Your parents are people, and that's all we can be

Thursday music corner: American singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III was born in North Carolina in 1946, and since his self-titled debut album in 1970 he has released a large body of work: seven studio albums in the 1970s, four in the 1980s, four in the 1990s, five in the 2000s, four in the 2010s, and two so far in the current decade. In 2007 he worked with musician Joe Henry to create the score for Judd Apatow's Knocked Up, and in 2010 he won a Best Traditional Folk Album Grammy for his album High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project. He is the father of musicians Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright and Lucy Wainwright Roche, and was previously married to folk singer Kate McGarrigle.

The poignant divorce ballad Your Mother and I appeared on the Richard Thompson-produced 1986 album More Love Songs, which was recorded in England, during a period when Wainwright lived there, and attained greater public recognition by appearing regularly on Jasper Carrott's TV show.

Loudon Wainwright III - Your Mother and I (1986)

See also:

Music: Loudon Wainwright III -  I Knew Your Mother (live, 2016)

Music: Loudon Wainwright III - Me & My Friend the Cat (1971)

Music: Kate McGarrigle, Rufus & Martha Wainwright - Talk To Me of Mendocino (live, 1999)

The central role of drugs in the history of international trade

The popularisation of drug foods by Europeans often transformed their meanings, uses, and location of production. Tea and coffee gained initial favour in China and the Middle East because their caffeine contributed to the wakefulness necessary for religious rites. Muslim Sufi holy men and Buddhist priests popularised the drinks, which long were closely associated with religious observances. Cacao drinking was restricted to the Aztec theocracy and aristocracy in Mexico. In Europe all three beverages became tied to secular uses. Over time their class appeal changed: they began as aristocratic privilege, diffused to bourgeois pleasures, and eventually became mass delights and finally common necessities. The drugs that began as nourishment for spiritual contemplation became the sustenance of industrial workers. Along that path, the way they were consumed also changed. They were originally hot drinks with no sweeteners (the Aztecs added chili to cacao, the Arabs sometimes nutmeg or cardamom to coffee); later, so many additives were included that the original beverage was hardly discernible.

Once they gained acceptance and began creating fortunes for merchants and state treasuries, most of the drugs became respectable. In areas marginal to world trade, they sometimes served as money. Cacao beans in Central America, tobacco in West Africa, opium in southwest China, and tea bricks in Siberian Russia were currency. But usually the goal was to transmute them into gold or silver. At first they were foundations of mercantilist empires. The Spanish doted on chocolate because of their dominion over most of Latin America, which had a natural monopoly on cacao until traders later moved it to Africa. The British, who were the first Europeans to become coffee crazed, found tea more to the advantage of their trade plans in China and India. The French and Americans, oriented to Latin America, became coffee addicts.

These exotic drugs emerged from the outlaw underground to become central parts of the nascent bourgeois lifestyle in Europe. They went from the stuff of community, such as the tobacco smoked by Native Americans in council meetings or by West Africans in religious ceremonies, to the fuel of entrepreneurs and agitators for individual rights. Coffeehouses (which served other drinks as well) served as centres for trade and politicking in Europe. The first newspapers, men's clubs, and political parties were organised, and revolutions plotted, around tables serving coffee and tea. Smoking brought together men who created civil society amid the acrid clouds of tobacco. (Indeed, the coffeehouse was the world economy in miniature, an international emporium joining coffee from Java, Yemen, or the Americas, tea from China, sugar and rum from Africa's Atlantic islands or the Caribbean, and tobacco from North America or Brazil.)

The nineteenth century would popularise these goods so much that they lost their revolutionary appeal and their sense of social distinction. Tobacco descended from elegant snuff and fine cigars to vulgar chewing tobacco. Aristocratic Parisian dandies at Versailles who delicately took snuff would not have recognised that this was the same substance that US baseball players later called chaw and spit out on the sidelines or teenagers smoked furtively in school restrooms. Indeed, making it easier to consume tobacco while also working—as when cigarettes replaced the elaborate, heavy pipes that elites in the Middle East had favoured for nicotine delivery—could be crucial to expanding the market, while also changing the social image of smoking. Sugar was debased from extravagant culinary dessert masterpieces to a huge source of working-class calories in beverages to an industrial additive in something so prosaic as, say, ketchup; coffee and tea descended from the elegant salons to become popularised with instant coffee and iced tea in military rations and in cafeterias.

- Kenneth Pomeranz, The World That Trade Created, 2006 (via DelanceyPlace)w

Love is just the door that's locked and there's no key

Thursday music corner: The Assembly were a short-lived synth-pop side-project formed by ex-Depeche Mode and Yazoo member Vince Clarke and record engineer and producer Eric Radcliffe, who would later go on to own Blackwing Studios. 

Never Never was the group's only single, and featured the ex-Undertones lead singer Feargal Sharkey on vocals. The Clarke-penned synth ballad reached number four in the UK pop charts in November 1983. Clarke would go on to huge chart success with Andy Bell in Erasure, scoring 34 top 40 UK singles between 1986 and 2007. Sharkey would go on to a successful solo career with five UK top 40 hits, including the chart-topping A Good Heart in 1985, which reached number one in the UK, Ireland, Australia and Belgium.

The Assembly - Never Never (1983)

See also:

Music: Depeche Mode - New Life (1981)

Music: Erasure - A Little Respect (1988)

Music: Undertones - My Perfect Cousin (1980)

For the fashion-forward lady of 1924

Ladies: in case you're feeling fashion-forward - n.b. fine cotton woven bloomers in navy or white, a snip at 1/11 1/2, down from 2/6 (Hugh Wright's of Queen St advertisement, NZ Herald, 13 October 1924, via Papers Past)

Deconstructing the Civic Administration Building (still)

 

Jane Austen's letters to Cassandra

It is frequently said of Austen’s letters that they ‘illuminate’ the world of her fiction. This is certainly the case, though to say so is hardly to say very much. Sometimes, it is true, Austen comments directly on work in progress – in particular, on the earlier novels, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. (In a famous letter written just after the publication of Pride and Prejudice in 1813, she tells Cassandra that she is ‘vain enough’ over her book, but thinks it ‘rather too light & bright & sparkling; – it wants shade.’) But what advocates of Austen’s correspondence usually mean is that the letters deal in a general way with the same topics explored in the fiction: marriages and family life, parties and balls, domestic entertainments and the now-antiquated courtship rituals of the early 19th-century provincial English gentry.

Yet with Cassandra in mind, one wants to put a finer point on it. Both Austen and Cassandra received marriage proposals at different points in their lives; Cassandra was in fact engaged to be married in 1797, only to have her fiancé die of a fever in the West Indies. Austen received at least two proposals in her youth, both of which she turned down. Biographers have made much of a mysterious ‘gentleman’ at Lyme Regis in 1804-5 who, according to Austen’s niece Caroline (who heard about it from Cassandra), had ‘seemed greatly attracted by my Aunt Jane ... I can only say that the impression left on Aunt Cassandra was that he had fallen in love with her sister, and was quite in earnest. Soon afterwards they heard of his death.’ Whatever one makes of the story (and Austen’s own part in it goes unrecorded) neither she nor Cassandra showed much real inclination for matrimony later in life. One can’t help but feel that both found greater comfort and pleasure – more of that ‘heartfelt felicity’ that Emma Woodhouse finds with Mr Knightley, or Elizabeth Bennet with the handsome Darcy – in remaining with one another.

The letters from Austen that Cassandra allowed to survive testify to such a primordial bond. Virginia Woolf observed of Austen’s fiction that ‘it is where the power of the man has to be conveyed that her novels are always at their weakest.’ Perhaps this is because men are inevitably inferior to sisters...

- Terry Castle, 'Sister-Sister', London Review of Books, 3 August 1995

Wellington Hospital, Mein St

 

If you wanna act the fool, walk away and leave me

Thursday music corner: American blues and soul singer Syl Johnson (b. Mississippi, 1936, d. Georgia 2022) is perhaps best known for a song covered by other artists: Is It Because I'm Black (Ken Boothe and Delroy Wilson). He also released a version of Take Me to the River before labelmate Al Green's own single release, recorded with the same band. Johnson released at least 19 studio albums from 1968 to 2010, on a range of labels.

Johnson released his third album Back For a Taste of Your Love in 1973 on Hi Records, featuring Anyway the Wind Blows as track four.

Syl Johnson - Anyway The Wind Blows (1973)

See also:

Music: Syl Johnson - Is It Because I'm Black (1969)

Music: Syl Johnson - Annie Got Hot Pants Power (1971)

Music: Syl Johnson - Take Me to the River (1975)

Aristotle & the politics of flourishing

The politics of flourishing

The good life for Aristotle has an inescapably social and political dimension. The Stoics don't need other people to follow the good life; they can do it on their own, in exile, in a prison cell, anywhere. But for Aristotle, many of the virtues are social, such as good humour, friendliness and patience. That means we can only achieve the good life together. We're naturally social and political creatures, which is why we feel fulfilled when we're working on a common project, uniting with others in friendship. Friendship is a key virtue for Aristotle - he devoted a whole book of the Nichomachean Ethics to it. The Epicureans also emphasised the importance of friendship, but theirs is a friendship disconnected from political life. It's a private friendship. For Aristotle, friendship in its highest form has a political or civic dimension. We love our friends not just because we like each other or are useful to each other, but because we share the same values and ideals for our society, and come together to advance those ideals.

The good society, then, is one which enables its members to reach human fulfilment. Humans are happy when the highest drives of their natures are fulfilled - the drive to know, to master skills and virtues, to connect with other people and work on common projects. Aristotle's vision of human nature was tested out, in the 1970s, by two psychologists called Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. They found that humans are not the profit motivated creatures that liberal economics believed. In fact, a series of experiments run by Deci and Ryan suggested humans will actually work harder at projects for less money, or even no money, if they find these projects to be meaningful, challenging socially engaging, and fun. That's why humans are prepared to spend so much time and effort on projects like blogs or Wikipedia, which don't necessarily make a profit. We're not killing time, we're making meaning. As Aristotle predicted, we're seeking ways to fulfil the higher drives of our nature for meaning, mastery, engagement, transcendence and fun. A good society creates opportunities for its citizens to fulfil these drives. Aristotle thought the best constitution for the pursuit of the good life is democracy, because democratic societies enable people to join together and set up clubs, associations, networks, communities of friends, which can practise philosophy and reason their way to the common good. And the solutions they come up with will be better than in a tyranny where only a handful of minds are engaged. In a democratic society, everyone is thinking, everyone is engaged.

- Jules Evans, Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations, 2013, p.214-5.

Drei ostdeutsche Musicals / Three East German musicals

I've recently been using the film streaming site Kanopy to explore the obscure world of East German musicals thanks to a collection of restored vintage titles from the Communist-era German Democratic Republic made by DEFA, the state film bureau. All three are resolutely apolitical and are designed as middle-of-the-road crowd-pleasing entertainment. 

Revue um Mitternacht (Midnight Revue, 1962) is a light farce in which songwriters and filmmakers are kidnapped and locked up in a mysterious mansion so as to produce a hit musical on a tight timeframe, for almost no discernable reason. Some have described Heisser Sommer (Hot Summer, 1968) as East Germany's pre-saging of Grease due to its rivalry between good-looking troupes of young women and men, but it's more accurate to liken it to the wholesome family-friendly 'good clean fun' of Cliff Richard's The Young Ones (1961) or Summer Holiday (1963). And Nicht Schummeln, Liebling (No Cheating, Darling!, 1973) carries on the battle of the sexes motif to a small town in which a clever female doctor takes on the town mayor at his own game when she forms a ladies' football team to teach him a lesson for commandeering all the town's resources to support the men's football team.   

Of the three Revue is most akin to a frothy Jacques Demy musical, and the lavishness of the sets and production numbers shows the East German authorities' desire to provide an impressive film spectacle for East German viewers. There's also a touch of Busby Berkeley's ambition in some of the set pieces, such as the stage set designed to show off a dozen smartly-dressed semaphore girls, deploying their skills in such a coordinated fashion that long-serving Chairman of the East German State Council, Walter Ulbricht, would no doubt have been proud.

Heisser Sommer is an exuberant tale of perky eighteen-year-olds who hitch-hike to the Baltic coast for their summer holidays at the sea-side resort island of Rügen. A rivalry springs up between the troupes of girls and boys, initially because the girls gazump all the hitch-hiking opportunities, and exacerbated when the boys trick the girls into traipsing across a mosquito-infested swamp to get to their destination. (The mosquitos are at least partially repelled when the girls all light up and smoke cigarettes like veritable chimneys). Many of the songs, as in Grease nine years later, revolve around one-upmanship, with the boys proclaiming their prowess at boisterous 'boy things' and the girls either tearing down their arguments or simply dissing their masculinity and maturity at every opportunity.

Nicht Schummeln, Liebling, the slightest of the three films, follows a similar path, with the founding of the girls' football team to take the prideful boys' team down a peg, but adds a layer of local politics in which the town council is manipulated to honour accidental promises to give the girls the same perks as the boys - chiefly a club-house for the purposes of staging slap-up meals, plus the obligatory song and dance numbers. The girls also present the boys' captain with a live piglet, for some reason. 

Frank Schöbel (c) & Chris Doerk (r)

An idiosyncratic if memorable lyrical turn of phrase

Heisser Sommer and Nicht Schummeln, Liebling are also noteworthy for featuring the real-life husband  and wife team of performers Frank Schöbel and Chris Doerk, who were both highly-popular East German pop performers in their heyday. Both deliver almost ridiculous levels of enthusiasm, immaculate hairdos and toothy vigour, even when required to dance joyfully on cobblestones in fake rain or be pushed down a steep street in a go-kart by slightly crazed schoolgirls.

Sooner or later your legs give way, you hit the ground

Thursday music corner: Pete Townshend (b. Chiswick, 1945) joined local skiffle and rock group The Detours in late 1961 at the behest of new member John Entwistle and with the agreement of band leader Roger Daltrey. Learning that an American band had the same name, in 1964 they renamed themselves The Who. The Who have released 12 studio albums between 1965 and 2019, and following the 1978 and 2002 deaths of drummer Keith Moon and bassist John Entwistle, Townshend and Daltrey are the only two surviving members. Townshend has released seven solo studio albums from Who Came First (1972) to Psychoderelict (1993), with the most successful in chart terms being the platinum-selling Empty Glass (1980), which reached number 11 in the UK album charts.

Save It For Later was written by guitarist Dave Wakeling as a teenager and recorded by the UK ska / new wave band The Beat, appearing as the first single release from the band's third studio album Special Beat Service (1982). While it only reached number 47 in the UK charts at the time, it has since grown considerably in popularity, being widely covered and appearing on a range of film soundtracks. Among its many cover versions is the 2006 version by Townshend, which appeared as a bonus track on the re-release of his 1985 album White City: A Novel, and on the subsequent 2006 live album Deep End Live.   

Pete Townshend - Save It For Later (2006)

See also:

Music: The Beat - Save It For Later (live, 1982)

Music: Harvey Danger - Save It For Later (1999)

Music: Eddie Vedder - Save It For Later (2024)

Moby Dick takes Ray Bradbury to the brink

Even after seven months of work, [writer Ray] Bradbury still needed to write the last act of the script. And that’s when it happened. On the morning of April 14, 1954, he woke up, alone in his London hotel room, homesick for Los Angeles, lonely for his wife and children, longing for his old life as an author—autonomous, not answering to anyone, creating his own schedule, writing his own stories. He climbed out of bed, stood before the mirror, looked at himself and declared: “I … am Herman Melville!” He then calmly proceeded to his typewriter.

As with the creation of Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury worked best when he wrote quickly, in an onslaught of creativity. “Your subconscious is smarter than you are,” he once told me, “so get out of its way.” He wrote nonstop for eight hours. He produced the final 37 pages of the script in that one sitting. And he knew that, of the 1,500 pages of drafts and outlines he had written in the seven months he had been working with [film director John] Huston, these were his best.

Huston concurred. Bradbury had finished the screenplay. There would be revisions to follow, but the day-to-day work was done. He was free to leave London and travel south to Italy to meet up with his family. He parted on good enough terms with Huston, the two men hugging, Bradbury thanking him for the singular experience. He left London on April 16, 1954, done with the ordeal of working every day with the unpredictable director.

While he was still in Europe, new screenwriting offers poured in. He was offered assignments to adapt the novels Anatomy of a Murder (1958) and The Man with the Golden Arm (1949), among several other projects. The lifelong cinema aficionado was now completely embraced by Hollywood. And Bradbury turned every offer down. He had, after all, harpooned the white whale. And it almost killed him.

- Sam Weller, 'I ... Am Herman Melville!', Los Angeles Review of Books, 6 September 2024

Get yourself together now and give me something tasty

Thursday music corner: Ringo Starr aka Richard Starkey (b. Liverpool, 1940) joined the Beatles in August 1962, replacing Pete Best on the drumkit. Since the Beatles split up in 1970 Starr has appeared in a range of movies, voiced the Thomas the Tank Engine children's TV programme, and released 20 solo studio albums. 

Back Off Boogaloo was a non-album single released in March 1972, which reached number 2 in the UK pop charts; it was his highest-charting UK single until he participated in the BBC Children in Need Medley single in 2009. The title was inspired by Marc Bolan's incessant use of the word 'boogaloo' in social gatherings. George Harrison produced the record, played slide guitar and helping to co-write it, although Starr didn't reveal the co-writing credit until 2017. The music video was filmed in the grounds of John Lennon's Tittenhurst Park estate in Berkshire; Starr and family lived at Tittenhurst after the Lennons, from 1973 to 1988. Back Off Boogaloo's release is sandwiched between Starr's two greatest singles: It Don't Come Easy (1971) and Photograph (1973).

Ringo Starr - Back Off Boogaloo (1972)

See also:

Music: Ringo Starr - Blindman (1972, B-side of Back Off Boogaloo)

Music: Ringo Starr - It Don't Come Easy (1971)

Music: Ringo Starr - Photograph (live at the Concert For George, 2002)

First came a distant hollow sound, swelling at a frightening rate

George Albert Hansard, who kept a journal aboard Her Majesty's steam vessel Acheron during its four-year charting of the New Zealand coastline, recorded the effect on Wellington of the 1848 Marlborough earthquake; the quake is now almost forgotten, particularly overshadowed by the big 1855 quake. It's estimated to have had a magnitude of 7.5. Author Sheila Natusch recounts his reportage:

The earthquake itself, need it be said, afforded Hansard splendid copy. First came a distant hollow sound, swelling at a frightening rate, and next thing a convulsive shock - houses crashed, bricks came tumbling down, women and children rushed to and fro, and even the stoutest-minded felt off colour. There were three shocks. The first, a long deliberate shaking that lasted a couple of minutes ('three', said a Frenchman at Akaroa), was solemnly believed to have stopped the current gale in its tracks. As soon as the shock ended, the gale sprang up again. The shock was felt over a wide area.

The second one next day was ushered in by a bang, followed by a jolt, a loud roar and a tremblement de terre. Waves were seen, a foot high in some places, passing along the ground. Unfortunately, walls and brick buildings were thrown down, killing three people.

The third and most violent grand shock arrived early in the morning two days after the second. It too came roaring into the midst of a howling gale and apparently shocked it out of existence - or at least took people's minds off it - while it knocked down the remaining brickwork. This time, as everyone was still in bed, no harm was done to lith and limb. After that there were no more violent shakes, just a diminishing series of aftershocks, noticeable even on board the Acheron. One of them sounded like barrels rolling along the deck. With two-thirds of its 'chimnies' down, the walls of the Wesleyan Chapel scattered in all directions, the half-ruined Ordnance Store propped up with timbers, and heaps of brick and rafters where there had been houses, Wellington must have looked dishevelled in part; but Lambton Quay, and houses built on higher ground, especially one-storey houses, were not badly damaged. 'All wooden houses, small and great, seem perfectly uninjured, Hansard wrote.

- Sheila Natusch, The Cruise of the Acheron, Christchurch, 1978, p.74.

The commander of the Acheron was Captain John Lort Stokes, who in the 1830s had shared a cabin with naturalist Charles Darwin aboard the Beagle. The same year as the Marlborough earthquake Stokes Inlet and Lort River in Western Australia were named after him. 

"Your story is too good not to have it perfect"

[Katharine S.] White edited according to a set of principles that she never wrote down but that structured her entire career, and the careers of the writers she cultivated. She was lavish with her rejections—both in the sense that she handed them out freely, and that she was generous in always giving a detailed reason for turning down a piece.

She made abundantly clear that she was rejecting a given poem or story, not the writer herself. Though her office was awash in manuscripts from the slush pile, she assiduously followed up on each of “her” authors, writing to them to encourage them to submit if she hadn’t heard from them in a while, even sending them ideas for stories.

But she never suggested other writers to emulate or tried to nudge one writer to be like another. She prided herself on giving unwavering support and encouraging her writers to submit work even as they dealt with divorce, illness, institutionalization. She herself worked from hospital beds through her many surgeries and ailments, so she had no problem sending page proofs to Elizabeth Hardwick in the hospital just days after giving birth to her daughter Harriet.

Katharine advanced her authors money, sent them books, introduced them to each other, introduced them to their future husbands, turned dry spells into rushing rivers, suggested now-classic stories and essays. In one instance, she inquired about getting a divorced poet an annulment so she could marry her Catholic fiancé—the editor as a full-service consultant for all writers’ troubles.

White called out the best from her authors through her relentless attention to them—her criticism was her love language. As she wrote to one potential contributor from whom she asked for major revisions, “your story is too good not to have it perfect.”

- Amy Reading, 'Editing Without Ego: How Katharine S. White Quietly Shaped The New Yorker’s Writers', Literary Hub, 3 September 2024

See also:

Books: Dylan Thomas' Laugharne, 4 February 2022

Books: Mansfield on Joyce, 27 December 2019

Books: The Paris correspondent starts his day, 30 April 2016

He comes up the back stairs every evening at the same time

Thursday music corner: Side Effect were an American disco and jazz-funk band chiefly active from 1972 to 1982, formed in Los Angeles by Augie Johnson. The band released eight albums, including three on major record label Elektra from 1980 to 1982. Five of their albums charted on the US R&B charts, and the band had three US R&B top 40 singles: Keep That Same Old Feeling (1977), It's All In Your Mind (1978) and Make You Mine (1981). 

Midnight Lover was an album track from Portraits, Side Effect's seventh album, released in 1981. The song was written by the band's young singer Miki Howard, who later had seven solo top 10 US R&B charting singles from 1986 to 1992, including two R&B chart-toppers. Portraits reached number 52 in the R&B album charts.

Side Effect - Midnight Lover (1981) 

See also:

Music: Side Effect - Keep That Same Old Feeling (1977)

Music: Side Effect - It's All In Your Mind (1978)

Music: Side Effect - Make You Mine (1981) 

William Gerhardie's definition of humour

Aunt Teresa looked at me uncertainly, not knowing whether I was serious or laughing, and if laughing whether I was laughing at herself. I wonder,' she said, 'whom you could write about?'

'Well, ma tante, you seem to me a fruitful subject.'

'H'm. C'est curieux. But you don't know me. You don't know human nature. What could you write about me?'

'A comedy.'

Under what title?'

'Well, perhaps - A tout venant je crache!" ["I spit on everyone who comes"]

'You want to laugh at me then?'

'No, that is not humour. Humour is when I laugh at you and laugh at myself in the doing (for laughing at you), and laugh at myself for laughing at myself, and thus to the tenth degree. It's unbiased, free like a bird. The inestimable advantage of comedy over any other literary method of depicting life is that here you rise superior, unobtrusively, to every notion, attitude, and situation so depicted. We laugh - we laugh because we cannot be destroyed, because we do not recognise our destiny in any one achievement, because we are immortal, because there is not this or that world; but endless worlds: eternally we pass from one into another. In this lies the hilarity, futility, the insurmountable greatness of all life.' 

I felt jolly, having gained my balance with one coup. And suddenly I thought of Uncle Lucy's death; and I realised it was in line with the general hilarity of things!

- William Gerhardie, The Polyglots, 1925, p.319-320.

Find a two-step partner and a Cajun beat

Thursday music corner: Mary Chapin Carpenter is a Princeton-born American country/folk singer who released her debut album on Columbia Records in 1987, at the age of 29. Her success built until her million-selling, quadruple-platinum fourth album, 1992's Come On Come On, and she won five Grammy awards between 1992 and 1995. Carpenter's most recent album was 2020's The Dirt & the Stars, which reached number 6 on the US Folk charts.

Down at the Twist and Shout was Carpenter's third single from her third album, 1991's Shooting Straight in the Dark. The lyrics celebrate a much-loved Bethesda, Maryland, music venue (which later closed in 1998), and features a collaboration with the Louisiana cajun collective BeauSoleil, who are name-checked in the lyrics. Down at the Twist and Shout won Carpenter her first Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance, and was featured prominently when she performed it at the 31st Superbowl in New Orleans in January 1997.  

The video below is taken from Farm Aid V in Texas in 1992, but features the album version of the track audio.

Mary Chapin Carpenter w/ BeauSoleil - Down at the Twist and Shout (1991)

See also:

Music: Mary Chapin Carpenter - Down at the Twist & Shout (live at Superbowl XXXI, 1997)

Music: Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter - One Cool Remove (live on Later With Jools Holland, 1994)

Music: Mary Chapin Carpenter, Sheryl Crow & Emmylou Harris - Flesh & Blood (Johnny Cash cover, 2002)

Victoria St, Hamilton

 

But I never made the first team, I just made the first team laugh

Thursday music corner: The Barking-born English folk-punk singer Billy Bragg came to public attention in 1983 with the release of his debut album Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy, not long after buying himself out of his contract to serve in the British Army's Royal Armoured Corps. 

He has released 13 studio albums to date, including Mermaid Avenue (1998) and Mermaid Avenue Vol.II (2000) in collaboration with American band Wilco, creating songs using Woody Guthrie lyrics. He has scored seven UK top 40 singles, including the 1988 chart-topping cover of She's Leaving Home recorded with Cara Tivey; three of his early singles also hit the New Zealand top 40.

Brewing Up With Billy Bragg (1984) was his second album, and the first of his to be released on the Go! Disc label. The album reached number 16 in the UK album charts, and number 23 in New Zealand. The wistful album track The Saturday Boy appears as track five, with a trumpet solo by Dave Woodhead.

Billy Bragg - The Saturday Boy (1984)

See also:

Music: Billy Bragg - Levi Stubbs' Tears (1986)

Music: Billy Bragg - Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards (1988)

Music: Billy Bragg & Wilco - Way Over Yonder In A Minor Key (1998)

Overlooking Cable Bay

 

When you bite your lip you're gonna flip your flip

Thursday music corner: Slade were a rock band formed in the English Midlands in 1966, first as the N'Betweens, then as Ambrose Slade, and finally from 1969 simply as Slade. They attained huge success in the British glam rock scene, with their particular prowess for crafting enduringly popular hit singles. 

They finally found a broader audience with their seventh single, a 1971 cover of R&B singer Bobby Marchan's Get Down & Get With It, which reached number 16 in the UK charts. For the next five years Slade chalked up a multitude of hit singles, including six chart-toppers and six other singles that hit the top five. Slade also scored three chart-topping UK albums, Slayed? (1972), Old New Borrowed & Blue (1974) and the Sladest compilation album (1973).

The 1971 non-album single Coz I Luv You was the band's first number one UK song. Co-written by lead vocalist Noddy Holder and multi-instrumentalist Jim Lea, it was propelled by Lea's electric violin that sought to emulate the Hot Club-style gypsy violin of Stephane Grappelli. Coz I Luv You also topped the Irish pop charts and entered the top 10 in Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium and West Germany. The performance below is from West German TV programme Beat-Club.

Slade - Coz I Luv You (live, 1971)     

See also:

Music: Bobby Marchan - Get Down & Get With It (1964)

Music: Slade - Mama Weer All Crazy Now (1972)

Music: Slade - Cum On Feel The Noize (1973) 

Film Festival 2024 roundup

This year's festival was a strong outing, with a particularly commendable array of retro screenings that proved to be every bit as compelling as the best new material on offer. I saw 16 films in 2024, the same as last year, and nearly all were in the Embassy Grand apart from one at the Roxy and one at the Lighthouse Cuba. Here's my overview of the films I saw, in rough order of preference, beginning with those I enjoyed most. (They ranged from definitely worthwhile to thoroughly excellent - no duds this year!) I'll just blurb the new films, because the vintage titles speak for themselves - must-see classics all. But special mention should go to Sir Peter Jackson, who kindly ventured to the Embassy to introduce the 30th anniversary screening of the 4K restoration of his 1994 masterpiece, Heavenly Creatures, sitting in the audience with fellow director Andy Serkis. 

Top of the class retro classic legends:

Days of Heaven (dir. Terrence Malick, US, 1978)

Paris, Texas (dir. Wim Wenders, Germany/France, 1984)

Heavenly Creatures (dir. Peter Jackson, NZ, 1994)

Everything else:

Eno (dir. Gary Hustwit, US, 2024)

American documentarian Gary Hustwit has already excelled with his design-themed 'documentart' films Helvetica, Objectified, Urbanised and Rams (a biography of German industrial designer Dieter Rams, not the Icelandic drama or its Australian remake). In Eno he brings his interest in the structure and composition of the artistic process to the perfect subject, ex-Roxy Music and solo artist and ceaselessly-inventive music producer Brian Eno. The subject proves thoroughly charming in addition to his decades worth of insightful, playful commentary on his work and how he creates it. Eno is both disarmingly modest about his artistic gifts and the way he brings out creativity in the collaborators he works with, and passionately articulate about the value of artistic expression. 

Aside from being ridiculously creative, he's also very funny. They interview him going through his old notebooks and journals and he says something like, 'Well on the one hand it's wonderful to have this personal archive stretching back to my teenage years, but on the other hand the downside is now I have to talk to you about them in a documentary, so perhaps I should've destroyed them all'. He also talks about the value of setting arbitrary restrictions to stimulate artistic creativity, and then also complains wistfully because he's set himself a daily ritual of not eating at all until midday and he's being interviewed at 11.30am.

Hustwit's documentary also plays with the form, thanks to the 'AI generative edit' that apparently determines the composition of the documentary anew each screening, jumbling the available content into a supposedly unique structure each time it's seen. Our version in Wellington felt well-rounded - while it lacked any direct interviews with David Byrne, it did feature intriguing clips of a 1990 collaborative album with John Cale, Wrong Way Up. Throughout, Eno displays a ready wit and spry, self-deprecating humour that are a convincing argument for seeing the documentary at least twice, to savour more of his company.

In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon (dir. Alex Gibney, US, 2023)

While long for a cinematic documentary (209 minutes) and likely better delivered as a steaming doco, In Restless Dreams is replete with quality archival footage and concert material that is allowed to stretch out to please Simon completists rather than appearing in truncated form. The modern quid pro quo of music documentaries - here's my new stuff that you're not all that interested in - doesn't really apply here, because the Seven Psalms album (released in May 2023) appears to genuinely be impressive, both creatively and technically. The documentary features amusing barbs and honesty from erstwhile collaborator Art Garfunkel, but tellingly only in audio form rather than on-camera. Simon's creative and multi-tasking 1970s work receives plenty of attention, including SNL skits dressed up as a giant turkey, and his brief marriage to Carrie Fisher. The film concludes with Simon's cathartic reinvention through the incredibly vibrant music of South Africa (Graceland) and Brazil (The Rhythm of the Saints), plus a bit of Edie Brickell, his wife since 1992.

Flow (dir. Gints Zilbalodis, Latvia, 2023) 

A vibrant, inventive animated project constructed by a small team over a five-year period, building a beautiful world populated solely by animals seemingly living amidst the remains of a human society in which all the people have vanished but a cornucopia of animals remain. Flow's protagonist, a skittish, standoffish black cat, initially flees from a pursuing pack of dogs but ultimately is forced to co-exist and cooperate with one of their number - a lively golden retriever, who quickly turns out to be a boon ally - and an increasing coterie of other lively creatures, including a supremely relaxed capybara, a covetous lemur and a protective stork-like bird. An inexplicable inundation of biblical proportions brings the animals together and forces them to band together to survive aboard a stray sailboat, roaming the flooded world in search of a dry home. It was a pleasure to see the film following the brief but sincere introduction by the director himself, who was present in New Zealand for the festival.     

Head South (dir. Jonathan Ogilvie, NZ, 2024)

A delightful homegrown New Zealand audience-pleaser replete with self-deprecating humour at the expense of the charmingly naive hero, teenager Angus, who in late-1970s Christchurch becomes fixated on starting a punk band, despite not having an instrument or knowing how to play one. Blessed with a quality supporting cast, high-quality middle-class New Zealand '79 production design, and a script punctuated with plenty of wry wit, the only way I can think of improving Head South would be if Angus (young Australian actor Ed Oxenbould, who sticks the accent landing with aplomb) asked his band nemesis "Why are you bloody angry all the time?", only to receive the reply, "Because I'm punk, you egg!" (Also, it was nice to see the visual homage to the cover of Joe Jackson's 1979 classic album Look Sharp).

The Universal Theory (dir. Timm Kröger, Germany/Switzerland, 2023)

A richly entertaining thriller built around a sci-fi thriller context with just a hint of shaggy dog story, The Universal Theory benefits from simply gorgeous black-and-white cinematography in the harsh alpine light of Switzerland and a grandiose, sumptuous orchestral score befitting a heightened mystery melodrama of old. There's a hearty dose of bunkum on the loose in the mountain air, but it's all executed by director Timm Kröger with such conviction and panache that it's never less than entertaining.

Black Dog (dir. Guan Hu, China, 2024)

A relatively rare glimpse into an outsider's China, with the additional bonuses of a charismatic canine co-star, pleasingly moody desaturated cinematography depicting the rugged Gobi frontier, a subcurrent of wry humour and pleasing touches of magical realist flair. Only the sensitively-staged depictions of animal cruelty make this a somewhat challenging watch for sensitive souls.

The Outrun (dir. Nora Fingscheidt, UK, 2024)

A solid third feature film from German director Nora Fingscheidt (System Crasher, The Unforgivable) in this Saoirse Ronan-led and -produced tale of a young woman's retreat to her Orkney homeland to recover from alcoholism. The London scenes of addiction and loss are convincing, but the film really thrives on Papa Westray as Rona holes up in an isolated cabin for the winter, amidst the wild North Sea gales and perched above rugged stony coasts to looks inwards and recover her sense of self. It's also nice to see some of the local island community given speaking roles.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig (dir. Mohammad Rasoulof, Iran, 2024)
Rightly popular at this year's Cannes festival, the recently-exiled Mohammad Rasoulof has crafted a deftly-handled family drama set amidst the backdrop of the popular insurrection convulsing the brutal theocratic regime in Iran. Much like Asghar Farhadi's 2011 film A Separation, this work examines a tightly-knit family as it unravels under misunderstandings and its own internal contradictions. The grim paranoia of life in a authoritarian regime and the helplessness of women beholden to male protectors are under the microscope, and while the final act may at least partially veer towards melodrama these are compelling, convincingly nuanced characters and the viewer is indelibly invested in their fates. Earlier this year Rasoulof disobeyed his official travel ban from the Tehran regime and escaped to Germany, where he has been given asylum. He was able to attend the Cannes red carpet event for this film.

Evil Does Not Exist (dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Japan, 2023)

Languid pacing and long shots and sequences give this film a dream-like sensibility, along with the taciturn presence of rural jack-of-all-trades Takumi and his inquisitive free-range daughter Hana. Aside from a left-field gear-change at the conclusion this is a gentle examination of Japanese small-town life, and the intersection between the rural existence and big-city ambitions. The music of Eiko Ishibashi and the cinematography of Yoshio Kitagawa are indelible contributors to this minimalist tone-poem of a film.

All We Imagine As Light (dir. Payal Kapadia, India, 2024)

A convincing directorial debut and a strong female-led Indian drama that benefits from an unsentimental perspective on the challenges faced by women in contemporary Mumbai, and shifts the cinematic ground by what must be taboo-breaking depictions of women's lives. The film is at its strongest when it leaves the crammed, high-pressure city streets and opens out in a seaside village of one of the trio of women at the heart of the film. If anything, it could have benefited from even less emphasis on the male supporting characters, and instead focusing with laser-like precision on the rich relationship between dutiful Prabha, who despite her husband long abandoning her for life in Germany, is unable to move on; passionate Anu, who is in an illicit relationship with a Muslim boy; and doughty Parvati, who is being evicted from her home by a corrupt construction firm. While the performances are commendable and the non-traditional Indian score is interesting, perhaps a little more plot might have been beneficial for non-Indian viewers seeking investment in the narrative.

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus (dir. Neo Sora, Japan, 2023) 

Even for the uninitiated this series of exquisite and expertly-played piano pieces by the sadly-departed Ryuichi Sakamoto, who died not long after this performance was filmed, is a rich opportunity to savour a performance by a master at near his peak, even despite serious illness. The elegance with which the pieces are performed, and the restrained volume at which they're recorded, might mean that for some, including me, the benefits of a big-screen viewing might be counterbalanced by the distractions of an unsettled audience - the master pianist's final performance deserves to be free of the myriad interruptions of coughing, sneezing, rustling, and in the case of the Embassy, two non-silenced mobile phones going off.

Kneecap (dir. Rich Peppiatt, N.Ireland, 2024)

A rousingly silly dollop of Gaelic-language self-aggrandisement in the time-honoured tradition of all hip-hop origin stories, with plenty of ludicrous self-mythologising that nearly always hits the mark in a crowd-pleasing spectacle that's ruder than Derry Girls and more knowing than Young Offenders. The chief surprise is that by all accounts it seems like this is a genuine trio portraying fictionalised versions of themselves, rather than my initial suspicion that it was actor-led - but that's a high compliment, because all three acquit themselves excellently as actors, despite playing themselves. Its cartoonish portrayal of Northern Ireland - sorry, 'the north of Ireland' - may not be grounded in total reality but it's certainly never dull.

Gloria! (dir. Margherita Vicario, Italy, 2024)

A frothy crowd-pleaser replete with orphans who are plucky in both senses of the word, given their resourcefulness and musicality. Set in a Venetian girls' orphanage circa 1800, the film lays on the melodrama, with cartoonishly evil antagonists stalking the screen attempting to thwart the resourceful parentless orchestra girls. A mysterious bequest and an impending visit by the newly-elected Pope Pius VII are the drivers of the plot, in a film with plenty of artfully-crafted shots and informed by a modern pop sentimentality rather than attempting the perhaps more challenging task of celebrating authentic period chamber music.

See also:
Movies: Film festival roundup 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 part 1 / part 2, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2009

Mt Victoria sunset

 

I'm always animated 'cos my game's so tight that I keep it laminated

Thursday music corner: Underground hip-hop trio Ugly Duckling formed in Long Beach, California in 1993. They released seven albums from their 2001 debut Journey to Anywhere, to their most recent release, 2011's Moving at Breakneck Speed. The wittily self-deprecating, sample-driven A Little Samba appeared on Journey to Anywhere, and also featured in the Johnny Vegas-led BBC sitcom Ideal and advertisements for Visa in western Europe.

Ugly Duckling - A Little Samba (2001)    

See also:

Music: Ugly Duckling - Smack (2005)

Music: Jurassic 5 - Quality Control (2000) 

Music: Molotov - Voto Latino (1997)

The triumph of the digital commons

Garrett Hardin's description of the commons as 'tragic' - which fitted so neatly into the neoliberal script - arose from his belief that, if left as open access to all, then pastures, forests and fishing grounds would inevitably be overused and depleted. He was most probably right about that, but 'open access' is far from how successful commons are actually governed. In the 1970s, the little-known political scientist Elinor Ostrom started seeking out real-life examples of well-managed natural commons to find out what made them work - and she went on to win a Nobel-Memorial prize for what she discovered. Rather than being left 'open access', those successful commons were governed by clearly defined communities with collectively agreed rules and punitive sanctions for those who broke them. Far from tragic, she realised, the commons can turn out to be a triumph, outperforming both state and market in sustainably stewarding and equitably harvesting Earth's resources [...]

The triumph of the commons is certainly evident in the digital commons, which are fast turning into one of the most dynamic arenas of the global economy. It is a transformation made possible, argues the economic analyst Jeremy Rifkin, by the ongoing convergence of networks for digital communications, renewable energy and 3D printing, creating what he has called 'the collaborative commons'. What makes the convergence of these technologies so powerfully disruptive is their potential for distributed ownership, networked collaboration, and minimal running costs. Once the solar panels, computer networks and 3D printers are in place, the cost of producing one extra joule of energy, one extra download, one extra 3D printed component, is close to nothing, leading Rifkin to dub it 'the zero-marginal-cost revolution'.

The result is that a growing range of products and services can be produced abundantly, nearly for free, unleashing potential such as open-source design, free online education, and distributed manufacturing. In some key sectors the twenty-first-century collaborative commons has started to complement, compete with, and even displace the market. What's more, the value generated is enjoyed directly by those who co-create in the commons, and it may never be monetised - with intriguing implications for the future of GDP growth [...]

- Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, London, 2017, p.83-4.

Fortune walks right in the door, and here I am just like before

Thursday music corner: American singer-songwriter Rickie Lee Jones was born in Chicago in 1954, and came to immediate prominence with the release of her hit self-titled debut album in 1979, which included the successful single Chuck E's In Love. Rickie Lee Jones went platinum in the US and reached number three in the US album charts; it also topped the Australian album charts. 

A Lucky Guy appeared on Jones' 1981 album Pirates, her second. It was the lead single from the album, but only reached number 64 in the US charts. The album was, in part at least, a response to Jones' break-up with performer Tom Waits.

Rickie Lee Jones - A Lucky Guy (1981)

See also:

Music: Rickie Lee Jones - Chuck E's In Love (1979)

Music: Lyle Lovett & Rickie Lee Jones - North Dakota (live, 1999)

Music: Willie Nelson & Rickie Lee Jones - Comes Love (live, 2004)

Cuba Street

 

How Lewis Lapham knew the CIA wasn't for him

Some readers saw a contradiction in Mr. Lapham's affluent life and his stalwart liberalism. But he said he made his choice soon after graduating from Yale, when he applied for a job with the C.I.A., then a bastion of Ivy League elitism.

The first question he was asked, he said, was "When standing on the 13th tee at the National Golf Links in Southampton, which club does one take from the bag?"

"They wanted to make sure you were the right sort," he explained.

He found the question off-putting and dropped his spy ambitions for a career in journalism, although he said he knew the answer: a 7- iron.

- Robert McFadden, 'Lewis H Lapham, Harper’s Editor and Piercing Columnist, Dies at 89', New York Times, 24 July 2024

Democracy is an unending process of humbling unconstrained power

The suggestion that the problem of abusive power should be central to how we think about democracy is a vital clue why it can be considered indispensable everywhere. If democracy is understood as an unending process of humbling unconstrained power, then we must abandon all earlier efforts to link it to arrogant first principles. 'Democracy is not figurable,' writes the French scholar Jean-Luc Nancy (1940-2021). Like water, it has no fixed form or substance. Not only does it vary through time and space, as we have seen, but its defiance of fixed ways of living and refusal of all forms of top-down power masquerading as 'normal' or 'natural' are compelling. Democracy has a punk quality. It is anarchic, permanently unsatisfied with the way things are. The actions unleashed by its spirit and institutions create space for unexpected beginnings. Always on the side of the targets and victims of predatory power, democracy doubts orthodoxies, loosens fixed boundaries, widens horizons and pushes towards the unknown.

Thinking of democracy as a shape-shifting way of protecting humans and their biosphere against the corrupting effects of unaccountable power reveals its radical potential: the defiant insistence that people's lives are never fixed, that all things, human and non-human, are built on the shifting sands of space-time, and that no person or group, no matter how much power they hold, can be trusted permanently, in any context, to govern the lives of others. We could say, thinking back to the age of the first popular assemblies, that democracy is a means of damage prevention. It's an early warning system, a way of enabling citizens, and whole organisations and networks, to sound the alarm whenever they suspect that others are about to cause them harm, or when calamities are already bearing down on their heads. Nietzsche famously complained that democracy stands for the disbelief in rule by elites and strongmen. It does, and for good reason. Democracy brings things back to earth. It serves as a 'reality check' on unrestrained power. It is a potent means of ensuring that those in charge of organisations don't stray into cuckoo land, wander into territory where misadventures of power are concealed by fine words, lies, bullshit and silence.

- John Keane, The Shortest History of Democracy, Melbourne, 2022, p.197-8

Maybe a life of cheap wine and Bukowski

Thursday music corner: Dead Flowers were a New Zealand indie rock band that released three albums on Murray Cammick's Wildside Records from 1993 to 1998: Skin of a Stone in 1993, Sweetfish in 1994, and their final, self-titled, album Dead Flowers in 1998. All three albums reached the New Zealand top 40 charts, and the band had early successes, being selected to support Guns 'n Roses and Pearl Jam, and playing the first Big Day Out in 1994. 

The acoustic-driven I Don't See Anyone At All was on the band's third and final album, which was recorded in Sydney and Auckland, with the latter sessions involving former Split Enz and Crowded House member, Eddie Rayner. 

Dead Flowers - I Don't See Anyone At All (1998)

See also:

Music: Dead Flowers - I Wanna Know (1998)

Music: Bailterspace - Splat (1995)

Music: HLAH - Spanish Goat Dancer (1994)

So isolated that she thinks that the army is the place where a man ought to be

Thursday music corner: Seventy-three-year-old English singer-songwriter Graham Parker attained prominence in the second half of the 1970s with his band the Rumour, which was comprised of ex-members of British pub-rock bands including Brinsley Schwarz and Ducks Deluxe. Parker has released 25 albums throughout his career; the first five from 1976 to 1980 were with the Rumour. (He also released a further two albums with them in 2012 and 2015). He has scored two UK top 40 hits - one in 1977 when the Pink Parker EP (Hold Back The Night / Let Me Get Sweet With You) reached number 24, and one the following year when (Hey Lord) Don't Ask Me Questions reached number 32.

Squeezing Out Sparks was Parker's fourth album with the Rumour, and was released in March 1979. It won Village Voice's end-of-year critics' poll award, and has featured in the Rolling Stone top 500 greatest albums chart. The self-loathing rock of Local Girls was the second track on the album, and its third single after Protection and Discovering Japan.

Graham Parker & the Rumour - Local Girls (1979)  

See also:

Music: Graham Parker & the Rumour - (Hey Lord) Don't Ask Me Questions (1978)

Music: Graham Parker & the Shot Steady Nerves - Wake Up Next To You (1985)

Music: Graham Parker - The Madness of Love (Richard Thompson cover, 1995) 

Upper Cuba Street

 

Bait your hook and keep on trying

Thursday music corner: The Marvelettes were a 1960s girl-group formed of Michigan school friends, who attained chart-topping success in 1961 with their recording of Please Mr Postman. This was Tamla Motown's first Billboard Hot 100 number one single, and was famously covered by the Beatles two years later on their second album, With the Beatles. (The Carpenters also took it to number one in 1975). 

The Marvelettes had 10 US pop chart top 40 singles from 1961 to 1968. Too Many Fish In The Sea was the Marvelettes' fourteenth single, and their most successful single release of 1964. It also appeared on their 1966 compilation The Marvelettes' Greatest Hits, which reached number four on the US R&B albums charts.  

The Marvelettes - Too Many Fish In The Sea (1964)

See also:

Music: The Marvelettes - Beechwood 4-5789 (1962)

Music: The Marvelettes - Don't Mess With Bill (1966)

Music: The Backbeat Band - Please Mr Postman (1994)

Joel Meyerowitz: the heart of the photographic moment

By way of illustration he cites the experience of walking down a street in Paris. "There was a famous bakery, Poilâne, with just a tiny doorway, and as you're walking along smelling the petroleum-laden air of the street, you walk past the doorway and you pass through a brief zone of sugar and butter on the air, and you immediately want to go in there. You take two more steps and you're out of the sugar-butter atmosphere, but in the moment I passed through it I was hungry for it, and I imagined and fantasized and wanted it! And then a step later it was gone. I remember thinking: That's photography! You are in a zone for a split second, you recognize photographic moment in the place where you are. Bang! A picture! It's as instantaneous and subtle as that. Something wakes me up! Suddenly I'm alert, and I can see everything happening around me on the street. And instantly try to put a frame around it.

And so I thought that that fragility of experience, that evanescence, is at the heart of the photographic moment. And color photography satisfies the generosity of that moment, and black and white reduces that to a kind of figuration; it's a graphic reduction. And so I had to ask myself: Do I want to work in this reductive method, or do I want the full expressiveness of the world I walk through and that I perceive and read with my entire body and all my senses? And I knew that color offered me that range, so I felt that I had to stand up for it. I made these comparison pictures to make an argument for accepting color."

- Joel Meyerowitz & Robert Shore, Joel Meyerowitz: A Question of Color, London, 2023, p.55

See also:
Blog: Cindy Sherman meets Cate Blanchett, 8 May 2022
Blog: Cindy Sherman: chameleon, comedian, 15 January 2017
Blog: Ans Westra: Wellington 1976, 30 June 2013

The decaying remnants of the Buran space shuttle

Only the most intrepid urban explorers have paid the survivors of the [Russian space shuttle] Buran class a visit, a mission that is itself almost intergalactic in its boldness and ambition. First, Baikonur lies in Kazakhstan's desert steppe - a full day's train journey from the largest city Almaty - at a point where both railway lines and roads terminate into a lunar-like wasteland. Second, it occupies a vast, heavily guarded site. Effectively a mini-republic leased to the Russian Federation, it was originally chosen by Soviet officials for its distance from settlements and prying eyes. The working spaceport contains relics from the glory days of Yuri Gagarin, the first man to fly into outer space, as well as launch pads for the current Soyuz programme. Somewhere in between lie site 112A and hangar MZK. Here, two incarnations of the Buran rest under a shroud of bird droppings, their cockpits stripped of instruments and their scaffolding in collapse. Explorers describe secretly hiking across the desert under cover of night, before shining their torches into this vast, echoing mausoleum to cosmic dreams.

The more important craft is OK-1K2 'Ptichka' - meaning 'little bird' - the second in the class to be built and intended for its first space mission in December 1991. Its neighbour is OK-MT, a test vehicle that was slated to be burned in the atmosphere as part of an experimental unmanned launch. Neither of these is the original Buran that made the only space flight. This was destroyed at Baikonur in 2002, when the roof of its hangar collapsed in an earthquake, resulting in the deaths of eight workmen. Broken instruments and torn blueprints are strewn around the complex. The buildings are occasionally patrolled by guards and, more regularly, by bats, which flit about the cathedral-like heights.

Where the American Space Shuttles occupy pride of place in national museums, these spacecraft have been left to decay in the desert. They are deeply ambiguous objects. On the one hand, they are a symbol of the past: of the Cold War, the space race and the former USSR, whose fragmentation left them marooned in Kazakhstan, far from Moscow. On the other, they whisper of an alternate future: of voyages never made, discoveries never celebrated, corners of the cosmos uncharted. In a small way, they offer a vision of a 21st-century Soviet Union.

- Oliver Smith, Atlas of Abandoned Places, London, 2022, p.154

See also:
Blog: Russians in Queen Charlotte Sound, 15 December 2023
Blog: Mr Putin departs Brisbane, 16 November 2014
Blog: Under a fire that seemed pouring from all sides, 9 October 2012

The UK general election under proportional representation

"Labour gained over 200 seats but their vote share increased by less than two percentage points to 34%"

The UK general election is just a periodic reminder of how unfair and distortional the UK first-past-the-post (FPP) electoral system is. While Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Party have stormed to a large parliamentary majority, it is not bolstered by the knowledge that a large proportion of the British electorate have actually voted for them. The above quote is from the BBC, which also notes that Reform won 14 percent of the vote but only five seats, which is 0.8 percent of the total seats. Notably, the Green party also won 6.8 percent of the vote, but only four seats (0.6 percent of the total seats).

Fortunately the Electoral Reform Society has produced a simulated UK general election conducted under proportional representation, which illustrates that to form a government comprising a majority of voters, Labour (236 seats under PR) would need to form a coalition or other similar arrangement with both the Liberal Democrats (77 seats) and the Greens (42 seats), giving a government of 355 seats. The Conservatives (157 seats) could equally form a coalition with Reform (94 seats) and the Liberal Democrats to give a government of 328 seats. The latter would be a flimsy majority, though.

Source: Electoral Reform Society, 2024

Robert Cecil's Elizabethan intelligencers

For more than a century, it lay undisturbed in the National Archives: a single sheet of paper, headed The names of the Intelligencers, with the power to unveil a hidden network of secret Elizabethan spies.

Now, the 428-year-old secret dossier of Robert Cecil, spymaster to Elizabeth I and the man who discovered the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, has been pieced together using this key document. It reveals how Cecil set up and used a clandestine espionage network to spy on European monarchs for the English throne.

The network was so extensive that the historian Stephen Alford – who has been hunting down Elizabethan spies and painstakingly reconstructing Cecil’s illicit files about each “intelligencer” ever since he found the list in the archives nearly 15 years ago – thinks it was “the first properly organised secret service” in England.

“There were lots of names listed – some I recognised, people in or close to the privy council of Elizabeth I, and lots I didn’t know. Eventually, I realised that the numbers next to their names were folio numbers and that this was really a contents page. That was a lightbulb moment,” said Alford, professor of early modern British history at the University of Leeds. He has written a book on his discoveries, All His Spies: The Secret World of Robert Cecil, which is being published by Penguin. The previously overlooked document, which Alford thinks Cecil began to write in 1596, had been placed in a “miscellaneous” folder by Victorian archivists.

“I think I was probably the first scholar to take an interest in it,” said Alford. “The Victorians had a habit, where if they came across papers that didn’t make sense to them, that were a little mysterious and couldn’t be filed away in a neat and tidy way, they would scratch their heads and then stick them in a miscellaneous folder and ignore them. And that’s where historians now find really interesting stuff.”

He began scouring the archives for any paper which looked relevant and had “a little number in the corner” that matched the intelligencer’s number on the contents page. “I just had to hope that the edges of the paper hadn’t been torn. And because the manuscripts were so poorly kept before the 19th century – often stuffed into the chambers in the Tower of London – rats and mice got to some as well. Often, they were stained, sometimes you see teeth marks. It’s a miracle these papers survived at all.”

As he gradually built up each intelligencer’s folio, he began to see a pattern. “Each was like an office file, I think. It was on hand in Cecil’s office for when reports came in, or to keep a record of payments made.”

Most spies in the 16th century worked for courtiers and were normally “a bunch of rogues”, Alford said, who would turn up haphazardly and volunteer information on an ad hoc basis. The intelligencers on this list were different: “These were serious individuals, a lot of them international merchants, who were on the payroll.”

Previously, scholars thought that Cecil, whose official role was secretary of state to Elizabeth, had a “few spies, here and there”. But Alford’s research indicates that he had an organised network of more than 20 spies, in Lisbon, Calais, Brussels, Seville, Rome, Amsterdam, Scotland, Sweden and unspecified locations elsewhere. “He chose merchants because they travel, can read and write, speak European languages and have networks of their own.”

Each agent was paid to secretly send coded reports to Cecil, who decrypted them using the individual, bespoke cypher in each of their files, which also contained a record of their payments and all their secret communications. “By modern standards, the cyphers are pretty unsophisticated – they’ll suggest different letters for letters of the alphabets, or symbols or diagrams for the Queen or King of Spain, for example,” he said.

- Donna Ferguson, 'Uncovered: 428-year-old secret dossier reveals Elizabeth I’s network of spies', Guardian, 29 June 2024