Emerald Champagne

Blog Migration

2010-05-21T23:01:00.001+02:00

I don't have much time to spend on this blog, and it's a bit silly trying to update two blogs, so I'll be concentrating on my other blog for a while: http://www.apostmodernbard.blogspot.com/
See you there!

The Corporation

2010-04-04T11:19:00.000+02:00

We don't worry about where your granny was born

2010-02-27T14:20:00.003+01:00

A vision I wish they would pay attention to at Stormont:

"Anarchists are not nationalists, in fact we are completely against nationalism. We don't worry about where your granny was born, whether you can speak Irish or if you drink a green milkshake in McDonalds on St Patrick's Day. But this doesn't mean we can ignore nations. They do exist; and some nationalities are picked on, discriminated against because of their nationality. Irish history bears a lot of witness to this. The Kurds, Native Americans, Chechins, and many more have suffered also - and to an amazingly barbaric degree. National oppression is wrong. It divides working class people, causes terrible suffering and strengthens the hand of the ruling class. Our opposition to this makes us anti-imperialists. ... So fight national oppression but look beyond nationalism. We can do a lot better. Changing the world for the better will be a hard struggle so we should make sure that we look for the best possible society to live in. We look forward to a world without borders, where the great majority of people have as much right to freely move about as the idle rich do today. A worldwide federation of free peoples - classless and stateless - where we produce to satisfy needs and all have control over our destinies - that's a goal worth struggling for."

Source: flag.blackened

Happy Valentine's Day from the Misery Bear

2010-02-14T14:08:00.000+01:00

Emily Says...

2009-12-13T18:32:00.006+01:00

One of the authors I'm studying this year is Emily Dickinson. This is a mixed blessing, for while I fell in love with Emily's poems a couple of years ago—she is now one of my favourite poets—, studying them for the French "aggregation" feels like raping the text.
Below I've posted one of her poems that speaks to me the most, especially because of my current situation. The two last lines are interesting as they seem to encapsulate an idea central to postmodern/Emerging Christianity.

Some keep the Sabbath going to the Church –

I keep it, staying at Home –

With a Bobolink for a Chorister –

And an Orchard, for a Dome –

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –

I just wear my Wings –

And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,

Our little Sexton – sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –

And the sermon is never long,

So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –

I'm going, all along.

Top 10 Albums of 2009

2009-12-02T19:48:00.018+01:00

It might be a bit early to write these kind of lists—2009 isn't completely over yet—but here goes anyway. My ten favourite albums this year were:

10. The Temper Trap - ConditionsThe hit "Sweet Disposition" of this atmospheric indie rock band from Melbourne was featured in (500) Days of Summer.

9. The Elms - The Great American MidrangeAfter trying out a Black Keys brand of blues rock which didn't suit singer Owen Thomas's voice at all, the Elms have returned to their old rhythm'n'blues/heartland rock sound, but with smoother production and improved musicianship.

8. Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
Camera Obscura's latest album sounds more contrived than their previous ones, but it's still enjoyable.

7. The Beatles in Mono
I had to include these in my list. I especially enjoyed the reissue of the earlier albums: it helped me understand why their earlier stuff sounded edgy at the time!

6. God Help the GirlBelle&Sebastian's side-project (with female singers, mostly) is the soundtrack to Stuart Murdoch's upcoming musical film. It's far less pretentious than it sounds, and its 60s pop sound is quite refreshing.

5. Lily Allen - It's Not Me, It's YouThis is a great sequel to her first album—it's more clever, more mature, but just as fun.

4. Patrick Watson - Wooden ArmsThis album is probably less accessible than his previous one, but it's definitely worth the effort.

3. Tonight: Franz FerdinandMany, many bands are having a go at "New Wave" these days, and it doesn't always work: but I think Franz Ferdinand have the creativity and the freshness that all those other "dance-punk" acts lack.

2. Monsters of FolkConor Oberst (Bright Eys) + Jim Jones (My Morning Jacket) + M Ward. Sums it up, really.

1. M Ward - Hold TimeA fantastic indie folk/alt country album...

Balloons, Toothbrushes and Jetpacks

2009-11-20T10:31:00.023+01:00

Another great gig at the cabaret of the Cartonnerie... Cultural activities are getting better and better in this city, I do think Reims is slowly waking up.

Libelul was an unoriginal but enjoyable indie pop duo from Brussels, which sounded a bit like Death Cab for Cutie or Jimmy Eat World with a hint of electronica.

Then came the main support act, the Swedish Thus:Owls, (pictured above) fronted by a girl who was sporting a Joni Mitchell-like dress and who sang like Shara Worden from My Brightest Diamond. The band was obviously influenced by celtic music, but there was a heavy dose of psychedelia and quite a dark edge. It wasn't unlike what I imagine goth folk band Espers would sound like if they started covering the seventies psych folk band Trees...

Finally Patrick Watson (below) started playing... I love the indescribable form of baroque pop of his albums (in 2007 he won the Polaris Music Prize for best Canadian album, beating fellow nominees Feist and the Arcade Fire), but I was expecting Watson to be one of those pretentious singer/songwriters who stare at their piano keys during the whole concert.
But he actually turned out to be very charismatic, and great at engaging the audience. He kept cracking jokes with his bandmates and chatting away to us in his Quebecan French. He got everyone singing happy birthday for one of the sound technicians, and for the encore, he walked through the audience, singing into a strange Tim Burton-like contraption which was strapped on his back and that he called the "megasuit". It basically looked like a jetpack with half a dozen megaphones sticking out of it. His band made use of instruments in some of the most creative ways I've ever seen. The guitarist did things I've never seen anyone do with a guitar (he played it with a toothbrush at one point); the drummer/percussionist would often draw a bow against a saw; and there were also balloons, Fischer Price kiddies toys, toothpicks and countless other weird objects-turned-instruments... It was one of the most entertaining and "interactive" gigs I've ever been to. And it just shows you that you can make "serious" music without taking yourself seriously. Very refreshing.

Sixties Caesar

2009-11-14T17:29:00.016+01:00

Thursday night I went to see Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, played by the American Repertory Theater company. I hadn't been to see a play in ages; the last one I'd seen was Othello at the Globe in London, a couple of years ago. I'd forgotten how much I loved the theatre!
I used to go quite often, when I lived in Château-Thierry. They had two small local theatres and they always had something interesting on. And my high school literature teachers often organised trips to Reims to see plays there.

The Comédie de Reims is a really good theatre. A great variety of plays are staged there, sometimes in French, sometimes in the play's original language. Most of those I saw there were really interesting; a few were pretty bad—the kind of plays where the director gets the female lead to show her tits, probably hoping that this will somehow compensate for the play's mediocrity.

I think I can safely say that the ART's Julias Caesar was one of the best plays I've ever seen. Several critics accused it of being too "facetious", or too difficult to understand, because of its style. But I think the director, Arthur Nauzyciel, really brought the characters—and the play itsel—to life, which is quite an achievement in itself: Julias Caesar is far from being one of Shakespeare's greatest plays (the plot is quite basic, the characters are very one-dimensional when compared to Hamlet, or MacBeth, or Lear). He stuck close to the text, but brought to it a depth which is lacking in the original.

It was full of surprises. The play was re-set in America in the 1960s, probably to draw parallels between Caesar and JFK's assassination. It was fun to hear Shakespeare played with an American accent, for a change! The actors were dressed in sixties-style suits, and surrounded by mod couches, lamps and armchairs. They often walked about with a glass of wine in their hands, as if they had walked out of some fancy cocktail-party.
The background was a huge, life-size photograph of an empty theatre (see below), which, as a classic postmodern device, kept reminding the spectators that what they were watching was fiction, not "real life". I'm sure Shakespare would have appreciated that, as he always liked to remind his audience that all the stage did was reflect the world. At the beginning of the play, the actors faced the audience, in front of huge white frames, which made them look like celebrities caught on one of Andy Warhol's prints.
The actors were quite talented, especially Mark Montgomery, in the role of Cassius. A lot of them had film/TV experience: one appeared in The Dead Poet Society, another in The Wire. One of the actors (who played Brutus's servant, Lucius) delivered all of his "lines" in sign language; his character was ever present on stage, most of the time sleeping, or looking at the other characters, as if he were in a dream. At one point of the play he disappeared, and walked back on stage dressed in a pair of Superman pyjamas and a cape. I'm not quite sure what the director was trying to get at there!
But the most surprising thing of all was that a jazz trio was present on the side of the stage during the whole play. From time to time the singer, in her black evening gown and covered in silver jewellery, would start crooning into a ribbon microphone, while two men in suits and bow tie suavely plucked the double bass and picked the guitar. The songs marked the end of scenes, or sometimes even interrupt scenes to ironically comment, in a way, what was happening (a few scenes before Brutus's suicide, she sang... "Suicide is Painless"); it had also had the effect of being a show within a show.

All in all, I had a great time. The only annoying thing is that, since I managed to get a good seat, I was surrounded by the Fur Squad—ie the bourgeoisie of Reims—who always show up at the theatre (or at the jazz festival), just because they hope to be seen, and they always end up sitting there bored to death, since they don't have the foggiest notion about art.

The French Connection #1

2009-11-11T22:49:00.019+01:00

C'est décidé. I'm going to initiate myself to French culture—something I've managed to avoid for twenty years despite the fact that I've been living in the country for all that time.

But I don’t mean French high culture. I already enjoy French literature, French painting, French classical music, French kissing and French cancan. I mean French popular culture. It's something I've always snubbed.

I'm starting with cinema. I've always found modern French acting to be, well, frankly, terrible. And most of the French films I've seen (apart from a few exceptions) I didn't like, either because it wasn't my type of humour, either because they've been the kind of films with scenes where you see a close up of a man washing his hands in the sink for five minutes straight (as one friend from Norn Iron once put it). But I decided to give it another chance. I thought I'd start with the nouvelle vague, an influential movement in cinema which started in France in the 1960s.

So last week I watched Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 film Alphaville. I thought it would be an easy start, since it's science fiction: I wasn't disappointed. It was brilliant. It wasn't like the American sci-fi B-movies of the time. No airships, no spacesuits, nothing extra-terrestrial; the setting was a French city in a not too distant fascist future. (Everything was shot in real locations in Paris.) There were a lot of themes apparently inspired from 1984 and Brave New World, but with a distinctive French touch. It was exciting, and fun to watch, but there were some very interesting shots, which had an experimental feel to them that hasn't been lost, even when being viewed today. And the acting... well, I was expecting bad, affected acting. But the actors were really talented, especially Anna Karina (pictured left), a sort of French Diana Rigg or Audrey Hepburn. (I actually found out afterwards that she was Danish-born, and that the lead male actor, Eddie Constantine, was born in LA, but I don't know if that has anything to do with the acting style).

Anyway I think I'm a convert, and I'm ready to see my next 1960s French movie... Probably Godard's Breathless. I'll keep you posted!

By the way, here's the most famous scene from Alphaville:

Grapes and Virgins

2009-11-05T23:26:00.009+01:00

At the end of last month I went to two gigs. One was by John Grape, a local indie folk band (and not a singer), which played for the "Noctambule", which is a night-time festival in Reims. Musicians, dancers, actors, artists etc come out in the streets. It's a great idea, it's just a pity that there aren't more people who come out for it.

A week later Lydia and I went to see the Virgins, a "dance-punk" band. They've only released one album so far, which is okay but not great. So I was impressed by their show: they're clearly far better live, and they've improved a lot since last year, when they released their album. It had been a while since I'd been to a gig with music you could dance to, and it was actually a lot of fun. The singer, Donald Cumming, also sang a couple of folk/blues ballads. It fitted his voice perfectly. It was a departure from their usual rock songs, which suggests that the band could come out with some surprises in the future... We'll see.

I was a bit bummed because I missed Shannon Wright and I won't be able to see Peter von Poehl, but I've got my ticket for Patrick Watson, who's coming later in the month.

"I've got nothing against Irish people, but..."

2009-11-02T09:04:00.008+01:00

So I was in the Kilberry—one of Reims's "Irish pubs"—last week, like every week, for a well-deserved pint after hours of mind-numbing lessons. My mate introduces me to this guy who goes to our classes. I haven't even noticed him before. Anyway, before drinking his pint, this bloke raises his glass, and says—remember that we're in an Irish pub— "God save the Queen" (in a terrible French accent, incidentally). I tell the guy that, being Irish, I can't join him in a toast to the Queen—not that I have anything personal against old Lizzy; as far as monarchs go she's not too bad; I just don't give toasts to anyone in positions of power— and my mate and I laugh it off. I mean the guy is only joking after all, right? Right? A few moments later my mate goes out for a smoke, and I'm left alone with the royalist, who turns to me and says "You're Irish? Oh well could be worse". I stare at him blankly. "I'm joking", he says, "but I'm pro-British". I shrug, trying to indicate that I'm more interested in my glass of Belgian ale than in his political views. But he forces me into a monarchy vs republic debate, which turns out to be rather interesting. I'm starting to warm up to the guy—or at least I'm beginning to thaw—but then he says: "You know, I've got nothing against Irish people, but..." Of course this one of the phrases most used by bigots. (Take the similar phrase: "I'm not..., but I don't like...", fill the blanks with: racist/Blacks, homophobic/gays, anti-feminist/women, etc. and you get the same general effect). He then draws a list of all the traditional vices that Victorians liked to ascribe to Irish people. He was extremely anti-Catholic (although I later learnt that his girlfriend was Polish and Catholic), and I pointed this out to him, while telling him that I myself came from a Protestant background and that I was born in Northern Ireland. His face cleared and he said something like "Oh that's not so bad then". He didn't seem too happy when I told him that I wasn't a unionist. And he then went on to say how Irish Protestants are just the same as Irish Catholics (not in the sense that we should forget our differences because we have more in common than we think, but in the sense that all Irish people are obscurantist medieval monkeys), but I wasn't listening anymore because my glass was empty, and my mate was coming back from his smoke anyway.
But it was a strange experience. French people usually love the Irish as much as Americans do (and almost as much as the Irish do themselves) and although I'm used to hearing silly stereotypes repeated over and over again (sheep, leprechauns, Guinness, Bono) I know that those are meant as compliments. But this guy came out with things which were borderline racist, and were definitely anti-Irish. He told me his mum had English ancestors, so maybe old prejudices have been passed down to him that way? It's only the second time in my life that I've heard a French person talk like that (the other time was at a St Patrick's party six years ago, when a drunk French soldier told me that the British army should have wiped out all the Irish decades ago, and that basically Bloody Sunday must have been heaps of fun. Man I loooove the military). In any case it was very, very bizarre, and quite disturbing.

Quill in Hand

2009-09-21T09:57:00.010+02:00

While reading a friend's poetry blog, I realised that I've been neglecting my own for a while. I was working at my Masters thesis this year, and now I'm preparing for that oh-so-French ordeal, the agrégation, so I haven't had much time to publish anything lately. The last time I completed a poem was over a year ago. But I haven't been completely unproductive. At the beginning of the year, around February I think, I had an idea for a novel. It partly evolved from a different project which I was working at the year before (see here for a snippet) and which was much too ambitious for me at the time, but most of it is new. I've been thinking it over during the past six months, trying to come up with a few things. I wrote a few scenes here and there. I managed to (mentally) paint the setting. During the summer I concentrated on the characters quite a bit. They are taking shape, coming to life, becoming "fuller", which is a lot of fun. Thanks to that, I've been able to concentrate on the plot more in the past few weeks. Nothing is fixed or definitive yet, of course, but I have an idea of what I want to get at. I don't want to talk about it too much yet, but I suppose you could say that it's a sort of coming-of-age story set around a second-hand bookshop (nope it's not a Black Books rip-off, as fun as that would be!) in a fictitious town in France. I've no idea if I'll ever finish it, or ever dare show it to anyone, but still, it's something which I'm starting to get quite excited about!

PS: this is a small text I'd written with the story in mind, but I've no idea if I'll include it or not.

The meaning of life and stuff

2009-09-06T16:58:00.012+02:00

So, what is the meaning of life ?

The question keeps popping into my head these days. It always has, I guess, but it’s been bothering me even more, lately. Frankly it's quite annoying. I mean I’d rather be left alone, left to enjoy eating Fry’s chocolate Turkish delight or drinking tea or beer or listening to the Velvet Underground or whatever, you know ? But no. Hm-hm. The Question won’t leave me five minutes’ peace. Not one single day of respite.

What makes things even more frustrating is that as a christian you’re supposed to have all of your shtuff together, you're supposed to have things more or less worked out, or at least that’s what the more sanctified (sanctimonious?) believers expect of you. You’re supposed to accept that you’re here for a fixed purpose (whatever that purpose might be) and that’s that. But it’s not as simple as that. Nothing ever is. (Except perhaps biting into a chocolate bar.) Because meaning doesn’t only come down to purpose. There’s also the question of identity. Even if you have a purpose in life, you can still wonder who you are, how, and why.

Sometimes I envy the freethinkers. No really. I really do. At least for them, the meaning of life is that there is no meaning – or at the very least, that meaning must be figured out or created out of scratch by oneself. I like that idea, probably because I’m a proud git and don’t like to have meaning shoved down my throat. I also envy the more naïve people (or maybe they’re just people of greater faith?), precisely because of the fact that they can swallow meaning (or truth, or purpose, or whatever you want to call it) as if it was maple syrup. I wish I could. At least I’d have some kind of solid framework. Still, I cross my fingers and hope that if I don’t know who/what/why I am, hopefully a Higher Power does.

Maybe the HG2G super-computer was right. Maybe the answer to life, the universe and everything really is 42.

.

The Go-Getter

2009-08-01T15:44:00.008+02:00

I'd never heard of the Go-Getter until I checked out Zooey Deschanel's filmography ; it's an indie road movie which was released in the beginning of 2007 and only ran for three days, grossing less than $12,000. Most of the cast (which is quite small), I'd never heard of before. Apart from Zooey Deschanel, the only recognisable face was Jena Malone (Donnie Darko, Into the Wild).
I loved the movie. I mentioned this in one of my last posts, but I'm a sucker for those kind of "indie" films. All the ingredients were there : an introspective anti-hero, a couple quirky characters, understated acting, the classic road movie "drive-by" scenes, and of course the trademark indie folk music (M. Ward, Animal Collective, Elliot Smith, the Black Keys).
Unoriginal, probably. Clichéd, no doubt. But it does the trick.

It's funny how different people respond so differently to works of art, be it painting, movies, music or literature. I don't think it's only to do with upbringing or education or peer influence. I can't help thinking that it has a huge deal to do with personality. I know it has its limits, but I think personality psychology could provide some answers, or at least some clues. (I've been interested in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the "Enneagram" theories lately.) For example, I wonder if certain types prefer to watch (or to work on) certain films. Maybe SP types ("Artisans") prefer quicker-paced, action and sometimes violence-orientated) movies ; and NFs ("Idealists") maybe opt for slower, more introspective films.

Melomania

2009-07-30T08:53:00.006+02:00

Got back from Scotland about a week ago, but I'm already back at work, preparing for the upcoming year. I might put some pics up later.
In the meantime, here's what I've been getting my kicks from (apart from shrooms, of course).

Wilco - Wilco

Eels - Hombre Lobo

The Hold Steady - Stay Positive

Kaleidoscope - Faintly Blowing

Crosby, Still, Nash & Young - Déjà Vu

Sunshine Cleaning

2009-06-29T09:23:00.009+02:00

I went to see Sunshine Cleaning yesterday ; I hadn't been to the cinema for a while. I'd missed it. It's so different from watching DVDs. I don't know if it's because of the "collective experience" side to it, or the bright silver screen, or the dusty tattered old seats, but there's definitely something magic to the cinema... A bit like in Terry Pratchett's Moving Pictures. The cinema I go to in Reims is privately owned ; it's set in an old opera-house, and it often shows "indie" films and foreign movies, subtitled and in the original language instead of dubbed as in most French cinemas.

I was really looking forward to Sunshine Cleaning. I'm a sucker for all those Sundance festival films. I'm aware that that type of "indie" film isn't original anymore. The humour is often dark, the characters are offbeat, and the soundtrack is always made up of indie pop or folk bands. But I love those films. I go to the cinema for the entertainment, not for highbrow pseudo-intellectual arroganza—I spend enough time reading that sort of stuff for uni, thank you very much. The Sundance films maybe aren't original, but they're entertaining, and more often than not, refreshing.

In Sunshine Cleaning, as in Little Miss Sunshine, all the characters are "broken", they are all "losers". Rose (Amy Adam) is an ex-cheerleader who is now a cleaner-lady, who hasn't the strength to put an end to an affair with her high school sweetheart who decided to marry another girl. Rose's little boy, Oscar, is a gifted but "special needs" child who keeps getting kicked out of school because of his OCD behaviour. Rose's younger sister, Norah (Emily Blunt), is a thrill-seeking immature young adult who can't hold a job, and tries to drown her grief in anything she can. The girls' mother committed suicide when they were very young, and they've never managed to get over it ; their father (Alan Arkin) keeps making promises he never keeps, and, convinced that he has "business acumen", constantly plans new and unsuccessful business ventures. All the characters need redemption, and they find it by helping others. Rose and Norah feel a special connection to the people they clean up after (they start a crime scene cleanup business). Their father takes care of Oscar while they're at work. A one-armed shopkeeper looks after Oscar at one stage during the film. And yet all these "helpers" are never "rewarded" in any obvious way. Rose takes care of the whole immature bunch (son, sister and father) and never gets any recognition for it. The one-armed shopkeeper who seems to like Rose doesn't even get a "thank you" from her for looking after her son. Norah tries to help a young woman by reconciling her with her dead mother, and it doesn't work out ; she even accidentally burns down a house while working alone to let Rose go to a high scool reunion party. The grandfather fails to raise enough money to buy Oscar a gift he promised to give him for his birthday.
None of the characters are "rewarded" in any conventional way. Instead, they find love. Not eros, not romantic love, but agape, unconditional love. They grow closer to one another. They may be broken, and yes, they may be losers in the eyes of the world, but together, they are able to "cope", to live, to find joy.

Burqa or no burqa?

2009-06-22T17:26:00.008+02:00

There is a huge debate going on in France at the moment over the burqa, the Islamic headdress which covers women from head to toe, and which conceals the face behind a mesh screen. Should it be banned by the state, or not ?

On one side there's the majority of French people who, in the name of freedom, women's rights and laïcité (the strict separation between religion and the state) argue that the burqa should be banned in public places.
On the other there are a number of Muslims—mostly the women who wear the burqa themselves—who claim that they are exercising their freedom by choosing to wear this garment and that any legislation banning it would be an infringement on their right to practise their religion.
What is interesting is that it has emerged that most of the burqa-wearers are in fact French converts to Islam ; not immigrant Muslims or second-generation "immigrants". In fact several moderate Muslims have argued against its use.
In an important speech in front of parliament this afternoon, Sarkozy proclaimed his opposition to the wearing of the burqa and anounced that he would set up a committee to decide which measures—if any—should be taken to deal with it.

I believe that the burqa is one of the biggest (and worst) symbols of the oppression of women ; of course extremist Islam does not hold a monopoly on the ill-treatment of women, but that's no excuse. Advocates of the burqa have said that it protects women and "liberates" them by preventing men from seeing them as objects. Yet it seems to me that wearing such a garment is just as dehumanising as selling one's body by working as a porn actor or as a prostitute. Just as sex workers and women in the porn industry are exploited—consciously or not—so it is with the wearers of the burqa. And even if some women wear the burqa willingly, by choice, who is to say how many are brain-washed, frightened or even coerced into wearing it? I don't think it's a sign of "cultural imperialism" or Western arrogance to be against the wearing of the burqa. I don't mind the wearing of the hijab (the "headscarf"). It's not something I agree with but I can understand it. But the burqa? That's simply going too far.

Yet, having said that, I'm not sure that banning the burqa is such a good idea. Perhaps for minors, but not for adults. For one thing, on a pragmatic level, I don't think it's a very good strategy. It would almost certainly further alienate the Muslim community. It could foster a siege mentality, and push even more young men and women into the arms of the wahhabists. Besides, if the government wants to fight the rise of religious extremism, it should work hard at addressing one of the root causes of this radicalisation : poverty, ghettoisation and feelings of alienation because of the fact that our consumerist society has only the latest Ipod to offer as an answer to life's questions.
But I'm also not in favour of the ban for another reason : I believe that too much legislating isn't a good thing ; I don't like the idea of a bureaucratic state encroaching on individual freedoms. It isn't its business. I don't have any answers to the problem, but I don't think that creating more laws is the solution.

Sorry I'm Late

2009-06-17T13:23:00.001+02:00

I haven't much time to blog these days, but I'll try to get back to it soon... In the meantime here's another cool stop-motion video by Tomas Mankovsky.

Stories

2009-05-13T16:23:00.012+02:00

Stories. That's one thing I couldn't do without. Like music, wine and chocolate.
In fact, it's probably something noone can do without. Stories are everywhere. In the films we see at the cinema, in the soaps we watch on the telly. The best songs are stories put to music—or music put to a story. Paintings often bring stories to life. Why is Mona Lisa smiling ? What happened to Van Gogh's ear ? What was Piet Mondrian trying to put in order, with his rigid perpendicular lines and sober squares ?

Advertisers are aware of our interest in stories. Brands like to pretend that they are several decades or even several centuries old, and often on the packages of their products you can read their "story". One of the most important trends in clothing and decorating is the "vintage look": clothes and objects have to tell a story or at least have a history.

Oral storytelling is probably as old as humanity itself, and every culture's mythologies are based on stories—more so than theology. History is boring when it's presented as a list of dates, intriguing when it tells the story of the people that lived ten, a hundred, a thousand years ago. Philosophy, religion and science become dogmatic when they concentrate on the particulars and forget the story.

Heck, we all like to have some amount of drama going in our own, real lives ; we all want to have a story to tell.

It was my grandfather who first introduced me to the world of stories. I remember him sitting in his old dark green armchair, resting his hands on his generous belly. I would sit facing him, on the sofa, my toes barely touching the floor, looking out of the window at the semi-detached red brick houses which surrounded the street. The only way you could tell them apart was by looking at the drain pipes, which hugged the walls like ivy: they were all painted in different colours. Brown, blue, green, yellow, white, red. Granny would come in to the living room, bringing me a cup of fresh milk and a plate with a buttered scone or a jam bun. Grampa would only get a cup of tea. He would give Granny a sad puppy dog look, but she would never yield. He, however, would always get a bar of chocolate or a biscuit from somewhere—he must have had a hidden stash. He would give me one, take a bite of his an say: "Well-now." Then his story would begin. About musketeers, with their swords, capes, and moustaches. About pirates, with their eye-patches, parrots, and panache. He would tell me about James Bond—his gadgets, his girls, his martini—when I was still too young to be allowed to watch the films. Sometimes he would tell me one of his own stories: as a boy scout he had slept in a haunted castle and heard the banshee scream ; he had come across the terrible pooka-horse when cycling down the small Irish country roads as a young man, and it had made him ride into a dung hill in a field ; he had seen a faerie in the isle of Man and had caught a glimpse of a leprechaun in his own garden.
Grampa's stories sent be back in forth in time, they took me all over the world. They taught me how to daydream, how to fantasise, how to develop a rich inner life. They set my head firmly in the clouds. I've never come down since.

Tree

2009-05-03T20:09:00.004+02:00

He stood barefoot, his back against the old oak tree. He closed his eyes. He dug his toes into the rich, welcoming earth which lay between the oak tree’s gnarly roots. They were warm in the primeval dust which had swallowed them up. He almost felt them grow, reach down deeper, further, closer to the timeless, abyssal mysteries. He slowly lifted his arms above his head. He could hear the suave whispering of the leaves above him. The wind, that evanescent lover, stroked his hair, caressed his soul. His face glowed in the sun. He could feel its fingertips on his cheeks. He smiled. He knew at that moment that he was alone, utterly, fatally alone. But he was alive. And that was enough.

.

Furry Happy Monsters

2009-04-21T22:37:00.000+02:00

Neighbourhood Issues

2009-04-18T18:38:00.002+02:00

Belgie

2009-04-17T12:37:00.010+02:00

Some photos from yesterday's daytrip to Brussels...

Matreesmo

2009-04-15T13:01:00.004+02:00

The picture isn't very clear, but hey.

Currently Listening to...

2009-04-11T18:58:00.006+02:00

Fleet Foxes - self-titled

The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society

James Yorkston - When the Haar Rolls In

The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love

Grandaddy - Sumday

Sexism, Strength and Dominance: Masculinity in Disney Films

2009-04-07T17:23:00.010+02:00

This short video ties in with what I was talking about in my Fey Pride post. I don't want to pick on Disney in particular—it has become something of a cliché to say that Disney conveys right-wing values (racism, sexism, consumerism, etc). But it's nevertheless true that entertainment and the media have a huge influence on the development of children. Sometimes it's done in a deliberate way, (ads are used to make sure children become model consumers) sometimes not (for example depictions of violence are probably a reflection of society and are broadcast because, well, violence sells, more than being a conscious attempt at promoting violent lifestyles). It's certainly the same for gender roles, as this short video clearly demonstrates.

I'm working on my dissertation a lot these days—about evangelicals and their attitude to power—and I found out that the first American evangelicals were actually very progressive. In the 18th century, they were opposed to slavery, women could vote in church meetings and preach, they were pacifists and were in favour of social justice. This changed in the South of the USA when evangelicals grew in power, at the beginning of the 19th century. Evangelicalism became the religion of the elites, used as an opiate of the masses to keep the slaves and the poor in check and to support the slave-system. Evangelicalism was stripped of its more radical aspects. Women and young people were no longer allowed to preach. Blacks were set aside. Pacifism was ridiculed. A rhetoric of war began to be used : a real "Southern male" was to be manly, dominant, physically strong, and if possible own slaves. Because a century later the South of the US would have a tremendous influence on evangelicalism, both in America and worldwide, this conception of masculinity would prevail among many evangelicals. You still find it today. If only conservative evangelicals would reclaim their progressive roots, what a change it would make to the world!

"This crisis of capitalism is not all bad news"

2009-03-21T14:37:00.003+01:00

If the video doesn't work, you can watch it here.

I admire the fact that Professor Ghosh, even though she claims that the current recession is "much bigger and more extensive" than the Great Depression, manages to be optimistic about the future, and denies that the crisis will necessarily lead to fascism as it did in the 1930s. I appreciated the way she started out, arguing that the current market/financial/banking needs to be changed to lead to more social justice and better care of the environment. But I was disappointed about her conclusions : she wants to reform capitalism, not do away with it. It's similar to Nicolas Sarkozy who on one hand says that "laissez-faire capitalism is over" and denounces the "dictatorship of the market" and on the other hand declares that he wants to "restructure capitalism". Now I don't know if they are being hypocritical or if they are just naïve. But reforming or restructuring capitalism just ain't possible. Controlled capitalism is an oxymoron. Welfare capitalism is a myth. Capitalism isn't evil : it can't be, it's not a person. But capitalism, by its very nature, has to expand to exist. If it stops growing, it collapses. It feeds on growth. If we really want the world to be a more just, ethical, sustainable place, we can't just reform the capitalist system, we have to pull out of it. What to set up in its place is a matter of great debate, and I don't believe that an alternative system will solve all of the world's problems, but that doesn't change the fact that capitalism has to be done away with.

Parables & Primes

2009-03-16T15:08:00.008+01:00

Parables & Primes is a folk album by Texan singer-songwriter Danny Schmidt.

Danny Schmidt sounds a bit like early Josh Ritter. Parables & Primes has the same bare and simple quality to it as Hello Starling. But its themes of isolation and alienation are more reminiscent of Jim White's material. Actually some of the tracks have the same kind of southern notes as White (the slide guitar on the song Neil Young for example), but thankfully stay well clear of the Nashville sound.

Schmidt, like all the great folk artists, uses and subverts biblical imagery, so there's that Dylan-Cohen feel to a lot of his songs. The album is musically quite diverse : a couple of the tracks sound like gospel songs (Esmee by the River and Beggars and Mules), Happy All the Time is a John Martyn-style folk-jazz fusion, and Stained Glass seems to have come right out of Songs of Leonard Cohen. Along with Dark-Eyed Prince it's, in my opinion, one of the album's most memorable tracks.

In Dark-Eyed Prince the artist uses a fairy tale-type narrative to talk about closing oneself up emotionally and not being able to accept what life or love has to offer.
Stained Glass tells the story of a congregation finding its church's stained glass window shattered on Good Friday, and finding out that the man who had made it has passed away years ago. The man's old father then decides to fix it for them and toils day and night, leaving his blood and tears in the glass, and finally bringing it to the church on Easter Sunday. Schmidt then goes on to sing about hope and brokenness.

The last few tracks of the album are less noteworthy, but all in all, Parables & Primes, without being revolutionary, is a good folk album. One warning though : like Leonard Cohen's material, it's probably not something you should listen to if you're already feeling down.

You can listen to the whole album for free on Deezer.

Procrastination

2009-03-12T14:24:00.004+01:00

This short video more or less summarizes my day-to-day life during these past few months.

Well I better go and get my stuff done.

.

no more

2009-03-10T11:33:00.001+01:00

Me and You and Everyone We Know

2009-03-07T18:38:00.010+01:00

Me and You and Everyone We Know came out four years ago but I only got round to seeing it now. It was directed by Miranda July, who also plays the lead role. Her quirky character, Christine, provides taxi services for old people. She's also a video artist, and she tries to get her work exhibited in a museum. She falls in love with Richard, a shoes salesman who has just got divorced. He tries to raise his kids and connect with them, but in vain - to try to get their attention, he even sets his hand alight and waves at them.
And that's one of the main themes of the film : connecting in the age of the internet. This is mostly developed in the subplots involving Richard's two boys, two teenage schoolgirls and a curator of a museum of contemporary art. The boys' first experience of sex takes the form of a scatological online chat with a complete stranger. A middle-aged man flirts with two schoolgirls, but when things might actually get physical, he hides from them. The curator views Christine's video artwork, and at the end of the cassette is a kind of pre-recorded interview of Christine : another delayed, indirect and virtual exchange. And although the exhibition the curator is preparing is a reflexion about the alienation caused by virtual communication, she herself has no one in her life. What's interesting is that the film came out just before the boom of networking sites (Myspace, Facebook, et al), but it brings some interesting insights. Even though technology and the Internet make it much easier, cheaper and quicker to communicate, humans are unable to connect in the computer age. The computer screen has become a barrier - an actual screen, if we want to play with semantics - between people. There is a breakdown of intimacy - whether platonic or sexual. Intimacy is replaced by an unhealthy type of fantasy - fantasy has always existed, and there's nothing wrong with it in itself, but the division created by the screen means that it's never acted out, there is never any real contact or sharing or exchange.
The film has some uncomfortable moments in it (the scene where a 8 year old kid sex-chats online with a stranger without even knowing what sex is is quite disturbing) and might be too quirky for the taste of some people, but it's one of the best I've seen in a while. Miranda July and John Hawkes (Richard) are great performers, some of the lines are memorable, the strange music fits the film perfectly, and there's some beautiful camera shots (the film actually won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes in 2005). But again, I don't think it's a film which will speak to everyone. Some people might think it's too pretentious, or just not get it. But it's probably like a good red wine. If you swallow it too quickly, you'll only taste the vinegary bits. If you let your tongue savour all the flavours it has to offer, you'll most likely love it!

Carol Brown

2009-03-06T08:26:00.003+01:00

This is probably my favourite song so far from the second season of Flight of the Conchords.

Fey Pride

2009-03-04T16:33:00.000+01:00

This post may be a good deal more personal than usual, but it’s something that has been on my mind for quite some time now. So here goes.

This is the 21st century.
But if a guy doesn’t follow certain cultural conventions, supposed to be traditional masculine norms, he is depicted or perceived as being gay. (This is actually another stereotype. As if all gays were effeminate… But that’s another story, for another time.)
For example : traditionally, masculinity is associated with : being into sports (especially team sports), preferring beer or strong liquor to wine and cocktails, being aloof and reticent or reluctant to express one’s emotions, appreciating depictions of violence in literature, cinema, etc, being reluctant to commit or to start a family, being homosocial rather than heterosocial (ie preferring the company of men to the company of women, in a non-sexual way), being less sensitive, talkative, romantic and moody than women, caring less about one’s own outward appearance (though admittedly that is due to the fact that there is far more pressure on women to conform to certain norms of physical attractiveness ; however that is changing, as it has been reported that more and more men are starting to feel the pressure too.), being attracted to certain colours, not caring about interior design, not being interested in cooking or gastronomy, liking meat etc… This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many, many such conventions. They may vary slightly from one country to another, but most of them are firmly engrained in Western culture.

But they just don’t reflect reality.

I know heterosexual women who love beer, team sports, gory horror films, who are reticent, heterosocial and decidedly unromantic. But they’re still heterosexual and they’re still women.
I myself don’t eat meat, I can't stand graphically violent or gory films and am nonplussed by action films, I actually like some “chick flicks” (of the “intelligent” kind), I’m not into team sports (mostly because I hate competition ; playing for “funsies” is okay), I like the colours pink and purple, I hate confrontation, I’m over-sensitive (nooot a good thing), I think cooking is fun, I’m a bit mushy (in a tasteful manner, I like to think. Inasmuch as mushy can be tasteful), I think most beer is overrated (I did say most), I like things fey, I’d like to have kids someday… okay I’m not going to type out all my likes and dislikes and characteristics, and I’m not submitting them to anyone’s moral judgement. I’m just trying to prove a point here. These attributes are rarely considered ‘masculine’ in mainstream Western culture, yet last time I checked I was still a man, and to quote Stuart Murdoch “I’m straight to the point of boring myself” – “even when I feel like a girl”. And by the way, my mannerisms aren’t considered to be effeminate, as far as I know.

I don’t want to be seen as overreacting or as whining – it’s just that such stereotyping can be annoying on the long term. I have more or less come to terms with this ‘altermasculinity’ now, but it took time. Interestingly it’s usually not something that women have a problem with. Women have other battles to fight, they are probably aware of the dangers of stereotyping as they themselves are constantly subjected to stereotyping in this patriarchal society. And not all men are guilty of this reactionary behaviour. (I’ve had mates who felt more or less the same way as I did.) But many are. Religious people, and in my experience conservative Christians, are among the worst, and often tend to misapply misinterpreted verses from Scripture .

I have in the past tried to conform to more traditional, conventional masculine gender roles, but on most occasions it was an absolute disaster. (I actually enrolled in a football club and practised every week for a year in 1998, because I thought that was the thing boys were meant to do. I was so bad at it that I wasn’t even allowed to play one single game for the team. I’ve tried to watch gory movies but was either bored to death or just disgusted. And I’m not even going to talk about my short and disastrous experience with the boy scouts…)

It’s an issue which has sometimes been addressed in ‘out-of-the-mainstream’ literature, music and cinema, but very little in popular culture. There are, however, signs that things are slowly changing. A character like “JD” (Zach Braff) in the TV show Scrubs, while not always being depicted in an altogether positive light, allows the idea that a man can flout certain perceived masculine norms without necessarily being gay. This is also the case, but to a lesser extent, with character Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) in sitcom How I Met your Mother. It’s nice to see main characters like that on mainstream, widely popular, prime-time TV shows. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were many men out there who feel forced to conform to norms of conventional masculinity.

Now I’m not suggesting that all conventional masculine norms be traded for feminine ones or unconventional ones. Everyone is different. It’s just that people should cut us some slack and let us be who we are.

End of rant.

I heart France

2009-03-01T11:21:00.001+01:00

I just noticed that whenever I blog about France or the French, the post usually takes the form of an ugly rant. That's probably because I only post about France when something about the country has just cheesed me off (pun intented). My apologies. I actually really love living here. Since I don't want to give the wrong impression, here's a list of some of the things I love about this country and its people (no order of preference):

France has many beautiful and very diverse landscapes
France has a fascinating history
the French are rarely superficial
the French are less materialistic than people in anglo-saxon countries (no matter what people say)
France is a republic. We have no useless monarch. (But plenty of useless politicians).
the French language is beautiful (when spoken properly)
France hasn't fallen for the extreme political correctness of some anglo-saxon countries (though sadly that's changing)
France has had some great poets, writers and artists
the French are always ready to question the authorities and stand up for their rights
the wine (no further comment needed!)
the food, especially the many different salads and cheeses
the weather (in general)
the urban French usually have a good dress sense
the French have a cute accent when they speak English
in France it isn't embarassing or socially abnormal for a man to cook or be interested in gastronomy
ordinary French people are interested in politics
it's a secular state ; no link between church and state
many French people are pacifists and are anti-war
the French kiss to greet one another (how better can it get?)
the French use their hands when they speak
in France, you can put your hands on the table when you eat
French markets aren't only full of hip bourgeois people
the French dig the Irish
José Bové (I don't know whether it's his moustache or his alter-globalism which I like best)
the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
the French are almost as cynical as I am
the French are into home-made cooking rather than ready-made meals
in cases of emergencies, men can pee in women's loos, without being shot down (mentally) by the muttawa
junk food is considered uncool
on a religious note (sorry peeps, I had to get this one out), French Christians generally don't give in to the Christian Right-type nonsense about politics and end-times theology that you often find in the US and in Norn Iron

(Dedicated to Camille)

Of Bread and Frogs

2009-02-27T18:25:00.009+01:00

Turning vegetarian - that was unforgivable for our French friends. Refusing to eat "le" meat ? How could we be such philistines ? (Yes, meat-eating is considered an art in France). Then it was choosing to get around on bikes.

But now we've given them another reason to label us as crazy arrogant foreign hipsters. We bought a bread machine. Now, our French friends don't know this yet. But I can already imagine their reaction. "What ? You don't like baguettes ? Food snobs !" Well, I guess baguette is okay now and then as a novelty, but it gets boring when you eat it 365 days a year - as many French people still do. Plus it isn't even healthy. There's no wholegrain in it. And if you drink water with it, it makes you bloat. Yes, like frogs.

It's part of a wider move. We're trying to buy less pre-packaged, processed and ready-made food, and cook/bake more ourselves. It takes much more time, but it's cheaper (no matter what people say), it's healthier, it's yummier, and it's more ethical.

So who cares what the French think ? I'd rather be arrogant and healthy any day than cynical and bloated.

PS. Don't miss the Age of Stupid drama-docu film about climate change when it comes out this Spring.

Wrapped Up in Books

2009-02-23T14:58:00.005+01:00

I've no time to update my blog these days. I'm really busy — and not in a trendy, livin' the vida loca, out-every-night way. In a monastic, nose between the pages, dreaming about words kind of way. I'm wrapped up in books.
And that's cool with me.

Duct Tape Christ

2009-01-04T22:38:00.008+01:00

Yesterday we went to Paris to meet up with friends we hadn't seen for a while, and we decided to go to the National Museum of Modern Art in the Centre Georges Pompidou. I didn't really know what to expect because I know very little about 20th century art. I was afraid of it being very arrogant, filled with paintings that any three-year old could make and which are only considered art because their creators are famous. There was some of that, but not too much, and I actually really enjoyed our visit.

There was an exhibition of works by Jacques Villeglé, a French artist I'd never heard of, who has been making pictures out of lacerated and ripped posters he found on walls in French cities since the 1950s : political posters, adverstisement posters and band posters. To quote the museum's website, "Villeglé's work is a tremendous seismograph of our "collective realities" such as they are distilled by urban space and whose stories are recreated for us via the unusual reality of its walls. It reveals to what extent what we see is conditioned by this everyday visual environment and reactivates our memory in a critical, but also enjoyable, way."
Villeglé is also famous for his "alphabet socio-politique" in which he uses political and religious symbols. The exhibition was fascinating, and would definitely be very interesting for semioticians.

There was also an exhibition about futurism. I didn't know much about the movement, but one of our friends has studied it during the year so she was able to explain quite a bit. The futurists focussed on machines, speed and the industrial world, and believed that technology would change the world for good. Unsuprisingly, a lot of them were fascists. I didn't really like the paintings, but they revealed the way in which the futurists perceived the world at that time, which was very interesting. With today's environmental crisis it's hard to understand how naïve they could be about technology.

Finally we visited the main gallery. Some of the more contemporary works were very pretentious (a white canvas with a line or two brushed across : it might have been original 30 years ago but it's a bit cliché now. Time to move on?). But they were some really thought-provoking works. One was a video : an artist went to Yemen to film kids carrying placards he had made and on which were written in arabic the names of famous Western "heroes" (Minnie Mouse, Picasso, Zorro, Santa Claus, James Bond...) to show how capitalism finds a way into poor societies and undermines centuries of local tradition and culture.

Another interesting work was a red and white duct-taped crucifix. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of the artist, but she or he was South African, and wanted to represent the way religion is used to justify the most terrible things. I think it's a very powerful work, and it could be applied to the situation in Northern Ireland or the way God was used to justify the war in Iraq.

I'll finish by posting a picture of the Parisian skyline. The view at the top of the Pompidou centre is breath-taking. When you see Paris from the top, you understand why so many people think it's one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

Camera Obscura

2009-01-03T10:26:00.006+01:00

During the summer I listened to a lot of Nick Drake, but the band that most punctuated my year was, without a doubt, Belle & Sebastian. But for the past few months there's been another band competing for my attention : Camera Obscura. I heard one of their songs, I Love My Jean, as I was listening to one of Deezer's radios one day, and for a while I thought I was listening to an early B&S song. Wikipedia promptly informed me that Camera Obscura is an indie pop band from... Glascow. Just like Belle. I also read on some music blog that Stuart Murdoch helped produce their first album, Biggest Bluest Hi Fi (2001) but I'm not sure if that's true or not. But despite this connection, Camera Obscura don't sound merely like a Belle & Sebastian cover band.
Biggest Bluest Hi Fi is the album I like best so far, but they've issued two other good ones since (Underachievers Please Try Harder, 2003, and Let's Get Out Of This Country, 2006), as well as a number of singles (including a "cover" of Robert Burn's song,A red, red rose).
I'll be keeping an eye on this terrific wee band during 2009...

Books

2008-11-16T12:57:00.006+01:00

I was just browsing Youtube videos and found this short stop-motion, which I thought was very sweet and cleverly-done. Bravo to Molly Green for making it.

Pink Elephants

2008-11-15T08:38:00.009+01:00

Here in Reims, the Socialist Congress is currently taking place. It is part of a process during which members of the French Parti Socialiste have to agree on a new party secretary. This is a tricky task as they need someone popular enough to unite the whole Party. During a preliminary vote, Ségolène Royal, failed candidate of the last presidential election, came out with the highest number of votes — but only by a small margin. She is reasonably popular in France, but she is rather pro-free market and authoritarian, more a social democrat than a socialist. In fact, some believe that if she had become president, the only thing which would have been different from Sarkozy would have been the rhetoric. Which is probably true. But several big names in the Socialist Party are uniting against her : several candidates continue to fight for the leadership. When members of the Socialist Party actually manage to secure positions of power in their party, they stay there. Forever. (Because of this the French media nicknames them "the elephants"). And that's the major problem with the French Socialist Party. They spend so much time bickering that they don't concentrate on opposing the government — not in a responsible, constructive way. Which means that many left-leaning French people are sick of the party.

What are the alternatives? The Communist Party, which abandoned the dictatorship of the proletariat several years ago, is what the French Socialist Party was a few decades ago : truely Socialist and reformist. But their popularity hit an all-time low during the 2002 elections and they never quite recovered. Perhaps it's because they are perceived as not being very young and dynamic.
A truely popular figure among French leftists is Olivier Besancenot, a trotskyist postman and leader of the Revolutionary Communist League. He was one of the candidates for the French presidency last year and I went to see him speak one evening when he was in Reims. He was small, dressed in jeans and a jumper, without a tie, but he was the most charismatic of all the candidates. Man, he knew how to talk. He is known for his speeches —he never uses any notes, he just memorises them entirely or makes it up as he goes along! He is especially popular among young people, because of his youth and passion. I like many of his ideas, but frankly, they are really very utopian. But what really bothers me, however, is the fact that his party hasn't given up the idea of dictatorship of the proletariat and revolutionary struggle. Even if they never put it into practise, it's still in their manifesto, and I can't condone any party or politician who sees violence as a solution.
On the same line, there's the trotskyist Lutte Ouvrière ("Worker's Struggle") a party whose leader Arlette Laguillers is a running joke, partly because she's been steadily leading the party since the 1970s. She's a friendly wee granny now, but it's harder to pull off being a revolutionary at that age. And besides, the party has the reputation of working a bit like a cult or a Masonic lodge, because of its watertight hierarchy system.
That leaves no other real party to oppose capitalism and Sarkozy's increasingly thatcherist-gaullist politics. Well, there's the Greens, which I have a soft spot for, but they're not "watermelon" enough for me : plenty of green, but not enough red. It's hard to see to which extent they care about the people. They have a reputation of being a party for upper-middle-class bohemians...

It's hard not to be left disappointed by the Left.

What France needs is not so much a party as a movement, grassroots if possible, a sort of united popular front which would bring a viable alternative to capitalism. The French are good at protesting. Well, that's a first step, and "bravo" for that. But opposing is not enough. Creating, imagining, building and offering alternatives is the only way forward if the Left doesn't want to be left in the sidelines.

Anarchism : the next scapegoat?

2008-11-13T12:38:00.010+01:00

Last week the SNCF (French national railway company) complained about several acts of sabotage which took place on its railway network. None of them put anyone's life in danger, and they apparently weren't done with the aim of derailing trains, but they had the potential of causing a lot of damage.
Just a day or two after the news hit the headlines, the French government anounced that they had already arrested a number of "suspected terrorists" : a group of "ultra-leftist autonomist anarchists".
What struck me (and a lot of French people) was that the government seemed to have moved very quickly... too quickly? Suspiciously quickly, at any rate.
Now all the newspapers are talking of the anarchist movement as if it's the next big terrorist threat. The people who were arrested were residents of an anarchist commune towards the South of France. According to Le Monde (the only newspaper which seems to have been unbiased in its coverage of the incident), there is absolutely no material evidence that they are in any way linked to the acts of sabotage. Which means that they are being detained only because of their political beliefs, under legislation which allows suspected terrorists to be detained up to four days without seeing a lawyer.
What really angered me is that Libération, which is supposed to be a centre-left newspaper, used the government's own terminology ("autonomist-anarchist movement") indiscriminately, tarring all anarchists with the same brush... as if anarchism was a single, monolithic movement, and a violent one at that. There is anarcho-syndicalism, pacifist anarchism, green anarchism, anarcho-capitalism, christian anarchism, anarcha-feminism... the list goes on and on. Lumping all those different ideologies and belief systems together is very unwise, and intellectually dishonest.
France has quite a strong leftist heritage, but not of a libertarian socialist kind... More of an authoritarian, statist type of leftism. The state is very centralised here, and it has been very strong for centuries : France has never had a strong parliamentarian tradition like in the UK or Germany. So I suppose that any ideology which attacks centralisation of power and a strong state is under threat of being targeted. And Sarkozy, although he is by no means a socialist, is firmly statist. Historians say he wields more power in France than Charles de Gaulle did back in the 1950s-1960s...
Is anarchism going to be France's next scapegoat? Only time will tell.

Famine

2008-11-10T17:14:00.013+01:00

Famine by Liam O'Flaherty follows a family of pratie farmers, the Kilmartins, as they face the potato blight, hunger, disease, the risk of eviction and British oppression in the Black Valley in County Kerry. The book is great in communicating what it must have felt like to struggle for life during the Great Irish famine of 1845-1849, and helps the reader understand why the trauma is so firmly engraved in the Irish psyche.
Liam O'Flaherty was a communist, and this is reflected in the novel, in which religious identity appears less important than class in defining dominant-dominated relationships. However O'Flaherty was no pacifist and this comes across very clearly, as he glorifies martyrdom, revolution and spreading blood for one's class and country. This talk of violence may seem naïve, misguided or even sinister to us today, but the book dates back to 1937, at a time when Ireland was a very young republic and was relying heavily on its set of Republican symbolism and myths to consolidate itself. But the novel does help give an idea of the suffering the Irish people went through during the Famine, which caused several of them to turn to violent revolutionary struggle.
The book is still relevant today as it deals with several issues that many people have to struggle with : identity, oppression, religious hypocrisy, violence/peace, and emigration.

There's No One as Irish as Obama...

2008-11-10T12:32:00.000+01:00

Ch... Ch.. Changes

2008-11-09T17:07:00.005+01:00

Hmm, I haven't blogged in ages... For once I actually have a valid excuse. I've been really busy these past few weeks. I started the second year of my Masters course : it's supposed to be a year where I can concentrate on writing my Masters thesis, but I have as many classes and more coursework than any previous year.
People in uni aren't too optimistic about the future these days. Partly because of the recession's promise of a new wave of unemployment. But also because our neoliberal government has made job cuts in the French "Éducation Nationale" for the second year in a row. Now there's almost no prospects for jobs as teachers or professors in university-level education, at least not in the field of the humanities... Which leaves must of us no other option than to "reorientate"—or leave the country. Which is one of the plans we're currently considering.

Who's been sailing my airwaves?

2008-10-06T16:12:00.007+02:00

The Dandy Warhols' ...Earth to the Dandy Warhols...

The album came out in the summer but I only got hold of it now. It's not revolutionary and it's probably not their best but it's classic Dandy psychedelia. The tunes aren't as catchy as Welcome to the Monkey House or Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia ; the songs are more similar to their earlier albums in that they need to be listened to several times to appreciate their true worth, but it's worth the effort.

Patrick Watson, Closer to Paradise.

I discovered this Canadian artist while listening to Deezer's indie pop/folk playlist. Closer to Paradise sounds a bit like what would happen if you got Jeff Buckley to sing on Radiohead's OK Computer, and enlisted Danny Elfman to play the glockenspiel, Tim Burton-style. Me likey very much.

Belle & Sebastian

I've been listening to them a lot recently, probably too much. What can I say... they're great pop songwriters! I can't say which album I like the best, but I've recently discovered their singles through the Push Barman to Open Old Wounds compilation. They've evolved quite a bit since their first album, but that's probably a good sign.

The Jungle

2008-09-25T13:23:00.008+02:00

I finished Upton Sinclair's The Jungle just a few days ago. It's about a family of Lithuanians that has immigrated to the USA in the early 1900s, lured by the American Dream's promises of wealth and happiness, only to end up working in the infamous factories of the Beef Trust in "Packingtown", Chicago.

I was looking forward to the novel as I expected it to be a bit like Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath : both authors were investigative journalists and Socialists. Unfortunately Sinclair isn't as skilled a novelist as Steinbeck is : his characters are rather flat, so when the book's working-class hero, Jurgis Rudkus, loses everything, it doesn't move you as much as when Tom Joad sees his family disintegrate. The plot isn't very solid, but it serves the author's purpose : to expose the gritty reality of life for the American underclass. And it's shocking : some of the things Sinclair describes are so horrible that he couldn't have made them up. He saw them during his investigations.

His muckraking novel shocked the nation, but not in the way Sinclair hoped for. Instead of striving to improve working people's conditions, all that the readers cared for were the parts in the books which dealt with the terrible lack of hygiene in the meat factories. (The public outcry actually led to a Pure Food Act)."I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach", Sinclair lamented.

But what interested me the most about the Jungle was the fact that it's a Socialist book, written by a dedicated Socialist in 1906, just a decade before the Russian Revolution. It's a socialism that hasn't yet discovered the excesses it would lead to under Soviet rule, and yet you can already detect some of the seeds of this future state-socialism. For example, the ''people" are always referred to in a very paternalistic, patronising manner.
Yet Sinclair isn't completely utopian either; he very honestly states that Socialism won't solve all of the world's problems, that there will still be conflict, but he argues that it would be a better alternative to capitalism.

In the last chapters, once Jurgis has seen the light (Socialism is clearly described as a new "dispensation", a new "revelation"), he witnesses several discussions between Socialists with very different ideas : for example a debate about religion between a Swedish professor and anarchist and an American ex-minister. The latter argues, in Tolstoyan fashion, that Christianity has been distorted by the institutional church and that Christ's message of peace, love and social justice has been forgotten. (It is worth noting that Upton Sinclair was himself some sort of a Christian socialist.) Something which was true in Sinclair's time, and which is equally true in Western christianity today, where the Church-body has become the church-institution, where spiritual and material salvation are seperated and where man-made rules become more important than compassion and love.

I'll finish with a quotation from the novel. Referring to a bunch of rich christians trying to evangelise the starving poor, the narrator exclaims:

"They were trying to save their souls- and who but a fool could fail to see that all that was the matter with their souls was that they had not been able to get a decent existence for their bodies?"

Holidays...

2008-08-24T13:58:00.002+02:00

I won't be posting for a while, as we're leaving in a few days to go on holidays for a couple of weeks. See you soon. =)

A Really Inconvenient Truth

2008-08-20T13:07:00.006+02:00

A Really Inconvenient Truth is an analysis of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and a critique of capitalism by American eco-socialist Joel Kovel, who ran against Ralph Nader for the Green Party's Presidential nomination in 2000 .
If you're a hardened capitalist, you'll probably hate this video. Otherwise you should have a look.

The main point Kovel makes is that you can't try to stop environmental crisis and the thrashing of our planet without challenging the capitalist system, and all that it entails.
I really appreciated the fact that Kovel makes it clear that we, as individuals, have to change our lifestyle of unabashed consumerism. Too many socialists are busy attacking capitalism (which is a good thing in itself) but aren't ready to change any of their own habits.

Horse before the week ends

2008-08-19T09:15:00.010+02:00

I've just received the strangest phone call ever.

Phone rings.
"Allô?"
"This is (so-and-so), do you need horse before the end of the week?"
"Huh... Sorry? And you are...?"
"This is (so-and-so). Do you need horse before the end of the week?"
"Horse?"
"Yes, don't you need any?"
"I... think you've got the wrong number."
"Is this not (some phone number)?"
"Nope."
"Oh, sorry sir. Bye!"

Hope she finds the right number or some unlucky person will not be getting horse before the end of the week. Whatever that means.

Let the Good Times Roll

2008-08-16T23:38:00.006+02:00

A good friend of ours, Donna, stayed at our place for four nights. She lives in the Netherlands now and we hadn't seen her for almost a year, so it was great to spend time with her again. We really enjoyed the fellowship ("yea the fellowship!") and spent a lot of time talking, often till the wee hours of the morn, catching up orelse re-dreaming the world. Other highlights included getting in the champagne cellars (where L works) and sampling the wine free of charge, a disco night, beer, watching the Omen (1976), going to cafés, complaining about society, beer, introducing Donna to (our version of) tecktonik dance and more beer.

Amusing Ourselves to Death

2008-08-12T15:46:00.011+02:00

Amusing Ourselves to Death : Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business is an enlightening book, and is an easy read. It was written over twenty years ago, back in 1985, but it's even more relevant now than it was then.
Its author, media theorist Neil Postman, is now dead, but Penguin published a 20th anniversary edition of the book, with a preface by Postman's son.

Postman argued that the change from the Age of Typography (the printed word) to the Age of Television has not only had a huge impact on Western culture, it has changed how we approach the issue of knowledge (epistemology). The written word can convey statements that can be either accepted as true or refuted, but images don't offer that possibility : they can ony be looked at.
The author illustrates this with the example of advertising : in the mid 19th century, advertisements in newspapers were paragraphs of rational discourse which gave information about the product. On 20th century TV advertising (and even more so on 21st TV as well as online advertising), slogans, jingles, music, pictures and videos are used, and there is no true description of the product itself : what is important is that it looks good on the silver screen. The actors are there not to give ant new insight about what they're presenting, but because they have pretty faces and look perfectly happy : implicitly promising the viewer that to reach a state of beatitude, all you need is to buy the latest car, or ipod, or chocolate bar.

If things stopped there, it would be bad enough. But it gets worse. Politics and democracy are threatened by television. To quote Postman, "we may have reached the point where cosmetics has replaced ideology as the field of expertise over which a politician must have competent control". In other words, images speak louder than words. It doesn't matter what a politician thinks about climate change or social justice or immigration, what really matters (to the viewer at least) is how good the politician looks on TV, how he speaks, how he dresses, where he goes on holiday, how pretty his wife and children are and so on. This was already the case in '85 when the book was written ; it has become the same in France with Sarkozy, the King of Bling, and his groupie wife Carla Bruni (who advertises for her husband through her music albums, among other sings). If we've begun to chose our rulers because they look good on the telly, that is a very scary fact. Hitler looked good in uniform.

To conclude, there is also an interesting chapter on religion and its relationship with TV : with the likes of televangelism. I'm not going to go into the details, but basically, the author argues that even if isn't the intention of TV preachers (though I may suggest that often it is), the fact of turning a religious service into a show and more significantly the fact of turning themselves into performers is, ironically, a form of blasphemy : the preacher is glorified, not the deity.

The book is really worth the read. And it needn't make you feel guilty about watching the telly : the author himself argues that the only harmless TV is "rubbish" TV. TV is okay as long as it sticks to mindless entertainment. It becomes dangerous when it starts dealing with serious issues... as it inevitably turns them into a form of entertainment.

Eagle vs Shark

2008-07-31T13:14:00.007+02:00

I enjoyed watching Eagle vs Shark a few days ago. It's a kiwi rom com featuring Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords), with a quirky, offbeat feel to it, in many ways comparable to Napoleon Dynamite : it has nunchucks, weird animal drawings, and strange dialogue.
The soundtrack is great, most of the tracks are by New Zealand indie band the Phoenix Foundation.

If you want to check it out, you'll find the link at the bottom of this post, but hurry! Movies uploaded to Youtube usually don't last long these days.

Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton

2008-07-28T21:53:00.012+02:00

Last week I finished a book I had started to read months ago, but never had time to finish because of coursework : Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton. Published in 1848, the novel had a lot of influence in its day, as it highlighted the plight of ordinary working people in Manchester in the 1840s. Being both a literature lover, a history enthusiast and a socialist, I had high expectations. And I wasn't disappointed.

I'm not going to say much about the plotline because I don't want to spoil the story for anyone. But the novel centres on two working class families and the struggles they go through everyday : hunger, disease, death of loved ones, appalling living and working conditions...

Elizabeth Gaskell was by no means a socialist so I wasn't expecting to find any socialist critique of capitalism in her novel. But she was a social reformer. Although she didn't want to see the end of the capitalist system, she was genuinely concerned about the plight of the less fortunate, and she set out to let England know about the terrible living conditions of the working people in Manchester. In fact, she exposed herself to a lot of criticism from the people who frequented her milieu, who were often mill owners and "masters", of the class which she berated in her novel for not being attentive to the workers' needs.

But the most important theme in the novel is arguably the theme of reconciliation. Gaskell was a Unitarian Universalist, in fact married to a Unitarian preacher, and she strongly believed in human goodness. Many have criticised her for this, but I don't think she meant it in a naïve way. She does seem to have believed in evil. But in an age when most people believed the working class to be a horde of brutish, degenerate and evil animals (remember that this was the age of phrenology and misapplied Darwinism), Gaskell was really eager to show that these people were in fact human beings, just like their masters, and she actually tried to explain why they sometimes resorted to violence. If the characters she created (both working people and "masters") are almost always redeemed from their propensity for evil, and ultimately become reconciled to their fellow human beings and to God, I don't think it's because of any naïveté on her part, but rather because she believed that it was really possible for people to change, and hoped to see it come true.

Parisienne Walkways

2008-07-26T14:14:00.013+02:00

L was off work for three days last week, so on Wednesday we took our bikes and rode down the old tow-path by the canal, until we reached the end of the city. We continued a little until we found a small dirt track which we cycled down. Then we put down an old towel on the long, wild grass by a sunflower field and enjoyed a picknick under the burny midday sun. We later found a few trees and enjoyed the cool shade.
It wasn't exactly the open countryside — there was a village and a rather busy road not too far away — but it was good enough. When we looked to the North, all we could see was fields, woods and tiny little villages. It was nice to be away from the urban landscape, and, even if only for a few hours, be immersed in a more pastoral setting.

The following day we went to Paris. I don't have any pictures or film because we chose not to take our camera this time. It can be fun "documenting" trips but it can also be a hassle — I usally have more craic when I'm camera-free.
We started by visiting the Panthéon, which is right in the middle of the Latin Quarter, beside the Sorbonne university. Originally built as a church, the Panthéon is an impressive edifice which, since the revolution, has basically served as a temple to the French nation-state. All the "great men" of France are buried there. It's not the kind of thing I'm usually into, but it is a must-see. Also some of my favourite authors are buried there : Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas. There are also the tombs of Voltaire, Rousseau, Jean Moulin (a famous French resistant), Victor Schoelcher (France's William Wilberforce), Louis Braille (the guy who invented the alphabet for blind people) and a host of other supposedly "great men" (most of whom I'd never even heard of, to be perfectly honest). Significantly, there is only one woman buried in the whole Panthéon : Marie Curie. It speaks loads about the place of women in society, even in a modern secular liberal democracy, where men and women are supposed to share equal rights... *sigh*

On a lighter note, I was almost entombed in the Panthéon myself . I went to the toilets, which are underground, and after hearing the door bang behind me, I realised that there was no knob on my side of the door. I had to phone L several times (you're supposed to turn your phone off in the place) before she answered. Eventually she set me free. Otherwise I might still be entombed in the Panthéon, alongside Voltaire and Zola.

After that, we strolled round the Latin Quarter and found an old 2,000 year old Roman arena which was dug up at the end of the 19th century. There were very few people around, it was incredibly quiet, which is really bizarre when you're right in the middle of Paris. It was as if we had been taken back in time for a few minutes.
Our tummies were rumbling by then and we went looking for a vegetarian restaurant that I'd read about on wikitravel.org, but it was nowhere to be found. Several of the joints in the area seem to have closed down, and it wouldn't surprise me if the vegetarian restaurant was one of the first to go, seeing that less that 1% of French people are vegetarians, and that they're basically seen as eccentric radicals, possibly even traitors to French-ness for refusing to eat meat, the base/staple of all French cuisine. (Thankfully we are tolerated — we're just a couple of eccentric foreigners, after all...) So we settled for an Indian restaurant which served great meat-free dishes. There was a menu at only 10€, which was great value, as the food was realy good, the quantities reasonable, and the restaurant was rather classy. Even the kama sutra picture hanging on the wall was rather tastefully drawn.

In the afternoon, we went to the "Musée du quai Branly". Now this is a museum which drew quite a lot of controversy when it opened in 2006. It's a tribal art museum , with artefacts from Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas. It was originally called "Musée des arts premiers" (lit "Museum of First Arts", a euphemism for primitive art), which understandably caused uproar from some circles. Thankfully the term was dropped.
It's the biggest museum of its kind in Europe, and it's incredible to see all these objects and works of art from all around the world. What is really good is that they are treated as art, on the same level as the paintings you'd see in the Louvre. I expected the museum to be very patronising and condescending and... well, French, but it wasn't at all. What impressed me the most was the Americas section. It was the most colourful section in the museum. There was everything from headdresses to clay pots, from robes to combs... The other sections were great as well, of course. The African ceremonial masks and the Melanesian decorated skulls were fascinating (albeit in a freaky kind of way). My only disappointment was that the Asian section was rather small. There was very little from Nepal or India. But if you're ever in Paris, you should definitely check out this museum... it's really worth the visit!

In the evening we met a friend of L's who used to live in Marseilles, and who is currently an intern working for a famous French newspaper (L'Express). And it was that evening that I lost my Starbucks virginity. Yup, until then I'd been Starbucks free. Mostly because coffee makes me sick, but also because I'm not ready to pay to 5€ for a hot drink. So I took a kind of raspberry milkshake, which was way too sweet for me. American-style sweet. I know a lot of people get their kicks from Starbucks, but it didn't do anything to me. Maybe it's just because I'm coffiephobe.

Well, that was the end of our day.
And the end of this post, seeing that it's so long that it's getting out of hand.

The Sound of Place

2008-07-21T15:08:00.010+02:00

Découvrez Neil Young!

You've probably noticed how smells and odours can bring back memories of people, places and events that were sometimes long forgotten. For example, the smell of certain types of manure always reminds me of Ireland, because that was always the first thing I smelt coming out from the aeroplane once it had landed in Belfast International airport. Or the smell of rice boiling in milk brings me back to when my late grandmother would serve me steaming hot rice pudding in a tiny bowl with a blue flower pattern when I was a child.

Well, lately, listening to music has had more or less the same effect on me. It didn't bring memories back to me, but it made images of places pop up in my mind. For example, listening to Nick Drake's third and last album, Pink Moon, brought to my mind the picture of hilly woodlands under a dark starry sky, with the slender trees bending in the wind, and the top of a church steeple somewhere in the distance behind one of the taller hills. Joni Mitchell's Ladies of the Canyon painted a Provençal landscape in my mind's eye, with its blue mountains, proud poplars, lavender fields circling a quiet little market town waking up to the soft morning sunlight. My favourite Neil Young album, On the Beach, reminds me not of the coast or the sand, but of the open sea ; the ocean, dark but not agitated, failing to reflect the pallid sun ; the impression of loneliness, sadness, but not despair. It's probably no wonder, because the album itself is rather melancholic and bleak.
You might be wondering what I've smoked. But that's what music does. It sings to parts of us which are beyond our intellectual reach, beyond our conscience.

France's Last Taboo

2008-07-08T08:59:00.004+02:00

Violence is a terrible thing, and anyone that knows me will know that it is probably the thing that I abhor the most. There is worse, though : domestic violence (aka spouse abuse). As if dehumanising one's neighbour and oneself by giving in to violence wasn't bad enough, some people act in this way towards the very person they are supposed to love and care for : their partner or spouse.
Amnesty International campaigned to make more people aware of this in France last year, and it doesn't seem to have worked. This morning, while logging on to Yahoo to check my email, I noticed that this issue was making the headlines of Yahoo News France.

According to the article, a French governmental body which measures the country's crime rate (the OND) found that in 2007, spousal abuse had increased by over 30%. That year, 410,000 women reported having been abused in some way by their partner or ex-partner. This represents 2% of France's female population. Apparently 20% of cases of spousal abuse go unreported — and unpunished!
There also cases where men are the victims of spousal abuse : 0.7% of the male population in 2005 and 2006.

But the issue of domestic violence is terrible not only in itself, but also because of the fact that it such a taboo in France. Speak to anyone in France, and they will deny that it is a problem. At most they will say that it is something which only happens in Muslim or working class families (which isn't true, by the way. It happens in white and middle class families as well).

There is a fair chance that you personally know a woman who has been abused by her partner or ex-partner, but that you know nothing of it. It's very hard to know if the victim doesn't speak out : very often, the victim will keep it a secret for fear of reprisal or because she loves her partner nonetheless.

I know someone who told me that she was attacked several times by her boyfriend. She didn't seem alarmed by the fact, and when I suggested that she should break up with him or call the police if it happened again, she said she couldn't do it, because she loved him.
I'm not one to underestimate the strength of love. Love is patient ; love heals. But it's no excuse for keeping quiet about mindless (or premeditated!) acts of violence, especially when it happens within a couple — the relationship which is designed to be one of the only safe, trusting and nurturing havens on earth.

The taboo must be broken.

Bicycles

2008-07-06T17:48:00.003+02:00

Découvrez Queen!

I'm just back in from a bicycle ride. Very refreshing! L and I each bought a city bike last week. So far, we've been used to going everywhere either with the bus or on foot. Now we can go to places that are not at a walkable distance and where buses don't go. We'd been hoping to get bikes for a long time now, and with the sales on and the summer here it was the best time to do it!
Here are a few reasons why using a bicycle is cool.

It's fun!
It's much healthier than taking the car or the bus. If like me you're not really into running/jogging, or team sports, cycling is a good alternative to keep you active and on the go.
It's handy for groceries... I attached a basket to the front of my bike, which already attract a few strange looks. It's not considered a typically "masculine" thing to do in France, but people should get over it. In the Netherlands and Flanders, it's the norm!
It's cheap! No need to pay the bus fare as often, and it's (literaly) costs nothing compared to all the money you have to put into a car... no petrol, no insurance, no MOT test...
Last (and most importantly), it's eco-friendly. There's no CO² coming out of a bicycle! There are so many people over here that take the car just to drive a few hundred metres down to the bakery for their baguette. Worse, in our cities we have lots of SUVs and 4x4s roaring down our streets, driven by upper middle class mothers with fake tans and sunglasses driving their model kids to the local Conservatoire (the notoriously snobbish French music school). Maybe they are scared of leaving their enclaved suburban homes or snazzy city-centre dwellings for the urban jungle of ordinary people, and feel protected behind the wheel of their safari-style vehicles? I think those cars should be prohibited or severely restricted in urban areas. If you aren't a farmer or a forester, frankly, you don't need one, so give it up!

The Forester

2008-06-30T18:17:00.003+02:00

Here's one of my latest poems. I've posted it here 'cause it's not too long, but it's also on my poetry blog, A Postmodern Bard .

The Forester
I met you in the woods on a dark autumn day
When a fair young fawn, fleeting, Ied me astray
Through the deep green clouds, into the clearing
Where you held court with the oak and yew trees.
A red flannel shirt and denim slacks were your robes;
An empty packet of cigarettes, your sceptre.
Your beard was an ancient thicket, sage and regal,
And your long sylvan hair was your silver circlet.
Your eyes were black and deep, bottomless wells
Wisened by the water of life you always
Carried in the pocket of your duffle coat.
I was a lost child, under a moonless canopy,
Seeking a star that might, perchance, light my way.
You never said a word, but slowly raised your eyes,
And with your arms outstretched, you parted the emerald sea.
We never said a word, but I went, and you wept,
Your smile stinging my back with my own shame.
When I turned around for a last glimpse of you,
I saw you swinging your axe, bringing it down,
Felling timber for your own funeral pyre.

Tim, 17 June 2008

Velvet Ukulele

2008-06-30T17:16:00.007+02:00

I've been thinking of buying a ukulele lately. It looks fun, it's handier to carry to the park than a folk guitar, and it sounds great... A bit like strumming a regular guitar with a capo on the 10th fret. Before buying one, I was checking if there were any uku ressources or tutorials on the web — I'm no autodictat — and while searching I discovered a singer called Jem Cooke. A Youtube video of one of her songs, "Miss You", was on a ukulele tablatures website, and it's quite good. (I included it in this post, below). She has a beautiful voice. I especially like her softer, simpler songs, which have a folkie ring to them. She sings in a "soul" style, so if you don't like Adele or KT Tunstall's vocal style, you mightn't like Jem. But it's definitely worth check her out her Myspace page anyway, here.

I've also started listening to Velvet Underground again. It had been a while. I'm especially into their third (untitled) album, the one with "Candy says", "Pale Blue Eyes" and the like. Listening to it again made me realise how much of an influence Velvet Underground and especially Lou Reed were to modern indie folk/accoustic bands. I had read about it but I had never actually noticed it myself before. You can hear their influence in some of Belle & Sebastian's early material, for example... even in a Devendra Banhart song (I can't remember which one) I was listening to earlier.
It's also interesting how people change. Lou Reed used to be one of the wildest rockstars around, now he's releasing meditation music, practises tai chi every day and is into Eastern spirituality.

To beer or not to beer

2008-06-28T17:49:00.005+02:00

We just had a small end-of-year, post-exam party Thursday night. Some of the people who were supposed to come weren't able to in the end, but it was still good craic, and it also meant that there was more punch for us (on top of that, a couple of the guests didn't drink because they had to drive home afterwards). One friend of mine, Manu, who was a teaching assistant for a year in Swansea (Wales) stayed at our place overnight. We drank beer and watched Flight of the Conchords until the wee small hours of the morning.
The next day, the girls went shopping (it's the sales here) so Manu and I waited for them in the Blackface, enjoying a pint. When the girls had finished, we met them in a café, for yet another pint. So basically Manu and I spent most of the day in pubs, or drinking beer, but it was great to catch up and just chit-chat — something I hadn't got doing for a long time.

The Great Beyond

2008-06-23T11:10:00.009+02:00

Sometimes, just sometimes, pictures speak more eloquently than words. This is certainly the case with these photographs of the Marseilles skyline, taken by D, my bro-in-law.
Nature is so beautiful that on rare occasions, it leaves you wordless, breathless and reaching for the ineffable. I'm not trying to get all metaphysical on your arse, but it does make you think.

When I lived in the country, I used to spend more time in nature, in the woods, in the fields, or watching the starry sky; and it's true that it would make me slow down, enjoy what was around me, and wonder where such beauty could come from. It's something I miss in the urban bustle of Rheims, but such pictures show that even when you live in the city, you can catch glimpses of the Great Beyond.

Check out the pics here.

Dark Night of the Soul

2008-06-14T13:10:00.018+02:00

It's been over a year and a half that we haven't been part of any church or community. L works every Sunday so it's not even possible for her to attend anywhere, and I've long given up looking for a place of worship where I feel I can belong.

Yet I don't see my churchlessness as an entirely negative thing. After all, I had become tired of the fundamentalists and the crackpots ; tired of hearing the same old moralising sermons or congregation-pleasing rethoric over and over again ; tired of the criticism of anyone different or the promises of health and prosperity. Tired of church in general, at least the way it is done in this city. The only thing I really miss is the sense of community, the fellowship. But even that was never very profound. Superficiality is something we Christians major in.

Still, I don't see my churchlessness as an entirely negative thing. I have learnt more in these past two years than I have in all the previous years of my existence. I don't know if I've grown : I haven't started putting all these things into practise yet. But I've learnt.

But this process of discovery has come with a price. The more I search for the truth, the more I realise I have to leave my old mindset behind, like a dark - but warm - cocoon. I have never felt so liberated as I do now, yet at the same time, I have never felt as scared and doubt-ridden. In fact, sometimes the only thing I am sure of is Christ. Yet He has never felt as far away. I just can't feel his presence the way I used to. I have never felt as abandoned.

I think this might be my dark night of the soul.

The dark night of the soul is a period in one's spiritual life when one feels lonely and abandoned by God ; it can last for a few days or for most of one's lifetime. I wanted to look into the subject more. St John of the Cross, the 16th century Spanish Christian mystic, counter-reformer and poet, first coined the term, in a poem and later a commentary of the same name.
According to St John of the Cross, some of the symptoms are a feeling of abandonment, a fear of losing oneself on the road, of backsliding or of losing one's salvation ; an intense yearning for God while being unable to feel His presence ; a difficult and unsatisfying prayer life.

To explain the reasons why God puts us through this, the poet uses the analogy of a child nurtured by his mother. A day comes when the child, used to the sweetness of his mother's milk, has to let go of her breast, separate from her and learn to walk. The child's weaning is a very distressing period of its life, it loses all sense of security, yet it is essential if it is to grow. In the same way, when someone gets to know God, there is at first a sweetness and a sense of satisfaction when he or she prays or talks to Him. But this is sometimes taken away so that the believer may learn to rely on God without the pleasure of his senses, be it peace of mind or intellectual satisfaction ; so that he or she may learn to grow spiritually, and not to go to God simply to get something from Him, but to seek to serve Him and follow His will.

According to the mystic, it is something that happens to a large number of followers. The book reassured me a lot because it seems to correspond, more or less, to the period I've been going through. John tries to give an explanation for it, which, to me at least, seems rather satisfying. During the dark night of the soul, God tries to make us realise how lowly we are, and teach us to rely on Him even when our senses seem to indicate that we are alone and abandoned.

I just hope it doesn't last too long.

On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings—oh, happy chance!—
I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest.

Evil Cymbal-banging Monkey

2008-06-13T22:36:00.004+02:00

The other day I was speaking to a friend about things that used to freak us out as kids... you know, things like monsters under the bed, great aunt Martha or Father Christmas.
My childhood trauma - and one I shared with my brother - was linked to the evil cymbal-banging monkey toy. Yes. The evil monkey toy. Fear its wrath!

On my brother's 8th or 9th birthday - I can't quite remember - my Dad gave him a video cassette of a film, Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders. It sounded like an innocent, child-friendly fantasy story. My brother watched it, alone. And was freaked out. He asked me to see it again with him - you know how fun it is to freak yourself out - so I watched it with him. It turned out to be more of a horror film than a kiddie's movie. The first part of the film (which is set in contemporay America) is the story of a sceptical journalist who borrows a book of spells from Merlin and ends up iniating himself in magic - only to find himself confronted with a zombie cat, his wife's blood, and a demon apparition.
The second part deals with a cymbal-banging monkey toy which is stolen from Merlin's shop, and ends up as a present for a young boy. Trouble is, the toy is haunted by an evil spirit, which tries to destroy the boy and his family. When left alone, its eyes light up red. Each time it bangs its cymbals, something dies. It sets the house on fire, withers all the plants in the home, kills the family dog, and almost causes the kid to die in a road accident. When the boy's father manages to bury it in a field far from home, it somehow manages to find its way back with the family. In the end Merlin comes to take it back, so there's a happy ending. But still... freaky film.
I was probably about 14 when I saw the film, so it didn't give me any nightmares... but it was pretty uncanny. Now the evil cymbal-banging monkey toy is a kind of inside joke between my brother and me. Someday I'd like to find the film and watch it again - for old time's sake. I wonder if any other unsuspecting kid was freaked out by Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders!

It's funny, though, how memories like that stick with you all your life - especially the unpleasant ones. It seems that we let our lives become much more affected by the negative things that happen to us than by the positive things. Maybe someday I'll learn to be less cynical and pessimistic, and begin reflecting on all the wonderful things that have happened to me, and - as they say in France - "see the world in pink".