Essential viewing and reading matter for this uncertain Autumn. The BFI follow up their superlative Land of Promise set of British documentaries, 1930-50, with an intriguingly titled volume covering 1951-77. Owen Hatherley follows up his offensive on the part of modernism, Militant Modernism, with a guide book to the state of our urban architecture.
The book arrived yesterday; was flattered to discover I was thanked for my recommendations of places to visit in the North East, responding to the request made in the 'Brasilia of the North' post here: http://nastybrutalistandshort.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html
First time to my knowledge that I have appeared in print, as it were, and hopefully not the last! :) I cannot think that I would merit a mention in Chris Mullin's forthcoming collected diaries from 1994-99, for my week's work experience in his office in June 1998. Met him briefly on the Friday and I must have cut an awkwardly monosyllabic figure, though I could certainly boast a reasonable work ethic, managing to re-file most of his constituency case work!
"I never wanted to big up any drugs, because I don't reckon they deserve it. It's just something that you choose to do. I probably come across as, like, 'Yeah, acid and weed are amazing.' But I don't think that at all, really. And if I did, I wouldn't want to say it in an interview. Plus, I'm never under the influence of drugs when I make music. Whenever I have been, it's always been totally rubbish. It's a real disciplined thing, making music. When you're tripping, you're just fucked. You could never get it together to make a track. When I'm stoned, I go to bed."
"only with programming you have to use your brain. The most important thing is that it should have some emotional effect on me, rather than just, 'Oh, that's really clever.' There's a lot of melancholy in my tracks." His best ones, he says, are those which evoke feelings that can't quite be described, where "you're not quite sure what emotion it is".
"These distinctions matter because the way out of this mess (and it is a mess, fuelled by ignorance, stupidity, prejudice and weapons) is to clarify and discriminate rather than hurl abuse at anything that goes near a mosque.
I doubt many Muslims can be bothered with Amis. But he nurtures in his audience a corrosive prejudice against people they've never bothered to meet. It is culturally dim for us to form confident opinions about people based upon how they look and what we've heard they think. It is also against our interests. Nonsense abounds on the causes of terrorism but it is hard to argue that alienation doesn't channel potential foot soldiers towards radicalisation. As one solitary Muslim asked him at the ICA, 'Why such contempt for Muslims?' Amis must have known something was up because he dropped his drawl and called the man 'sir'. But he could hardly unspeak his views. And those views are certainly alienating."
Carl Neville's Classless: Recent Essays on British Film, another fine Zero book, identifies the late-1990s as a time in which There Was No Alternative - to consumerist hedonism or its political parent, Blairism. When ideas and learning were restricted (and the culturally highbrow buried ever deeper in the schedules), popular culture itself lost out through lacking any contrast or focal point to rally against. It became the establishment; one that we now need to recognise as intensely problematic.
In the late 1990s, there was a resistance, embodied best perhaps by two figures, Chris Morris and Richard D. James (aka. Aphex Twin). Morris, educated at Jesuit Stonyhurst, is of course best known for The Day Today and Brass Eye, but for me the initial few series of Blue Jam and in part Jam, make up the pinnacle of his work and define the late 90s era like nothing else.
If his earlier work was a liberal savaging of tabloid Toryism and stupidity in all its forms, Blue Jam tapped into the nation's nervous systems, fears and desires laid bare: a forensic representation of a national unconscious. There is a languid quality; strong, almost primal emotions sometimes, others a completely detachment - always a serene melancholia.
Some fragments bite all the harder now for all of the subsequent 'Noughties' history: the middle-class couple's sex arrangement in return for slight reductions in house price. The Middle England couple's campaign to get their child into the 'right school', as mentioned in an excellent post by Nina Power here: http://infinitethought.cinestatic.com/index.php/5324/. The man bowing out in his prime; an ambiguous reflection on euthanasia and the narcissistic self-image of the Baby Boomer generation. The sublimely timed Mr Bentham sketches, depicting the quiet nightmare of Consultancy Britain.
The musical soundtrack is perfectly judged to create the mood of alternating unease and sadness: Morris' choices tap into a thoughtful strain of British music, electronic and ambient. The music of BJ forms an eloquent expression of his own singular qualities: articulacy, eccentricity, insight, precision. His best work in Blue Jam makes one think of Pinter, as well as Cook and Stanshall. The music is rooted in a time when the 1960s/70s born musicians began developing a hauntological music (in its more populist form, Lemon Jelly, in its more abstract, Position Normal; its most euro-electro, Broadcast).
The soundtrack Bark Psychosis. Brian Eno. Thomas Dolby. Gainsbourg. David Sylvian. The Cardigans heartrending ('Celia Inside'). PJ Harvey at her most haunting. Recontextualised 'Oh Lori' by Alessi, chilling lost summers. Reflective city music: Mono, Dubstar and Alpha.
And Aphex. Always Aphex.
The magnificent SAW2 does not need recounting; perhaps The Richard D. James Album does - an electronic symphony of English Weirdness. 'Windowlicker' is the seminal single that should have taken us into a different universe, but somehow didn't. Even Drukqs is essential; or, at least half of it is: the miraculous 'Btoum-Roumada', the uncanny 'Father' which evokes Allan Gray's spiralling piano tones in A Matter of Life and Death. The AFX Analord series is artful evidence of his growing into an elder statesman role, as dubstep, Ghost Box and Mordant Music arrived. Morris went on to make the vitally important (if occasionally slightly lax) Brass Eye Special, the flawed London media satire Nathan Barley (some valid digs at the line-quoting hero-worshipping of him in the treatment of Dan Ashcroft by 'The Idiots'; some great moments, but ultimately little of the satirical bite or scope of his previous work) and most recently, the commendable Four Lions. Not a great film overall, but a humane statement of libertarian-left sanity in an ever more sensationalised, reductive media landscape.
For millennial melancholy, one might also cite the retrospection of Black Box Recorder and, of cours,e Radiohead, whose sequence of albums from OK Computer to Hail to the Thief display no illusions about their times, as well as US bands like Lambchop and Sparklehorse. Perhaps my favourite record of this time remains Bows' absurdly overlooked Blush (1999), with Long Fin Killie's Luke Sutherland fusing diverse elements: urbane trip-hop, sedated Drum & Bass, aquatic strings, abstract harps, Scandinavian female vocals and a post-rock undertow.
Morris and James are so much more than the lazy stereotype of 'media terrorists', of people 'pushing the boundaries of acceptable taste', yawn. True, they cut through cant and politesse, but are not empty nihilists out to shock. They rather display a clear-sighted humanity, and, at their peak, an extraordinary discipline in the causes of intelligence and feeling.
Admittedly, quite a few of the backing tracks are quite old; but they were worthy of finishing off and flesh out. They struck me of summer, too. Only tracks #3 and #4 originate at all recently. The lyrics are all August 2010, with 'Do Real Men Cry?' edging into this new month.
There are resonances of much of what I've been reading: Ted Hughes' poetry, H.C. Andersen's 'The Snow Queen' (and W.H. Auden's reflection on it), Raymond Williams' "Culture and Society". Two of the best films I've seen all summer are sampled - prizes to who can name them!
Again, I am very interested in listeners' feedback... I think this marks something of a transitional EP - and I want the next to be different in feel. I aim to record everything from scratch for the Autumn one; this one felt at times like a reckoning with the past, necessary in order to move forward.
My trips to London and Keswick inform the spirit of this record, plus the fine people who have contributed to it being such a good time - thank you all.
No surprises really with that, though it should contain a question about voting reform. Balls has spoken up well on the economy, one of the few to challenge the absurd prevailing 'logic' put forward by Osborne and media cheerleaders regarding the need for cuts of an ideological scale.
It remains to be seen just how genuine Ed Miliband's supposed reclamation of social democracy is; in itself, it may not be enough, but it would be a significant improvement on New Labour if truly felt and enacted.
N.B. The site does not include Burnham, as apparently he didn't submit answers to the full set of questions.
…that night she [Cherie] cradled me in her arms and soothed me; told me what I needed to be told; strengthened me; made me feel that I was about to do was right … On that night of the 12th May 1994, I needed that love Cherie gave me, selfishly. I devoured it to give me strength. I was an animal following my instinct, knowing I would need every ounce of emotional power to cope with what lay ahead. I was exhilarated, afraid and determined in roughly equal quantities.
Tony Blair, A Journey
Theodore Millon identified five subtypes of narcissist.[2][3] Any individual narcissist may exhibit none or one of the following: unprincipled narcissist - including antisocial features.
A charlatan - is a fraudulent, exploitative, deceptive and unscrupulous individual.
amorous narcissist - including histrionic features. The Don Juan of our times - is erotic, exhibitionist. compensatory narcissist - including negativistic (passive-aggressive), avoidant features. elitist narcissist - variant of pure pattern. Corresponds to Wilhelm Reich's "phallic narcissistic" personality type. fanatic type - including paranoid features. A severely narcissistically wounded individual, usually with major paranoid tendencies who holds onto an illusion of omnipotence.
It is a legacy of personal hubris, and confusion of 'centre-left' politics with celebrity and Rupert Murdoch. Regardless of the same old 'bliar' terminology in the strapline - yawn - this is a forensic article displaying an attention to reason and evidence that Mr Blair neglects in his selective interpretation of history and his role in it: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/mehdi-hasan/2010/08/saddam-iraq-weapons-report
The actual legality or otherwise is not the issue that this article is concerned with (though Deputy PM Mr Clegg certainly made his own views clear in parliament). The wealth of evidence points at least to the lack of due dilligence he gave to the available evidence within the intelligence community and the UN. He was selective in what and who he listened to, typical of a man who privileged the first-impressions of celebrity over an engagement with facts and ideas. The article is an attempt to highlight many of the inaccuracies in Blair's intepretation of the evidence available and the erroneous nature of many of the arguments he made for going to war. Many excerpts I have seen so far justify the impression of Blair as seeing things in rather black-and-white terms, all too close to the Palins, Bushes and Glenn Becks (and yes, at times, the Galloways) of this world.
From the selections online, his prose seems rather Daily Express in style; a studied informality, with all those exclamation marks. His comments on Brown seem typically disingenuous, considering his high-profile appearances in support of Labour and Brown in the election campaign. For all of Blair's supposed advantage in emotional literacy over Brown, he seemingly proved a dubious judge of character - his comments on Murdoch and Bush, for example. His actual politics are seemingly a misuse of his supposed gifts. From other comments, he now seems entirely signed up to a shallow Ayn Randian anti-statism - presumably adopted for the benefit of the US 'lecture circuit'. Selectively avoiding the truth that we now have a state built around subsidising a failed economic elite, with barely any more regulation than before. He characterises Brown as a socialist; an incredible deviation from reality, again - part of his attempt to aggrandise himself as a heroic figure. Brown was more up for PFI initiatives than Blair. Blair himself seems closer to Ronald Reagan in philosophy than John Stuart Mill, Beveridge or any significant liberal thinker - most of whom will accept the need for the state as a 'positive actor'.
The Marr interview was telling - Blair showing every affinity with the Clegg-Cameron coalition in policy - admitting regrets over the FOI Act and the Fox Hunting Ban, and rubbishing any attempt by Labour to 'move a millimetre' away from New Labour. The old actor was in evidence, absurd as ever. Blair represents so much that I intensely dislike about our recent media-political nexus: the consummate acting, the displays of faux-religiose sincerity (he sets himself within the same continuum as Glenn Beck); the 'Joker Hysterical Grin' - to quote Mark Fisher - masking a contempt for anyone daring to disagree with him.
Was this man really Prime Minister? Or rather clairvoyant or Daily Express agony aunt-on-call? It is remarkably odd that Blair deemed it so important to warn Diana about Dodi Fayed, on so little evidence other than a feeling: "This was not for the obvious reasons, which would have made some frown
on him; his nationality, religion or background don't matter a hoot to me. I had never met him ... so if you ask me, well, spit it out, what was wrong, I couldn't frankly say, but I felt uneasy": http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/01/tony-blair-diana-relationship-fayed
Then one has to consider the bizarre claims that he predicted John Smith's death and knew that he would gain the leadership... This is all to trivialise the death of a man who would have made a far more considerable Prime Minister for this country, by associating it with his absurd Mills and Boon talk of 'devouring' Cherie's love.
It is a sign of Blair's success in moulding the country in his image that his book has been so successful despite the leaked absurdities; that people are still seemingly taken in by the 'charm' and consider this bizarre, profoundly misguided man as 'likeable' in any way. Presumably a large element of the support comes from the Baby Boomer generation, of whom TB is an exemplar: corpulent, deluded, narcissistic. Believing fundamentally in the power of the self to shape the whole world. His claims to be acting in the 'national interest' in his foreign policy was perhaps the biggest joke of all.
Yes, and the whole campaign against the ideological (and unnecessarily severe) cuts must be waged as number one priority, but this is part of the same battle.
I encourage everyone to write to their MP on this issue of the BBC. Whilst an imperfect organisation, we have to support it as infinitely better and with the scope to improve - in comparison to the completely commercial alternatives. Do people look at Murdoch's broadcasting - Sky News, Fox News - and see a future they really want? Do they look at ITV and see a future even...?
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MARCH, Graham
23 Jul
Many thanks for your recent email to Julie Elliott regarding the BBC.
Ms Elliott shares your concern and has written to Jeremy Hunt on the issue. When we receive the minister’s reply we will get back to you.
With best wishes.
GRAHAM MARCH
Senior Parliamentary Affairs Assistant to Julie Elliott MP
