bye bye!
I’ve left my job. No more cloister views, lunchtime antique browsing, Maggie Jones’ lunches or Caffe concerto ice creams in the old cemetery. I shan’t miss it much though. I’m in Westminster now, opposite the Holden building on 55 Broadway – I love Holden! My view is of Henry Moore’s west wind sculpture. Not that I get to look out of the window much.
This week I have, besides having started some sort of career (as someone said: it is better to be a swineherd in a castle than to be a king in a pigsty), been to hear Maurice Glasman talk about blue labour. I really like him, mainly, I think because of the jewishness (yes, I’m one of those). He reminds me of Jeff Goldblum et al. – should’ve been an actor with that face. I’ve been to a Roxette concert at Wembley which was just as amazing as you can imagine it would be for a Swedish expat like moi. And to a Terry Eagleton lecture at St Martin-in-the-Fields where an argument was being made for power and against compassion – muy interesante. I’ve also been to the Christmas fair at the Swedish Church and whad’ya know – it was exactly the same as last year. I guess that’s what Christmas is all about: repetition – or tradition as we like to call it.
For someone who has trawled through the better part of the In Our Time archive, it was a real treat to see Melvyn Bragg IRL at the National aka my second home. Melvyn (yes, I think we’re on first name basis here) is how I imagine the Victorian polymath from the public lecture halls would be. So jam packed with knowledge that it can barely be contained, it spills over in anecdotes, in jokes, in semi-unrelated facts, accompanied by gesticulation so wild, hand written notes flies all over the place.
They are celebrating the anniversary of the King James’s Bible which is the subject of Melvyn’s new book The Book of Books: The Radical Impact of the King James Bible (I went to some of the bible readings as well but I don’t know if it works, you know. I like costume and bit of spectacle when I’m at the theatre, and I don’t fare well with monologues.). A lot of this talk – on the social and cultural importance of the KJ Bible – resonated with the talks on the gospel and social justice that’s been running at St Martin in the Field, where Neil MacGregor did an amazingly good speech on Compassion in Art – or lack thereof.
Now, I can’t show you any Christian art of radical compassion because apparently there isn’t any but I will show you this. Engraved in ONE single circular line, starting at the tip of the nose and moving outwards (click on it!).
Sometimes, like Flaubert, I believe in nothing but art.
All the wild horses
All the wild horses
Tethered with tears in their eyes
May no man’s touch ever tame
May no man’s reigns ever chain you
And may no man’s weight ever defrayed your soul
And as for the clouds
Just let them roll
Roll away
The sky behind the townlet and the church was orange-red; the flower-garden was flooded with a strange warm light that lifted every leaf into significance. Paul passed along a fine row of sweet-peas, gathering a blossom here and there, all cream and pale blue. Miriam followed, breathing the fragrance. To her, flowers appealed with such strength she felt she must make them part of herself. When she bent and breathed a flower, it was as if she and the flower were loving each other. Paul hated her for it. There seemed a sort of exposure about the action, something too intimate.
Sons and lovers, D H Lawrence
Where I’m from a haircut is about a tenner – and you can be sure to get all the town gossip from the past year thrown into the deal as well as well. Here in central London it’s a different story. It’s perfectly alright to charge 100 quid for a simple, straight-forward cut justified by some “senior stylist” title bollocks. I know I have myself to blame for being such a push-over but I find it virtually impossible to walk into a hair salon without being talked into having the most ridiculously priced stuff put into my hair. Your hair needs it. Does it now, really? Because I can never say no, nor have the guts to complain, I have had some pretty wacky – and expensive – hair cuts in the past. That’s why I’ve stayed clear from hairdressers for a good year now. Then yesterday I gathered some strength and went for it. Five hours, four hair colour removal runs, one exceptionally gentle (i.e. exceptionally expensive) hair-colour, three absolutely essential treatments, a cut and a blow-dry later, I could walk out as the red-head (although not quite the shade) I had come for. I didn’t even dare listen to the total cost, I just paid and ran out before they managed to convince me to get the super amazing “Brazilian blow-dry” for the fantastic price of £200. Such bollocks.
Don’t ask yourself so much whether this or that is good for you. Don’t question your conscience so much—it will get out of tune, like a strummed piano. Keep it for great occasions. Don’t try so much to form your character—it’s like trying to pull open a rosebud. Live as you like best, and your character will form itself.
The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
I listen to Tim Buckley’s Song to the Siren about ten times every day. I have no idea why; I’m not a Buckley fan otherwise. Sometimes This Mortal Coil’s cover will do as well, but never, ever Robert Plant or Brian Ferry (although Ferry’s live performance on Jools Holland was quite acceptable). And for the rest of my waking hours, it plays inside my head, over and over again.
It haunts me to say the least (thought I’d better get it out of my system).
Which, of course, leads me to present these various Ondines / Victorian pin-ups…
.
The steadfastness of generations of nobility
shows in the curving lines that form the eyebrows.
And the blue eyes still show traces of childhood fears
and of humility here and there, not of a servant’s,
yet of one who serves obediantly, and of a woman.
The mouth formed as a mouth, large and accurate,
not given to long phrases, but to express
persuasively what is right. The forehead without guile
and favoring the shadows of quiet downward gazing.
This, as a coherent whole, only casually observed;
never as yet tried in suffering or succeeding,
held together for an enduring fulfillment,
yet so as if for times to come, out of these scattered things,
something serious and lasting were being planned.
(Self-portrait by Rilke; Arthur Hughes; Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Jean Delville; Steichen; Munch; William Hazlitt; Samuel Palmer; Charles Hazlewood Shannon)
‘When?’ said the moon to the stars in the sky
‘Soon’ said the wind that followed them all
‘Who?’ said the cloud that started to cry
‘Me’ said the rider as dry as a bone
‘How?’ said the sun that melted the ground
and ‘Why?’ said the river that refused to run
and ‘Where?’ said the thunder without a sound
‘Here’ said the rider and took up his gun
‘No’ said the stars to the moon in the sky
‘No’ said the trees that started to moan
‘No’ said the dust that blunted its eyes
‘Yes’ said the rider as white as a bone
‘No’ said the moon that rose from his sleep
‘No’ said the cry of the dying sun
‘No’ said the planet as it started to weep
‘Yes’ said the rider and laid down his gun
How many wonderful period dramas we have been treated to lately…Downton Abbey, Any Human Heart, Upstairs Downstairs, The King’s Speech. Of course, BBC makes the mistake to overdo the drama on the expense of the period setting as usual. I’m quite happy for the camera to linger on pretty sights instead of cramming in a major plot-changing event every sodding minute (something ITV learnt to do to perfection 30 years ago with Brideshead).
Nonetheless, in whatever shape, this is a great love of mine (something which harks back to the unhealthy amount of Catherine Cookson adaptations I had to endure as a child). And in Maid in Britain, BBC did some great digging into why we watch it and why we love it, and whether it is socially relevant or mere escapism. Surely it can be a little bit of both and more still?
Personally, I’m especially weak for the kind of master/servant dichotomy we find in both Downton and Upstairs, Downstairs. The most touching portrayal I have ever come across for this is Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. I find it almost unbearable to read. All work is of course noble, but to take such pride in doing your duty that you suppress your whole being is impressive. To live not only for your master, but trough your master.
Let us establish this quite clearly: a butler’s duty is to provide good service. It is not to meddle in the great affairs of the nation. The fact is, such great affairs will always be beyond the understanding of those such as you and I, and those of us who wish to make our mark must realize that we best do so by devoting our attention to providing the best possible service to those great gentlemen in whose hands the destiny of civilization truly lies. …
Tragic yes, but the dignity I admire. On the other side of the coin we have the people who live trough their servants, one sees this happening too often still and it is nasty business.
Oh, please give me more wonderful costumes, stately homes, grand dinners and complex, restrained characters and less freaky “coincidences” and raree-show worthy people. Thanks!
2011 will be the year of excessive reading. I’ve found it so, so hard to read properly since graduating. From reading like four books a week, I have now been going at the same novel for five months. Five months! To my defense, I have been working a lot, and I have been reading other stuff (erm, like the Internet). Nonetheless, it is just plain wrong. I can’t even look at my bookshelves; all the unread books stress me out.
Clearly, it can’t go on like this any longer. So, I thought I’d tag along on one of these many reading challenges that are going on at the moment. And as all good things come in threes, I thought I better do three of them.
I find the American South endlessly fascinating as a dramatic setting and I love Tennessee Williams and should really give Mockingbird a rest and explore new territory. So, I’ll have a glass of sweet iced tea and read Faulkner, Chopin and Margaret Mitchell (because, even though I might possibly, once or twice, have implied to have done so, I have never actually read Gone with the Wind) for the Southern Literature Challenge.
As I have a soft spot for the Irish I am also set on reading Oliver Goldsmith, John Banville and Elizabeth Bowen (and hopefully find inspiration for a fourth along the way) for the Ireland Reading Challenge.
Last, but not least, will be my own baby: The Decedent Reading Challenge. I’m thinking Theophile Gautier, Octave Mirbeau, probably some poetry and perhaps, as icing on the cake, a masked ball at The Last Tuesday Society (because one must give one’s body pleasure so that one’s soul is happy there).
Fingers crossed, this will work!
