You and I

December 23, 2013

It’s often early morning when we meet, you and I. Before anyone else – or even the possibility of anyone else – is there to see us. Though there’s nothing much for anyone to see. Only that in one glance of shared recognition, we see each other entirely. You and I. I and You. Workers on their way to work; father, mother, son, daughter – it doesn’t matter what homes we have come from or where we are going.

In a nondescript place owned by neither of us and common to both, we look each other in the eye, hold it for a moment (that look: comprehending, comprehensive). Then move on, never to meet again.

This journalism – if that’s what it is – aims to perform that look. The look between strangers who are not estranged. It is not a look of innocence or naivety; neither is it dismissive or destructive.

I want to hold you in my eyes, to see you for who you are. It’s only fair, then, that I should make myself open to the same kind of scrutiny – unstinting but also sympathetic.

Not Playing

December 22, 2013

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former oil tycoon pardoned by Russian president Vladimir Putin, perhaps with the Sochi Games in mind, was released from jail having served 10 years for ‘tax evasion and fraud’, and interviewed in Berlin by Christiane Amanpour for CNN.

Half a century later and she still looks like Jackie K. Same length hair (no flick-ups, they’re too Mad Men nowadays). Lips thickly drawn, firmly penciled eyebrows and heavily painted nails – especially nails because there are plenty of florid hand movements. And she isn’t wearing an Alice band but she could because it would go well with her tailoring (royal blue).

After JFK was shot dead, the New York Times reporter wrote that Mrs Kennedy’s ‘stockings were saturated with her husband’s blood.’ Now Amanpour wants Khodorkovsky to spill.

What was it like in that jail? And weren’t you attacked, stabbed? You missed seeing your family grow up…..

As she is animated, Khodorkovsky is subdued. So much for the coarsening effect of prison: he is fine; he has finesse. Frameless glasses and close-cropped hair combining Prison House and Designer. His words are finely chosen; his lips more finely drawn than hers.

Fifty to a hundred inmates in a barrack-like room: he merely says there is nothing good to say.

Food? Comes the answer: ‘bread’. The translator gives us to understand this was his one and only word on the subject.

The stabbing? He went for my eye but the blow glanced onto my nose; and the prison dentist was also a plastic surgeon, so now there’s not even a trace of it.

No trace of Khodorkovsky playing the scene for personal gain. But perhaps this is his play – the persuasive power of underwhelming. Except he is surely not acting when Amanpour asks about his family, and his performance is just the same. read more

The ‘I’s Have It

December 21, 2013

Her upper lip plumped up. Permanently puckering. Ever-ready for sex or stimulated by food or bruised, or – most likely – fluffed and buffed by the collagen of publicity.

Nigella Lawson: buffeted by the break-up of her marriage to Charles Saatchi; embarrassed by salacious evidence given during the trial of the Grillo sisters (former personal assistants whose successful defence against fraud charges rested on discrediting Nigella as a prosecution witness).

Not Grotto or anything like it, but the Grillos are dunnos when it comes to inflating themselves; whereas Nigella must always have known (with a name like ‘Nigella’, perhaps she always had to). In the tilt of her chin and the set of her mouth as she is seen going into court, the domestic goddess keeps faith with self-promotion (requiring tireless dedication to the sacred cause).

Motto: manifesto ergo sum; manifesto ergo ego.

Meanwhile on the BBC Radio Four Today programme, with pencil-thin lips (drawn on like a second moustache in the midst of his clerical beard) Anjem Choudary will not condemn the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby, butchered on a London street in May. Choudary will not enter into the personal domain where normal persons are seen to have acceptable feelings, because he is there to promote the Not-I, the annihilation of self. How I feel is not the most important thing, he insists. Compared to Islam, he seems to be saying, we are nothing. And for saying this, he is pleased to receive plenty of attention.

Manifesto ergo non sum; manifesto ergo non ego.

The negatives cancel each other out. Nigella and Anjem are mirror images of each other: posing and deposing the supremacy of self; in their opposite ways, both equally selfish.

Wrong End Of The Shtick

December 19, 2013

Crying but he’s trying to push it away; trying – now failing – to keep the collapse out of his speaking voice. Ditto the Mother. Father and Mother. Of two boys lost. Killed in some kind of an attack, in some sort of city, which happens to be Baghdad.

Their boys lost and gone, now all they can do is hold on to themselves, hold it to together – together.

But neither one succeeds; each of them breaks down in front of the microphone.

Now the radio reporter has got what she wants. For her the interview is drawn around the soundbites of parents crying. As soon as they start speaking again, what they say is translated into English, and the translation is voiced by someone else; someone who is not authentic. But the sound of sobbing seems more vital than anything the parents might have to say. Elemental and transcendental, the parents themselves, as they really are, expressing themselves beyond language. Their crying is what the rest of the package is for.

How wrong can you be? They are not this animal sound. Who they are, is what they have made of themselves, and how they have made themselves stop weeping. Just as parents, previously, they made themselves make their boys into more than whining, whingeing little creatures. On cold mornings and warm evenings, never giving up until the day their children were ripped away.

You’ve got it wrong, Dear Journo. The common denominator is not the lowest but the highest we can be. Better to approach all your interviewees as if each of them is Nelson Mandela.

Which, of course, we are.

Painting With Light

December 18, 2013

Blown off – and not just the bloody doors. Exposed by explosions, the inside of a block of flats revealed like the set for West Side Story. Look at those balconies, crudely constructed out of iron bars: modernist Mondrian meets original Broadway set designer Oliver Smith – fantastic!

Beneath the flats, Breugel-people sift through white debris in search of survivors; asking themselves, ‘how can dust be so heavy?’ Milling around they merge into one: crowd, community, peasantry.

The whole scene is glazed with light. Did the bombs rain down at dawn? Exposed interiors brightened from Pantone PMS 7502 to PMS 7500 (beige to cream); suffused in the same way as Tintoretto, Canaletto, Fra Angelico.

This is Aleppo, rebel-held Syrian city in the aftermath of air raids, as photographed in this morning’s newspaper. The tint in the scene comes from the block of red (Pantone PMS 185) in the Vodafone advertisement on the other side of the same sheet of paper.

By dint of this, I stop to see these people and their torn city instead of turning over the page.

Healthy Appetite

December 17, 2013

Beautiful bones and richness of tone. Eyes unabashed. Looking up and taking it all in – whatever it is you have to give. O’Toole is the name – lest you forget mine’s a large one.

RIP Peter O’Toole 1932-2013.

Two Cheers for Singing The News

December 16, 2013

Here are two reasons why you should support Singing The News.

Journalism must find something else to do.
Imagine you’re an architect witnessing the birth of a new technology which allows untrained individuals to design their own houses and offices, providing they follow a pre-existing template. In such circumstances, architecture, which had been both functional and aesthetic, would be bereft of much of its everyday, functional aspect. Which leaves the aesthetic. That is, if there is less demand for architects to perform the merely functional, so they would need to pay more attention to the aesthetic in order to maintain their usefulness to society. Ditto journalism. As more information now comes directly to one individual from another – neither of them journalists, journalism can no longer rely on its merely functional aspect. Like architecture, journalism has lived until now on the cusp of the functional and the aesthetic. Moreover, as in the hypothetical case of architecture, journalism’s real predicament means it must now look more towards its other aspect – the aesthetic – in order to continue to play a social role.

The aesthetic is a public place – perhaps the only place left for the reconstitution of the public.
Historically, besides containing information and referring to the aesthetic, journalism has also covered two other spheres: politics and ethics; and, in turn, these spheres have been constituent elements in the formation of journalism. But now there is no politics to speak of; only the shadow play of the Westminster village. And ethics, having been asked to take the social weight which politics used to carry, has itself become a casualty of the death of politics. That is, the inter-personalisation of the political, which is itself antithetical to politics, has been carried over into the adjoining sphere of ethics, where it has had a similarly corrosive effect. A parallel process of inter-personalisation has also been at work upon the aesthetic; yet in this sphere especially, there seems to be wider recognition that the kind of culture which ensues, is grossly inadequate. Perhaps ‘recognition’ is putting it too strongly, since it is hardly articulated in these terms. Nonetheless there is a widespread sense that what is, is not enough. This is expressed in a variety of ways, ranging from the restless quest for the next Bling thing, to the young woman taking the veil in search of something bigger than the strictly personal. But this is where the aesthetic – tending towards the sublime but also rooted in the secular – should be able to intervene on a daily basis. It has the capacity – indeed, it only realises itself in the actualisation of this capacity – to represent the trajectory between what is particular and what we have in common. Thus the spine of the aesthetic is also the backbone of the public. Moreover, in its particular rendition of the commons, the aesthetic can hold up a new prospect of the public; but it has to be seen to do this in regard to what’s happening to human beings every day. And this is the point where the aesthetic turn in journalism – for the sake of journalism, also turns into a public role, i.e. the role in the re-constitution of the public, which only journalism can play; but even journalism will only be in a position to play this role if it looks more towards its own aesthetic aspect.

Better Things To Do

December 15, 2013

What’s this? Not only have the Chinese arrived on the moon, when it comes to cultural references their recent space mission has also landed a few doubles.

Inside China’s lunar lander there was a lunar rover named ‘Yutu’ (as in ‘U2’ but with cute spelling), which is now frolicking across the surface of the moon using ground penetrating radar to look for minerals. The dear little creature looks like Wall-E, but even Pixar would have to admit that ‘Yutu’ comes more trippingly off the tongue; especially when you discover that in English it means ‘Jade Rabbit’.
In Chinese mythology the mother of the Jade Rabbit is the moon goddess Chang’e; hence the name of Yutu’s mothership. That is, lunar rover = Jade Rabbit/Yutu; lunar lander = Moon Goddess/Chang’e. Bob Dylan couldn’t have said it any better: with China’s arrival on the moon, the times they are a-Chang’eing.

Although the Chinese have arrived on the moon in some style, in cultural terms there is still a way to go. Their mission control room seems to have been lacquered into shape – too much dark wood evoking Imperial tradition or perhaps Art Deco; either way, according to the global etiquette of mega-event branding, it doesn’t translate into 21^st Century Technology: The Image.

Likewise, the rocket which brought the Chinese payload to the moon really is called a ‘Long March’ – here’s hoping the pun is intentional, but even then it’s as quaint as a Jimmy Stewart movie. Under this name, China’s rocket cannot be propelled into global consciousness as a cutting edge icon.
Furthermore, it was as if China’s mission controllers haven’t yet understood the significance of the bon mot. This can hardly be the case – not after all those centuries of Confucianism. So why no ‘one step….’ to mark the occasion? Only a CCTV (state television) broadcast which made the lunar craft descending look like soap on a rope, followed by a few techie types being seen to shake hands with each other. Because of lack of attention to the mise en scene, the event came close to becoming a non-event. To some Western eyes it will have come across as a low-budget re-make of Capricorn One (N.B. Hollywood film suggesting Apollo landing was really a studio set-up).

On the other hand, if their considerable technological achievement wasn’t fully presented as a descent to make the spirits rise, perhaps that’s because, unlike the West (in the week when Obama and Cameron went to Mandela’s memorial to make themselves into a better selfie), China is not yet fully occupied with self-presentation. read more

M-Words

December 14, 2013

Better you don’t know how much they’re manipulating you.

Wannabe statesmen want to retain you as their Madiba – ancestor of the nation, guardian of the world. Your closed casket is their open season; now they can arrange you any way they like.

Madiba, embodiment of elderly wisdom, also serves to outlaw the idea of Mandingo, i.e. ‘look at those huge fists, see the terrifying cock on that black bull’. The magic of Madiba dispels the fantastic dangers of the flesh (skin, boner and bare-knuckle fighter) conjured up in swart gevaar (Afrikaans for ‘black threat’) mentality.

Meanwhile Tutu does a twirl because your political party, the African National Congress, has wrapped you in its flag and drawn up the guest list for your funeral – minus a certain archbishop. He has a point: the sight of your grandson Mandla harvesting Madiba’s reputation – your most vital organ – is hard to watch.

But this is too one-sided. Any story which refers only to other people’s machinations, is bound to be simplistic. Postcards from your boxing days – bare-chested with stiletto-thin moustache – suggest that the idea of Mandingo was not entirely alien to you. Your ‘dignity’ was never docile nor disinterested; even in your prison cell, you always worked the room. Machiavelli might have written The Prince with you in mind; rather, he need not have done so, since you were already mindful of it.

Conversely, I bet the dodgy geezer currently trading on Tata’s persona, would still stake it all in order to play the grandson’s traditional role: having accompanied his grandfather during the days leading up to the funeral, speaking alone to the dear departing as he goes gently into the night.

Machiavelli, Mandingo, Madiba: Nelson Mandela has been something of each of these; he was only as complex as the rest of us. read more

Po-Mo Terro’ and Its Backward Country Cousin

December 8, 2013

Nine people died yesterday when gunmen (thought to be Shi’ites) shot up 12 liquor stores in Baghdad. The killers approached their targets in SUVs, raking shops and supermarkets with gunfire. Most of their victims were Yazidi Kurds. Since their syncretic faith (Sufism and Zoroastrianism) takes a liberal line on alcohol, most of Baghdad’s liquor stores are staffed by Yazidis.

Did the gunmen see themselves as Untouchables, blasting seven bells of hell out of Prohibition hooch? For that truly authentic experience, instead of SUVs they could have hired an armour plated Cadillac and stood on the running boards brandishing their Tommy guns. Al Capone meets Al Qaeda. Shame if a few bootleggers caught a round of lead and ended up dead of the post-modern condition.

Meanwhile in Makhachkala, capital of the federated Russian republic of Dagestan (North Caucasus), anti-alcohol terrorism looks more straightforward. Naïve by comparison, like a bunch of schoolboys out shoplifting.

Here they come now, including the one in a bright red anorak (must have missed the class entitled ‘the importance of being unobtrusive’). They almost collide with the security guard as he saunters out through the shop doorway. Anorak pulls a gun, drops him – suddenly the guard’s legs and feet are poking back into the CCTV frame. Furtively, the three boys enter the shop and drop a bag with a bomb in it behind the nearest counter. Then scuttle out again. On their way out, did they grab a few sticks of chocolate and shove it up their jumpers?

Outside, on the other side of the street, another CCTV camera records the smoke and dust as the shop windows are blown out. Next: the security guard is lying largely where he was before; still flattened, his face now blackened, encircled by shop debris – bits of a wire trolley, twisted light fittings and shelving. Woven together with autumn leaves, this rubbish forms a bargain basement wreath around him. read more

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