter something as impressive as a real medieval castle. You begin to comprehend both the importance and the difficulty of the journey, when you catch a first glimpse of the castle (left). Still, the beautiful landscape that surrounds you makes you forget at once all the misfortunes of walking up the hill (right).

While on this excruciating journey, I’ve been thinking what it was like for people of previous centuries. I had a denim bag, and I wore jeans, a shirt, and a pair of rather comfortable moccasins. But I had neither hat, nor sunglasses, and I had to walk in the raging sunshine, which cost me the sunburnt forehead. If it was a rainy or stormy day, I wouldn’t even think of going to the castle, but previously the inhabitants of and the visitors to Dinefwr wouldn’t always have my choice. And so, what would this walk be for peasants with their carts, and baskets, and cattle; or for knights in armour, on horses; or for lords and vassals, with their court? With this thought in mind I finally reached the castle.

Dinefwr Castle not only survived en masse until today, it was well cared after in the 17th and 18th cc. – so well in fact, that some of the castle’s stones were used for its renovation. Some of the interior details of the 13th c. northern chamber block are well preserved, as you can see on the left. On the right image, you see the restored wall-walk and the 13th c. tower, viewed from the circular keep (you can see on the image above; it dates to around 1230s). Below you can see the northern part of the castle, which comprises the 13th c. tower, the 14th c. hall, and the 13th c. chamber block.

At Dinefwr you can’t help but also begin to contemplate on what it was like to live in a castle. A tourist notice at the castle’s entrance warns you against the bats. I haven’t seen any, but I surely heard the wings’ beating. If that was indeed a bat, I’m glad I haven’t seen it, otherwise my screams would be heard all over Carmarthenshire. Imagine if I were a fair maiden, inherently fearful of those creatures. As you can see, the castle’s windows are large, but the entrances are often not, which makes one remember that medieval people weren’t especially tall. The views from those windows, however, make you realise just how important was a castle as a fortress; how far it was possible to see from the window or from the wall; and how strong and deft were medieval archers.

Finally, at Dinefwr I was able to do something which I was thinking of doing for a while. I do like spiral staircases, but all of you who’d ever been on a medieval staircase would’ve noticed how narrow the stairs were. David Dimbleby recently showcased both the purpose of spiral staircases and the art of using them, when imitating the fighting with a sword in How We Built Britain. What we need to realise is that it wouldn’t be Mr Dimbleby (in comfortable shoes and with no sword) who would be exercising the martial technique, but the knights who would look and dress like those two on the left image. And so I thought: exactly how wide are those stairs? The widest part turned out to be of the size of my foot, and I wear size 3/4 UK (36/37 EUR). This also allows one to wonder at the size of medieval people’s feet.

Going from the castle was quicker, as I took a different route. The walking got tougher, however, and my soles were sorer and sorer, and the hot ground was only making things worse. Little did I know that all this time a Red Kite was soaring in rounds near the entrance to Dinefwr Park. When the next day after visiting the castle I went to the tourist centre in Carmarthen, I saw a book on the stand, with exactly this bird on the cover. ‘I saw it yesterday at Dinefwr!’ I exclaimed. ‘Oh, it must’ve been your luck’, an assistant, a young lovely woman, replied. ‘People come to Carmarthen especially to see it, but it’s a rarity’.

Seems like it was the reward for my journey in the footsteps of medieval Welshmen.

Links and credits:

Dinefwr Castle

Dinefwr Park and Castle (Flickr set)

The colour image of fighting knights is taken from the Knighthood, Chivalry and Tournaments Resource Library

Victory Day

Although I don’t normally use this blog to write anything too personal, this is the day when I would like to do so. It is 9th May, and in Russia this is the state holiday – the Victory Day.

I grew up listening to my grandmother’s story of her life during the war. Between June 2005 and January 2006 I was taking part, as a story-gatherer, in the BBC’s campaign, People’s War. The aim of the campaign was to create the living archive of wartime memories. And since stories from all countries were accepted (as long as they were in English), I contributed my grandma’s account of her life during the war.

I have always adored my grandma, Lydia, despite the fact that we belong to the two quite different generations, which results in occasional “culture clashes”. She was a working pensioner when I arrived, and when I was two, she left her job altogether, to stay with me. (Another reason was that I adhorred a nursery, and after three attempts my family realised that I wouldn’t be staying there, so someone would have to stay at home with me).

My grandmother held a BA in Law and has always been telling me to use my logic, as well as recalling various stories that had taken place at the Central Forensic Laboratory in Moscow where she used to work. She left when she met her husband, Alexei Sokolik, a Ukranian sportsman of Czech origin, and went to live to Lviv (Western Ukraine) with him. She eventually had to return to look after her parents. My mother was already born in Moscow, and my grandfather died of cancer in 1970. Since her return to Moscow until her retirement, my grandmother had worked for the Soviet Railways as a cinema instructor. Being a member of the Cultural Office at the Committee of the Railways Trade Union (Dorprofsozh – ДОРПРОФСОЖ), she supervised cinema clubs, cinema releases and box offices across all 15 regional railway committees.

So, what I decided to do is to republish the story from the BBC archive. Being a copyright holder, I nonetheless would like to acknowledge the fact that this story has originally been posted on WW2 People’s War website (Article ID: A8998933). It is one of the recommended stories in the archive, and I would like to say that I cannot praise my grandmother enough for collecting her strength to talk on the phone while I was recording. I subsequently translated her account directly from the tape.

This is what you’re about to read (quoted from my own entry on the website):

The story of evacuation of the Alekseev family spans from 1941, when they left their village with the last bus, until 1943, when they were given a derelict house to live in just outside Moscow. In these years there were many moments of joy, as well as of desperation. The evacuation camp set up in the Old Orthodox community was anything but friendly. Upon leaving it, the family was then caught up in Yaroslavl in the winter 1942/43, during the Stalingrad battle, when the prospect of Hitler’s victory created panic in the city. Throughout these years there was a constant fear for two brothers and a sister who joined the forces, which culminated in grief when the eldest brother was killed in 1943.

There are several reasons for republishing this story. It is dramatic, and many years after I heard it for the first time its dramatism has finally caught up with me, and I wondered how I would be able to survive in the similar conditions. I am sure some experiences will echo other people’s, and at best this memoire illustrates exactly where our grandparents got their will of steel. Then, of course, I am an historian, so I can also read my grandma’s story as a historical source. This is also a testimonial of a formidable personal memory, but also makes one wonder how a person goes on living with this experience. Ultimately, such stories should remind us of the devastating effect wars have on the civilian population. The Victory Day, which is celebrated as a state holiday in France (8th May) and Russia (9th May), is the good time to think about it.

The story is quite long, so I will break it up in chapters, which will all be collected under ‘My Life at War’ label. I also won’t do this in one go, so the chapters will appear in the course of this week.

Some VERY IMPORTANT notes on COPYRIGHT:
I understand that, as I am publishing this and subsequent posts, they will be read and possibly shared and/or commented by my readers. However, I hold the image and text copyright, and also the BBC holds a non-exclusive right to sublicense and use the content. May I therefore ask, please, that you 1) read carefully the BBC’s Terms of Use, and 2) link to ‘My Life at War’ label and a specific post whenever you’re planning to quote from them. Otherwise, please feel free to leave a comment.

Visiting London-5 (London Book Fair)

Three years ago, during my first visit to London, I was researching in the day and writing at night. This April I went there for the annual London Book Fair. I will not write about it more than you could already have found at the LBF official website.
My main impressions are:

meeting with my old University friend (yes, this world is really small!);
buying an English translation of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s My Discovery of America (I’ll be writing about this later);
attending three very interesting presentations;
spending about half an hour with a very interesting multilingual lady, who recently wrote a book about a cultured cat.

I’ll leave the third one out till later. Meeting my old friend was one of the biggest surprises in my entire life. I wrote somewhere on the blog about the new website that aims at bringing together current and former students from all Russian high education institutions. So this girl has finally registered there in early April, we exchanged a couple of messages, and then we found out that both of us were going to London for the Book Fair. Naturally, we decided to meet, which occurred in the form of stumbling into each other in the foyer. Soon after we sat outside chatting about each other and our unimates.

Strange things come out in these conversations. We had a girl in our year, who was a dedicated student of German medieval monasticism. Although a devoted Russian Orthodox, she was once very seriously discussing with another girl, whether they should attend the Christmas service at a Catholic or a Protestant church in Moscow on December 25th. Ultimately, she went to study in Germany for a year, where she’d met her present husband, a Muslim, for whom – reportedly – she’d converted into Islam. On one of the photographs we saw she was wearing a burqa.

Buying an English translation of Mayakovsky’s digest of visiting America was another huge surprise. When I saw the book on the stand, it didn’t even occur to me that I may not be able to buy it. So I just asked how much it cost. I bagged it with no problem whatsoever. Yet believe it or not I still haven’t read D. H. Lawrence, so when I saw several of his books on Wordsworth Classics stand, I asked if I could purchase Sons and Lovers. Turned out, they weren’t actually allowed to sell books. This was confirmed at another stand where I saw a book on successful blogging.

And the lady I spoke to is Brigitte Downey – a multilingual, cultured, well-travelled, exuberant person who spent years making documentaries and loving opera, and who had some wonderful recollections of Russia and Russian ballet. Half an hour that we spent chatting after I shared with Brigitte my knowledge of search marketing by explaining the difference between organic and sponsored results is the time to remember. And Chapter One of Diaries of a Cultured Cat is generally reminiscent of my experience of Moscow and Manchester that I have mentioned in chapters 1 and 4 of Visiting London.

In Egypt, as we know, cats were worshipped. And in 1932 T. S. Eliot wrote Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats that was adapted for the stage by Andrew Lloyd Webber. You can browse the chapters from Old Possum’s Book here, but this is an extract most relevant to us:

You’ve read of several kinds of Cat,
And my opinion now is that
You should need no interpreter
to understand their character.
You now have learned enough to see
That Cats are much like you and me
And other people whome we find
Possessed of various types of mind.
For some are sane and some are mad
And some are good and some are bad
And some are better, some are worse –
But all may be described in verse.

Brigitte Downey is describing this in prose, but even after one chapter I feel her knowledge and style will make this book an insightful reading.

Links:

Vladimir Mayakovsky, My Discovery of America
Brigitte Downey, Diaries of a Cultured Cat
T. S. Eliot, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats
London Book Fair
Wordsworth Classics
Brigitte Downey’s website

Visiting London-4

During my first ever visit to England I didn’t even go to London, to the great subsequent surprise of my Russian friends. It must indeed be surprising, but in truth it simply manifests this unconscious arrogance of capital citizens for whom no life exists outside the central city of a country. I also noted that some Mancunians were not particularly eager to go “down south”. I suppose with some of them it was the arrogance of somebody who lives well outside the country’s central city and thus wants to downplay the capital’s importance. So I joked: ‘when you’ve got Pall Mall and Albert Sq in your own city, what’s the point of visiting them elsewhere?’

In spring 2004 I went to London to research in the British Library and the National Archives. Since September 2003 I’d been living in Manchester, and by April 2004 the differences in lifestyles and perceptions (that would inevitably come to surface eventually) began to take the best out of me. Most frustratingly, I felt like I couldn’t write. It wasn’t quite true. I’ve always been writing wherever I had an idea or a line to build upon. During the day, this could happen at the lecture, on the bus, on the tube, in the cafe, in the park. At night I usually worked in the kitchen.

What happened when I arrived to England is hard to boil down in one or two sentences, however long. After all these years I realise that the main difference wasn’t so much between England and Russia, but between the “contexts” in which I lived here and there. The context in which I lived for the first seven months since my arrival to England was stiffening for me as a writer.

The context into which I migrated for two weeks in April 2004 was liberating. In every sense of the word (except strictly geographical), it was my homecoming. I no longer felt unfitting or dreamy. I understood that I was losing time and strength trying to adopt values and habits I didn’t want to have, or trying to persuade others to make changes.

Understanding this didn’t make my life easier, but the burden of feeling oneself strangely different was left behind for good. Spending a fortnight in London made me crave for space, motion and freedom in Manchester, which I was able to find.

I lived in LSE’s Carr-Saunders Hall, in a small room on the 4th floor. I took a bus to the British Library, or a tube to Kew. In the weekends I did a lot of walking. On my first Sunday in London I took a wrong turn from Fitzroy St and ended up in Soho instead of the British Museum. During Easter, I walked in the early morning from my hotel through Holborn to the Tower.

And at night I wrote. In those two weeks I perhaps wrote more than in the previous seven months. One of the poems has already appeared in Notebooks; because there is no actual rhyme, it was easy to translate. The very first one I wrote in London is called ‘Looking for You’. Despite the title and content, it is not actually dedicated to anybody, even obliquely. I interpret it as a poem about the search for somebody who shares your views, ideas; somebody inspiring; yet somebody who is very difficult to recognise.

Я ищу тебя в городе этом,
Не надеясь когда-то найти.
Ты, как Муза, бросаешь Поэта,
И расходятся наши пути.

Я ищу тебя в книгах старинных,
Где виньетка – разгадка судьбы.
В переулках, на улицах длинных
Чутко слушаю чьи-то шаги.

Я ищу… я ищу тебя всюду,
Даже там, где не стоит искать,
Но я верю, я верю и буду,
Не надеясь, но все-таки ждать,

Чтобы в день, когда ты будешь рядом,
Не заметив, пройти. И тогда
Снова ждать и искать тебя взглядом…
Я искать тебя буду всегда.

04-05 апреля 2004 г.

(I am looking for you in this town
With no hope to ever find you.
Like a Muse, you abandon the Poet,
And our roads part.

I am looking for you in the old books,
Where a vignette unveils the fate.
In the lanes and in the long streets
I am heeding somebody’s pace.

I am looking… I look everywhere,
In the places you’re never to be.
A believer, I’m waiting forever,
Without hope, to find you here,

So that once when you’re only near,
I would then pass you by. And again
I’ll start looking for you everywhere…
I will always be looking for you
© Julia Shuvalova, 4-5 April 2004).

[The English text is an almost verbatim translation; however, the second and third stanzas give a very good idea of the poem’s original foot and rhythm].