The Magic Mirror of Brexit

The Magic Mirror of Brexit

Reflecting on the UK’s December 2019 General Election, one thing above all others has been made clear to me. It is how few voters changed their minds about Brexit  in the 3 ½ years since the Referendum, in spite of the impassioned efforts of politicians and activists.

Why is this? Surely, one thought, as the contours of the possible Brexit landscapes became clearer over the months, there would be major reconsiderations (as proponents of a second Referendum argued). After all, as John Maynard Keynes said: “when the facts change, I change my mind”. 

The Predictor of Trumpism: Richard Rorty

The Predictor of Trumpism? Richard Rorty (1931-2007)

The US philosopher Richard Rorty achieved a species of  posthumous and retrospective fame, outside of academic circles, by “prediciting”, in 1998, the advent of Trumpisim. 

In Rorty’s view, the left-wing tradition in the US had swerved away from the dirty-hands business of practical politics, attentive to the political and economic needs of the blue collar classes. What the left had swerved towards was an academic-inspired tendency to “give cultural politics preference over real politics, and to mock the very idea that democratic institutions might once again be made to serve social justice.”

The Thing Itself: Antony Gormley at the Royal Academy

The Thing Itself: Antony Gormley at the Royal  Academy

There’s a drawing in the Antony Gormley exhibition at the Royal Academy that stood apart from plenty of others that did not detain me. It was larger than many; but what arrested my, by then, slightly bewildered gaze was the seeming familiarity of the subject: a shadowy, indistinct figure shuffling (fleeing?) away from the viewer, along a faintly sketched tunnel or crevice. Apart from the contours of the tunnel and the dark figure, the white paper is blank, suggesting a hostile frozen landscape.

Dogs and Deer in Norfolk

Dogs and Deer in Norfolk

After spending several days in Wells (of Norfolk, Next-the-Sea) I began gradually to be possessed by a conspiracy theory, one involving dogs.

Pompeii at the Ashmolean

Last Supper in Pompeii at Ashmolean Museum

The Exhibition’s title is not the most promising. Last Supper in Pompeii is glossed by the Ashmolean’s publicity as “…telling the story of this ancient Roman town’s love affair with food”. Last supper? Love affair with food? Oh really? Clunking metaphor and culinary cliché are not the obvious way to advertise the tragedy of Pompeii, except to a foodie archaeologist.

Blake at Tate

Blake at Tate

It is necessary for most people to be a bit picky when it comes to appreciating William Blake, who is the deserved subject of a large exhibition at Tate Britain (a "Blakebuster"?). Very few are those who have the patient scholarship to follow his art and writing through all their intricate visionary philosophies. Not many more, I should guess, fall into the category of general readers that, with the help of those scholars, have a good understanding of the preoccupations of his esoteric works.

Montreuil-next-the-Tunnel

Montreuil-next-the Tunnel

Just the other side of the Channel, less than hour’s easy drive from Calais, lies an enticing destination for a weekend visit (or even a day trip from southern England). This is the town of Montreuil sur Mer, a small but intricate and intriguing place a few miles from the coast. Once upon a time, up to the late Middle Ages, its river was a coastal, navigable estuary- hence the town’s now misleading name. That was also the reason for its original strategic importance. The strategic position led to Montrueil’s natural escarpment being continually fortified, and re-fortified (because occasionally sacked) over the centuries, culminating, after a final sacking by a Spanish-English army, in the C16 citadel and walls which still distinguish the town. The old part is enclosed by high ramparts, unbroken except by one road, with a goodly fort at the South West corner.

Eye Surgery at Opera Holland Park

Eye surgery at Opera Holland Park and Other Distractions

The temporary structure erected in Holland Park for a couple of months every summer has the feeling, if not the roundness, of a circus big top. It is set up against the side of Milord Holland’s C17 mansion, partly ruined, partly still used. This is the 1,000-seat arena for Opera Holland Park. 

Yesterday (film)

Yesterday(Film)

The cinematic world of Richard Curtis (film-maker and scriptwriter) is a multiverse – of sorts. The premise of Yesterday (a Curtis-written and Danny Boyle-directed film) is a strange switch in space-time to a world identical (or at least very similar) to our own, apart from the curious fact that certain pop cultural events have never happened (Coca-Cola, Harry Potter and, importantly, the Beatles).

Tom Bowling and Frank Bowling

Tom Bowling; Frank Bowling

Tom Bowling is a song written towards the end of the C18 by Charles Dibdin. Dibdin was a succesful (but not always financially) singer, composer and popular dramatist. Tom Bowlingis his most famous, and long lasting, song. In modern times it has been given an arrangement by Benjamin Britten. It is, of course, Britten and Peter Pears that have produced the benchmark recording of the arrangement.

Sorolla and Vallotton

Sorolla and Vallotton

A couple of London exhibitions (overlapping in just the first week of July) have brought merited recognition to two largely overlooked artists (overlooked in Britain). Sorolla and Vallotton were contemporaries, living and working in the late C19 and early C20, both dying aged 60 within 2 years of one another. Sorolla was Spanish; Vallotton Swiss-French. Both enjoyed success in their lifetime, Sorolla the more conventionally (he sold well in the US).

The Longest Day (film) Revisited

The Longest Day (film)

June 2019: the remembrance of the invasion of Normandy in June 1944 – the D-Day landings (“D” stands for Day; as “H” in H-Hour (the moment of attack) stands for Hour).

I have been thinking of the 1962 film The Longest Day (henceforth TLD), certainly a very long film, about the invasion. It was supposed to be a faithful representation of principal events, and boasted, as military consultants, a long list actual participants  (the distance between event and film was only 18 years).

Balletic Prowess

Balletic Prowess

There are some sports in which any participant (under certain fairly wide parameters) can achieve sublimity, if only once, and that fleetingly. 

Take a middle-aged, fundamentally unfit, park footballer, who, by happy coincidence of many factors of time and physics, and none to do with his skill, apart from an ability to swing a leg, hits a dipping 30-yard volley into the goal. A feat he’ll never repeat, but always remember. Or a weekend tennis player, whose flailing and hopeless lunge at the ball somehow produces the perfect fizzing topspin lob, landing on the baseline with utter untrievability behind her opponent.

The Illusion of Free Will - Hold it Fast

The Illusion of Free Will – Hold it Fast

We need to exercise our free will. What else can we do? It’s determined….

I’ve reached the conclusion, partly out of boredom, partly out of frustration with the pointlessness of the traditional debate, that the concept of “free will”, so long clung to, can be let go without much damage to our sense of self, but with implications, very probably beneficial, for criminal justice systems.

J G Ballard at Club Med

J G Ballard at Club Med

[I wrote about the novelist J G Ballard in April 2016. He was a writer preoccupied with what he saw as the frailties of the structures holding modern civilisations together, and the chaos and savagery that have the potential to emerge if those structures bend or collapse. He also detected in human nature a disturbing tendency to be drawn towards such anarchy. His fictions explore these themes in imagined closed, or closely-linked, communities that “go wrong” in horrible ways. Much though I enjoyed my stay in a Club Med resort, it immediately struck me as fertile ground for the Ballardian imagination…]

LORCA - CASA NATAL

Federico Garcia Lorca – Casa Natal

The life of Federico Garcia Lorca began only a short distance from where it ended. He was born just to the west of Granada and was killed and buried somewhere just to to the northeast of that city.

There was an ironic reason why he found himself, fatally, in the midst of one of the few successful Francoist uprisings in Andalucía in the summer of 1936. He returned to Granada from what he thought was the insecurity of Madrid on the verge of civil war, also to celebrate his and his father's name day. In Granada, he wrongly supposed, he would be safe among “his people”.

Flying Uncertainties

Flying- Small Moments of Uncertainty

I’m reasonably content to fly with Easyjet. On balance, one is given a friendly and efficient service on the plane. The EJ Airbuses land fairly gracefully – unlike the Ryanair Boeings, which, in my experience, thump down hard. Perhaps the notoriously disgruntled workforce are on a mission to wreck undercarriages (and now there are more sobering reasons to prefer Airbus to Boeing, for the time being).

An Arc through Western Andalucia

An Arc through Western Andalucía

Piety and violence are never far apart in Spain. Of course, the relationship holds in many other places at many times. But Spain has its own special place, certainly given the many centuries of conflict that endure between Christian and Muslim kingdoms, and the fierceness of the Spanish Catholic response to the Reformation, let alone the treatment of subject Jews and Muslims, once the Reconquista had succeeded in 1492.

Socialist Realist Painting in Malaga

No Potemkin Village in Malaga- Socialist Realism at the Russian Museum

After securing an offshoot of the Pompidou Centre to grace the City’s redeveloped port-side promenade, the authorities in Malaga have gone to form an alliance with the Hermitage in St Petersburg, and jointly create El Museo Ruso (Russian Museum) in the vast and splendid building that was once the tobacco factory. Does Malaga intend to become the synecdoche of the world’s leading galleries?

The Ousting of Spain's Moors

The Ousting of Spain’s Moriscos

The last Moorish kingdom in Spain was extinguished in 1492 when Granada fell to the Catholic monarchs. Thus ended an era of 7 centuries during which there was Moorish rule over most, or some, of Spain (an increasingly shrinking “some”).

That historical event coincided (not entirely a coincidence) with a marked increase in nationalistic Catholicism – Spain, or its ruling classes, held their country to be a triumphant Catholic nation, becoming the foremost power in Europe.