Saturday, June 16, 2012

I wonder whether Joe Strummer or Mick Jones ever imagined that pairing London with Calling would end with that simple juxtaposition ending up with a life of it's own; a self supporting existence that's traversed rebellion, Armageddon prophecies, blade-runner dystopia, edgy pop song, to where it's now actively touted as part of the London 2012 Olympic sound scape and life as a probable regular feature in any London music mash-up that's broadcast to the world. And in the latter, it's living it's sentiment to the fullest. 

In just over thirty years it's become part of London's universal consciousness; the younger, more attitude laden sibling to Dr Johnson's eternal truth that to "...be bored with London is to be bored with life". Why go to the trouble of hiring marketers to concoct a brand or an image, when each of these carries within them the kernel of what London is all about.

London calls. It's a loud, mouthy, pushy city, wrapped within a turban of near constant noise and confusion, of sirens, traffic, helicopters, music, trains, people, random shouts, accelerating motorbikes, roadworks. I walked along Wood Lane through to Hammersmith this afternoon with a friend. We could n't hear each other. Too much ambient noise. But it's the noise of a great city. An intoxication. It's about energy.

Bored. With London? How? I've lived in West London for twenty five years. This afternoon I discovered Wormwood Scrubs, an area of common land deep in the heart of the city and maybe ten minutes north of where my flat is. It was like finding Xanadu. Woods and meadows within sight of the Westway. Tell me how do I get bored with London if it's forever holding unknown pleasures in it's hands.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Earlier this year, I went to see the Royal Academy's blockbuster Hockney exhibition, where every gallery was hung with his depictions of East Yorkshire, a forgotten, ignored region, but not deliberately, this is not Chernobyl. The ignorance is different; it's a driven through, passed by area, neither A nor B, it's the bit in between. Glanced as a blur, without the courtesy of being looked at.

Hockney turned that on it's head, and as the alchemist a good artist really is, transformed this underprivileged, overlooked region, and drew out poetry, magic, passion, colour. Cinderella has finally gone to the ball. That ugly duckling? It was a swan all along. We just did n't see it until Hockney drenched it with nectar. It shook it's feathers and our eyes opened.

That's more or less the same transmutation that Rocco Papaleo, the director of Basilicata coast to coast, managed to do for his home territory, Basilicata; another area just as unheeded, as forgotten as Hockney's East Yorkshire. If ever there were two orphans, then here they are, rendered invisible in the public consciousness, by the shouts and clamors of more excitable neighbours.

Papaleo's film, which warmed my heart to it's very last cockle when I saw it last night, as it did for the friend I was with, draws out the the unexpected beauty of this spectacular area like fine gold wire. I was riveted. Nearly every frame is a burst of intense colour, stark contours and rolling, deep horizons.

And the plot, well, there's more than a hint of East Yorkshire poking through,with all the character's shared secrets, unacknowledged fears, heartfelt dreams as they trundle for 10 days across Basilicata en route to a music festival, evoked for me the sometime bitter sweet, yet always genial camaraderie of Last of the Summer Wine. The circle squared in a sense.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

From a mini debate I've been having on Facebook with a US friend; the subject, the paucity of reason in politics

It's not just the Right's dishonesty and extremism that makes them so difficult to debate with, they've handicapped themselves through the lack of any unified internal logic. There's nothing to argue against. I don't know what Socrates would have made of this. There's no possibility of anything even remotely dialectic; the give and take of persuasive debate towards an eventual and agreed truth lacks soil. There's nothing there.

If anything could be claimed as their vision, then it must be simple knee jerkism, outright objection without the intellectual courtesy of consideration. That, and mudslinging.

And it's not unique to the US I see it, I hear it, and I despair of it here. We are not immune.

As a liberal, and if there's a term that needs to be rescued from the lexicon of abuse, then this has to be candidate material, I equally despair that the Left is too ideologically purist. Christ, do we love the cut and feel of the hair-shirt. Too hard on ourselves, too theoretical, too down.

We're a progressive tribe that ought to be articulating the blessings of actually having a unified inner logic. One moreover that has palpable fruit sweet enough for anyone's taste. Yet we don't. Partly, through that grinding intellectual masochism that dogs our every move; partly due to, and how I wish fervently this was n't the case, an insane, rabble-rousing, flame grilled, vilely opportunistic, soundbite driven media. More in love with lucre than nuance and happier with emotionalism than with explanation.

Alarmist demagoguery is driving the debate, whilst reason lies in the stable, hobbled.

Yes,it is a difficult one. Far more questions than answers; the dream, though, let's keep it alive.