Aardman at the Young V&A - must see

Grommit's garden.  Galleon in background

Mrs Drew & I have just visited a truly superb exhibition at Young V&A* in Bethnal Green. 

It's brilliantly well done and is chock full of original Aardman stuff (Morph, Wallace & Gromit, Creature Comforts, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep etc) - meaning, of course, that it's in full collaboration with the famous animation studio itself.  A marketing ploy?  Who cares.

It works along so many dimensions.  Where do the ideas come from for the models and characters?  We learn a lot about the creative, artistic processes involved, every inch and frame the equal of Disney.  How do they make the models?  Yep, we learn that, too.  You wanna see the models themselves?  All there, from the tiny rivets on the space ship (they use lentils) to the immense galleon from The Pirates!  How do they make it all move?  Plenty of that, too.

How is a were-rabbit articulated?   Now we know ...  

And it's a lot of fun!  Loads of kids - as one might expect - really enjoying themselves.  Kids of all ages.

Getting a bit more po-faced about it all, in the context of Hockney I recently rehearsed my views on what constitutes Art is threefold:  complete mastery of the craft au fond; boundless, compulsive creative output; and a strong eye / ear for abstraction.  It's all here at Aardman.  Nick Park is a true artist.  Go and see his stuff.  

On till November and tickets go quickly during the hols.   

ND

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* This V&A outpost dates from 1872 and has had several incarnations: it once housed the V&A's Rodin collection; in 1974 it became the V&A Museum of Childhood.   Once the heart of Kray territory and very readily accessible from central London, Bethnal Green after the Krays became a magnet for South Asian immigration, notably from Bangladesh; and more recently, it's been gentrifying - just one tube stop from the heart of the City, with lots of fine brick buildings from the Georgian era onwards, ripe for conversion to smart, up-market housing.  The wonder is, it took so long to become trendy.

The museum itself went through a typically annoying woke phase some years ago; but in this case, as in many others, peak woke is mercifully behind us. 

Hockney - a true master

With the passing of David Hockney we have lost something precious: a master of his work.  I tend to think there are three pre-requisites for genuine artistry: that the artist should first be a complete master of the technicalities - craft before art; that they should have a fine eye (or ear) for abstraction; and boundless productivity.  Some might say that Vermeer provides a counter-example to the third of these, but I'd say that's a rarity.

Hockney had it all.   His output was legendary, of course: and his technical skills were that of an outright genius.  I recall a small, simple drawing he made of a muddy lane, and you could tell that what one was looking at was the indentations in the soft ground of where a pile of logs had been resting until recently at the roadside.  As if one was there. This is extraordinary stuff.

Crayon sketch: I did this - in homage - 50 years ago

The quick Guardian obit refers to "his fascination with perspective" but I don't think that's quite right.  Mere perspective is old hat: it was a fascination with depth, and how it can be conveyed in two-dimensional media - and in this, he was truly a revolutionary, going way beyond other depth-masters (Monet comes first to mind) in finding new ways to convey what all sighted people with two eyes experience all the time.  In particular, he worked on depth in its 4 dimensions, finding tech-facilitated ways to capture and portray the temporal aspect that always arises, because we can often only perceive depth by changing our point of view over an interval of time.   

His extremely well thought-out views on abstraction are important, too: and the accuracy of his eye in this regard was never in doubt.  In terms of mastery, abstraction and output he was the equal of Picasso (possibly also as innovator), though to different effect as he never really sought to go beyond the figurative.  He knew, though, as every good photographer does, that abstraction is at the heart of figurative representation.

ND

Would he, wouldn't he? Yes, "Burnham Would"

Sorry, but the Macbeth idiom is irresistible.  Presumably, after a full week of letting it be understood that any move by Burnham would be stopped dead in its tracks by the NEC, the Mcsweeney coven was hoping that he is

... not without ambition, but without / The illness should attend it

But no: whichever witches our Andy encountered on Newton Heath knew their man better: 

When you durst do it, then you were a man

The Mcsweeney bluff was in truth a really easy one to call.  So they block Burnham tomorrow: what chance then, for whatever hapless stooge Labour puts up in the by-election?  "I know you all really wanted Andy ... but I'm hoping you'll support me now ..."  A great rallying cry indeed, with only the thin chance of a haphazard but possibly lucky 3-way split to save Gorton & Denton for Labour.  

Shakespeare again: let's imagine Mcsweeney's day-dream.  The scene is some darkened Labour office in Manchester: Mcsweeney has Burnham marched in, sits him down, offers him a cup of instant coffee and says

Yeah, right, in his dreams.  For, (at dearieme's suggestion BTL) Burnham replies:

                      That's all you've got?  Thou knave, thou dunce inane

                      Starmer will rue the day he gave you rein! 

Great spectator sport.  Amusing, too, to see Miliband's response for the cameras yesterday, impishly saying Burnham would be "a massive asset" in Parliament and that he hoped Gorton and Denton party members would have "the option" of selecting him as a candidate.   He also hopes, of course, that Burnham would make him Chancellor.

More popcorn!

ND

© Nick Drew 2026

Mayor Burnham! - may I deign to call you Andy?

We all do have the high'st regard for you 

Trump charts new extremes of human nature

At the weekend I read this short piece, entitled:

"Our Impossibly Small-souled President"

The author, one Jeffrey Blehar, is no great artist or philosopher - but his coinage, small-souled trashiness, is on point.  And mention of 'small-souledness' inevitably brings to mind the classic descriptive accounts of the Great-Souled Man, starting with the ancient Greeks - Homer, Plato, Aristotle - amplified by Shakespeare, Goethe (to an extent) and of course Nietzsche.  Let's keep the citations to a minimum and satisfy ourselves with extracts from Aristotle's canonical account: 

The great-souled man is fond of conferring benefits, but ashamed to receive them ... He returns a service done to him with interest ... It is also characteristic of great-souled men never to ask help from others, or only with great reluctance, but to render aid willingly; and to be haughty towards men of position or fortune, but courteous towards those of moderate station ... it is vulgar to lord it over humble people ... He must care more for the truth than for what people think ... he does not bear a grudge.

And so on.  It's not difficult to conclude that Trump embodies the exact antithesis of all this, in every dimension: quite an achievement.  Not in terms of great villainy - think Iago, Judas, or the Serpent - but great smallness!  And quite a remarkable state of affairs, that one such as he should be in the position he is.  Age, thou art shamed!  Rome, thou hast lost thy breeds of noble blood!

Of course, in literature the extremes of human nature are frequently documented in poetic depictions of tragedy.  We've no shortage of dramatic events in the flesh - but where is the great art that so often emerges from times of great turmoil?  If tragedy is the classic vehicle for depictions of the great-souled man, what is the medium for portraying his opposite?  Where is our Shakespeare, our Milton?

ND  

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Afterthought: though hardly a man of worldscale literary merit, we must note with dismay the passing of cartoonist Scott Adams, whose perspicacity in identifying Trump as The Man Most Likely To, way back before Trump's selection as Republican candidate first time around, was detailed, shrewd and very impressive.  All of a piece with the astute micro-insights delivered over the years by Dilbert.  Needless to say, the small-souled one managed to make his commentary on Adams' death all about himself.  Of course he did: I rest my case.

Haunting new entry to the canon: Shostakovich Piano 2

For the first time, Shostakovich has entered the Classic FM 'Hall of Fame' top ten with the Piano Concerto no.2, in at number 9 in their chart.  I'm not surprised: the slow movement is truly exceptional.  It's all you'll ever hear played on a populist outlet like Classic FM because the other two movements are (IMHO) eminently forgettable.

When it comes to piano slow movements, starting with Mozart 21 composers have traditionally pulled out all the stops (if that expression isn't inapposite).  The collected body of such pieces makes for the most sublime (and accessible, what's wrong with that?) music on the planet.  Taking piano concertos as a whole - i.e. all three (or, rarely, four) movements - for my money the eternally popular Grieg and Rachmaninov 2 are superior; maybe even the Schumann (which doesn't seem to appeal so much to 'serious' musical types 'because the piano part is so simple').  Obviously, Beethoven 5 has many supporters, along with the Mozart and Tchaik 1.  Old Pa Drew went to his grave (literally) to Brahms 2: in WW2 he'd spent one of his two precious evenings of home leave during a short break  at a concert featuring the same, and his parents didn't even mind, they knew how strong was the draw.  This list goes on, and should really include Rhapsody in Blue, even if not technically a concerto.

As it happens, Shostakovich 2 was the last entrant into my personal full music canon (though I'm still open to more).  I'm not sure how it got overlooked chez Drew for 50 years - perhaps because Pa Drew didn't know it at all until I stumbled across it.  These things have their turn.

The youtube above is of Shostakovich playing it himself.  Slow movement starts at around 6:30 in.  Always good to hear the composer playing his own work** and it's a bit of a revelation: he's pretty brisk and businesslike, almost unsentimental.  Most interpretations wring more pathos out of it - which ain't difficult, and to my mind makes it the more haunting.  It's definitely in my top 5 for haunting. 

Everyone has views on music - so, have at it!

ND  

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** One of my most treasured possessions, inherited of course from Pa Drew, is a 78 of Gershwin playing Rhapsody in Blue: the brain quickly filters out the crackles as the soul becomes entranced 

Bullsh*t Book Blurb Award: the outright winner is ...

I have genuinely never before met hyperbole in this league: someone is really pushing the boundaries here.  My attention was drawn to it when encountering somebody laughing out loud in a bookshop - at the back cover of a document entitled Everyday Hero.  Deep breath, clear the coffee cups ...

• orchestrate soaring lives
• materialize your sovereign genius
• a calibrated blueprint for making true masterwork ... illuminates coming generations
• neuroscience-based techniques to turn hurts of the past into daily heroism
• wisdom to upgrade your aliveness, incubate sublime serenity and dignify the spiritual liberty that creates a beautiful life

... and so on.  The author of this astonishing literary, errr, thing, is one Robin Sharma - "a globally respected humanitarian ... one of the most widely-read writers alive".

Actually, no, he isn't.  I'd ask for my money back, except I didn't buy it.

Got any favourites to share?

ND

Tolstoy on clickbait and Princess Kate

Many years ago, when I was just a guest blog-curator on C@W, during CU's hols I ran a short series: Schopenhauer on blogging.  Yep, nothing changes: and I now find Tolstoy had some views on social media and clickbait too.

... it has now come to pass that as soon as any event, owing to casual circumstances, receives an especially prominent significance, the organs of the press immediately announce this significance.  As soon as the press has brought forward the significance of the event, the public devotes more and more attention to it.  The attention of the public prompts the press to examine the event with greater attention and in greater detail.  The interest of the public further increases, and the organs of the press, competing with one another, satisfy the public demand.  The public is still more interested; the press attributes yet more significance to the event.  [OK, we get the point - Ed]  So that the importance of the event, continually growing like a lump of snow, receives an appreciation utterly inappropriate to its real significance, and this appreciation, often exaggerated to insanity, .... etc etc (1906)

He always was a wordy bugger. 

It's clear enough: since the dawn of the printing press, reactionary forces have lamented whenever the layperson gets a new opportunity to self-publish their nasty little thoughts that depart from whatever wisdom the priesthood of the age seeks to guard.  I have a suspicion a well-read classical scholar could find something from Cicero or Aristotle along the same lines.   Reading?  We can't have the peasants doing that.  Bible in the vernacular?  No no no!

That's technology for you.  And the human spirit, etc.

ND

Happy Easter: some music

Over at Sacker's blog, there's an interesting Good Friday post from 'JD': a religious procession in the Spanish town of Avilés, taking place to a somewhat syncopated drumbeat.  Somewhat disconcerting, too - take a look for yourself - in all that Inquisition garb, making the drumbeat even more sinister.  At least to Protestants like me.

It put me immediately in mind of another procession I've personally witnessed - in the oddly similarly-named Ávila‎, another Spanish town: in fact, a splendid walled city.  Their procession is in honour of St Teresa.  And the thing is, they also process to syncopated drumbeat - though not identical with the one in Sackers' post.  And no pointy hats, either.  Sadly, I haven't quickly been able to find it on youtube.

I wonder if all Spanish religious processions jive in the same manner - perhaps one of our readers knows?

Anyhow, here's some more fine Easter music - Wagner's Karfreitagszauber from Parsifal.  Not a Catholic, Wagner.

ND

PS: the other vid from JD's post - from Pergolesi's Stabat Mater - is worth listening to, as well.  Wiki mentions that Bach picked up on it: and to my ear, there's something there that Mozart must have picked up on too, for his mighty Requiem.

Hockney at the Lightroom: outright genius

Rather late in in the day I have at last visited the extraordinary, innovative Hockney display in the Lightroom (London).

Hockney is an outright genius, on a par with Picasso, and more industrious (yes!), constructive and philosophical to boot.  Nobody has thought harder, and experimented harder, with the art of the visual space and indeed the visual space itself than he, deploying remarkable insight & vision (in every sense) alongside technology, the latter brilliantly displayed here - to vastly greater effect than his RA show a few years ago, or a couple of TV programmes of around the same time.

Sorry not to have been in a position to recommend it sooner; because it only runs until 3 Dec, and tickets for some slots are sold out.  So time is dreadfully short.  Still, if you can ...

ND

Only Psychopaths Need Apply ...

Here's a really telling piece of pop psycho-philosophy for our times. 

Who could she possibly mean?

It's Veronika Stepanova, a Russian online "psychologist" with a big youtube following, declaring that only a psychopath/sociopath (- ideally, a high-functioning one with a good IQ, natch -) is fitted to be a President.  Unfortunately I haven't got the direct link but you can view the relevant extract in this tweet.

In summary:  to be a good President, it takes someone with a pathological drive for power who can follow the necessary path of listening only to himself, and not the law, without conscience or guilt.  It's hardly a novel thesis: indeed, it's Nietzsche 1.01, The Will To Power, albeit expressed more artistically there.  Only such a man can become a Beethoven, a Caesar, a Napoleon who were certainly all complete shits.  Nietzsche included Goethe but I'm not sure that's as clear an example.  You can add your own favourites to the rollcall: many people put both Gordon Brown and Boris Johnson on the list, which (if that's right) goes to show it's a necessary characteristic but not a sufficient one.

(Ironically, it was of course Stepanova's compatriot Dostoevsky who gave us a compelling of the "maybe necessary, but not sufficient" aspect, in Crime and Punishment.)

It's also a view commonly held by many of our BTLers, who often include the sentiment that it's why they despise all politicians.  OK: but that still leaves a couple of key points to consider:

• It ain't just politicians, is it?  It's great artists (per Nietzsche: consider Monet for example, another self-focused shit); business innovators (libel is libel and I'm sure we all have our nominees); scientists ... and so it goes on.
• So - despise them or not: do we, actually, need them nonetheless?  Nietzsche, of course, didn't care about what "we" need, it was all art-for-art's-sake with him.  But George Bernard Shaw certainly thought we needed them: the hungry man had best follow the fat man, because fattie knows where the food is.

We are stuck with them!  Lamentably, there are those who merely think they are Napoleons - Raskolnikov, Johnson - and we are stuck with them, too.

ND

Dominic Cummings: The Silly Season

Sorry about the lack of posting: in my case, two deals to close before 31 July.  And hols soon!  

Anyhow, in the meantime one of our regular anons offered us this BTL yesterday, on the subject of Dom  - Dom Cummings, that is!

"Dom is a tragic case, very bright and driven guy, could have been a real asset to the UK, who gets shafted (like pretty much everyone who works long enough alongside Boris, he's not special), takes it personally and proceeds to make himself unemployable by not just spilling beans but pouring them on the floor and rolling round in them naked. Even I'd think twice about employing him. Real waste of talent. 'Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide' "

(We like the cultured stuff so thanks for that, anon.)

So: by way of a silly-season potboiler  -   would DC have survived at all in former ages, or suffered the fate of Savaranola?  Have his revelations already been priced into Boris' reputation?  Does he have anything more to offer, or is he beyond polite society's pale, a broken reed?   Discuss!

But do remember - the laws of libel apply online ...

ND

Nietzsche on Woke Identity Politics

We've had cause to mention Nietzsche over the weekend.  He is not to everyone's taste:  content-wise; stylistically; difficulty (or all three).  Nevertherless his insight into humanity is the most consistently penetrating I know, along with other tremendous contributions to philosophy, psychology and even wider still.  

And nothing changes.  This is from his famous Also Sprach Zarathustra (1884) - widely viewed as the most poetic expression of his thought, and extraordinarily influential in 20th century European literature, but (frankly) no easier read than his more conventional expositions.  Nevertheless, some passages need no contextual explanation for their force and astuteness to jump out at us.  His coinage for the woke warriors and 'intersectionalists' of his time is the tarantulas.  He wouldn't have been surprised by Edinburgh University's treatment of David Hume ...

   

"That the world may become full of the storms of our revenge, let precisely that be what we call justice"  -  thus the tarantulas speak to each other.   "We will wreak vengeance and abuse on all those who are not as we are"  -  thus the tarantula-hearts promise themselves.   "And 'will to equality'  -  that shall henceforth be the name of virtue; and we shall raise outcry against everything that currently has power!" 

You preachers of equality  -  from you the tyrannical madness of impotence cries out for "equality":  thus your secret desire to be tyrants disguises itself in words of virtue.

 

Nothing changes.

ND

 

Light, Mirror ... Camera, Action: Wolf Hall 3

Having praised Wolf Hall to the skies here - for its writing, its takes on court politics and fake news, its take-down of Bolt's Thomas More - now, after an impatient decade, I've devoured all 800+ pages of Book 3, The Mirror and the Light.  In truth, Mantel was by any standards an unconscionable time completing the trilogy; but it could fairly be argued she used the time well because there's evidence of a lot more research having been done (if not, errr, nine years worth) and I could just about say it was worth the wait.  

We always knew how it would end, of course; and in various learned articles (and interviews with Mantel herself) we'd been given hints as to how she was going to settle her account.  The very precise beginning and end of the story-arc (so now get up!) had already been explained by her; and the suggestion had been made that Henry VIII would end up treating Cromwell and everyone else essentially the same as he treated his wives.  I'm not sure that latter interpretation / prediction got it right: the dynamic of who's up and who's down in no-holds-barred court politics is unsavoury, but probably quite enough to account for our hero's temporary, but in the circumstances fatal, fall from favour.  But Mantel's fabulous extended illustration is taken full-cycle, of how poor a grasp we have on "facts", publicly and privately - even for a man with a memory and a grip on reality as strong as Comwell's.

Wolf Hall has set me back to Foxe's Protestant Martyrs, clearly one of Mantel's main sources.  What an amazing text that is: and what a bastard Stephen Gardiner was.  Mantel agrees.  Or perhaps we now need an author to do for him, contra Mantel, what she's done for Cromwell contra Bolt.

All the book prizes Christendom has to offer surely cannot be far behind.  Oh, and the TV version: bring it on (up)!

ND

Book review: This Is NOT Propaganda / Peter Pomerantsev

This odd book addresses one of the key sources of political angst today: fake news / post-truth / soft facts, “the war against reality” etc etc, by someone who’s apparently an expert, Peter Pomerantsev. He’s required reading in the Foreign Office, I’m told.

I say he addresses the issue, but that’s not quite right: he tees it up. He gives detailed accounts of troll factories in Russia (where, we’re told, it all started), and chilling examples of professional and often deeply malicious fake-news merchants at work across the globe; in the Philippines, Bahrain, Turkey, Venezuela, Serbia, Mexico, Estonia, Ukraine (a particularly long section of the book - “The Most Amazing Information Warfare Blitzkrieg In History”), ISIS recruiting, Aleppo and the “White Helmets” … oh, and of course Cambridge Analytica and another rollcall of countries where they’ve been active. (Just a leetle bit on the USA and UK, and likewise a very small amount on China – which seems like a bit of a cop-out. Still, we ain’t seen nothing like the Philippines or Ukraine, that’s for sure.)

This, he says, is the future: and “the future arrived first in Russia”, for reasons he expounds. His parents, incidentally, were Russian dissidents who suffered for their devotion to the truth (the absolute truth?) before being deported / allowed to leave. (See, we never quite know what’s what, do we … and then his father started working for the BBC World Service, during the Cold War era …)  But basically, he’s trying to warn, to horrify, to shock-and-awe us:  "part memoir, part investigation, part cry for help", says the Grauniad.  He’s apparently much in demand all over the world for his talks on these topics.

It’s all very odd because some of the practitioners of these dark arts, he seems to approve of! – or at least, the causes they are promoting. Fighting fire with fire?  Does he have any remedies? There’s a chapter near the end called “Conclusions and Recommendations” but that turns out to be fake, too – he doesn’t have any. Which is pretty unusual for a published book: publishers tend to insist on more than just a litany of woes.

This, then, is a book for anyone who doesn’t feel sufficiently perturbed by what’s going on. Personally I feel it’s a huge worry, not least for people like myself who have a high, conservative regard for absolute, objective truth (“Realism” in philosophical parlance), whilst recognizing the importance of differing perspectives.  I take that to be, broadly, a Right-leaning position. Funnily enough, though, my reading of the many angst-ridden post-election leftist tracts around at the moment suggests many on the Left feel the horror even more acutely - which, up to a point, does them credit.  Maybe they’d be less concerned if they’d won the election?  Perhaps fake news is a convenient excuse for any political failure these days. And perhaps the Left is even more prone to fret because of their self-defined “rationality” (vs conservative / nationalist emotionalism) and their confidence that, logic being on their side, it can only be disinformation etc that deprives them of electoral success.   Plus the usual leftist willingness to believe any evil of their opponents.

Or maybe it’s all just fine provided that our fake-news peddlers prevail against theirs.  As indicated above, there is a hint that Pomerantsev sometimes feels that way.

Three more disparate thoughts:

1. It’s a shockingly badly written book – a real pain to read, but the content was sufficiently riveting to drag me through. Nothing, incidentally, to do with English not being his native language, because it is. It’s stylistic. Aren’t there editors? 

2. While 21st century methods (particularly the near-universal social meejah) are revolutionary, the underlying truth-dodging, fact-swerving techniques are not. Proselytistng religions deploy them all the time, and always have - as Pomerantsev's chapter on ISIS and counter-ISIS makes clear.  Nietzsche tells us that, although the Will to Truth may be strong (as scientists would profess), the Will to Power is stronger. 

3. If you want something beautifully written that explores the same subject matter, Hilary Mantel is your woman. Although we’ve only had parts 1 and 2 of Wolf Hall, one of the key themes (as I read it) is how facts and events become distorted in the public register, often as soon as they have happened: some kind of spin – purposeful or otherwise – takes hold straight away. (There’s a lovely example, insignificant in terms of the formal plot and therefore significant for its being in the story, of something Cromwell does on his travels. By the time he returns home, just a day or so later, he finds a distorted version of what transpired is already current within his household.) 

When is Mantel going to give us Volume 3?  She’s been hatching it for an unconscionable amount of time!  Quite soon, apparently: and then we can get back to considering these troubling issues in a calm and literate fashion.  Unless we're lefties, of course, or living in Ukraine.

ND

UPDATE:  further to the blame-it-on-fake-news theme, there's this out today:

Almost a quarter of Labour members – 23% – appear to hold what they see as an inherently biased media (both print and broadcast) most responsible for the party’s defeat – or as one put it: “Tory funded MSM lies and misleading articles and campaigns along with daily lies and propaganda on Tory owned main TV channels starting with the BBC!”.

C@W's Xmas Outing to the Opera!

It’s been a few years since we all went to the opera at Christmas, but here we are again, at a rousing performance of the tragi-comic Madame Butterfingers, or How Theresa Dropped The Ball. 

You’ll want a reminder of the plot …

*  *  *  *  *  *

We see Philip May entering the flat in Downing Street and finding nobody at home.  He breaks into the doleful Ou va la jeune indoue? (where has Her Indoors gone this time?)   A civil servant enters, saying the PM is needed urgently – the owners of a Sunderland car factory are demanding a subsidy to keep it open after Brexit.  “We can’t expect the Japs to be asleep at the wheel”, he sings (Nissan Dorma).  May ruefully remarks that his wife is forever jetting off to pester other European leaders, and the man acknowledges: La donna é mobile (she certainly gets about a bit).

The scene changes to the Élysée Palace, where Ollie Robbins and a nervous-looking PM are being kept waiting.  Che gelida manina, she intones (you get a cold handshake here). In comes a stony-faced Macron.  She begs for changes to the Deal: a limit on the backstop, and more generous trade terms. If not, she wails, Eccomi in lieta vesta (the economy will go up in flames).

Macron gives her a stern lecture: the UK’s actions are damaging to everyone, he says, and renders the chilling baritone aria Connais-tu le pays? (and you know who’s going to pay).  Flushed with anger, she tells him he should be more respectful of another head of government; but he continues his rebuff with the refrain Regnava nel silenzio (shut it - you’re not the Queen) and the first Act ends with her tottering off, ashen-faced.

Act 2 begins with a comic interlude: the scene is a sordid mittel-european hostelry. A dishevelled Jean Claude Juncker sways towards the bar singing Mimì's sì, mi chiantamo mimì (mine’s a chianti, yes chianti for me!)   The bartender demurs but Juncker redoubles the volume with the tenor refrain Largo al factotum (- and make it a large one!)  

He grabs a bottle and staggers out into the street, where Boris Johnson is holding court to a gaggle of reporters.  He is keen to get publicity for his private mission to negotiate better terms: Questa e la Cameriera (where is the camera?), he demands.  Juncker lurches over and tells him there can be no further negotiation but Boris brandishes a folder containing pictures of the drunken eurocrat in compromising positions with various young ladies; and challenges him forcefully with Neghittosi or voi che fate (negotiate, or accept your fate).  Juncker is aghast, and turns aside singing Bimba pieni di malia (those slappers can do me plenty of harm).

Act 3 finds us in the heart of Brussels.   Robbins is ensconced conspiratorially with Selmayr, the Beast of Berlaymont, who mockingly renders Votre toast, je peux vous le render (you're toast, and I'm the one to do it to you).  Keeping his cool, Robbins declares he can reverse Brexit if the transition period can be extended until after the next general election, and if Selmayr promises to make him a commissioner after that.  The Beast is having none of it: Zwei Jahre sind dahin, Dulde (two years is all you get, dude!)  

Then May enters. Selmayr leaps up and takes her to one side, gesturing back at Robbins, who turns to the audience and sings Ah! Fuggi il traditor (oh fiddlesticks - he’s betrayed me!)  It seems he is right, because May rounds on him with the high-register soprano solo, Gott, der du schauest! (God, Robbins – you shyster!)  

She retreats, a broken woman, to the corner of the stage, as the rest of the cast gather in the centre; an unholy sextet of Philip, Boris, Juncker propped up by Selmayr, Robbins and the junior civil servant. They sing a complex 6-part harmony, ending with the simple, repeated chorus: Donna non vidi Mai – never has the world seen a woman quite like May!

Merry Christmas to one and all!
 

Imperium, Cicero and the Rule of Law

Some view Cicero, lawyer and statesman, as the first authentic voice of western civilisation; and he left quite enough writings and transcripts for us to form an opinion.  Robert Harris, that great student of flamboyant power-playing individuals across the ages (Caesar, Stalin, Blair ...), eventually completed his great Ciceronian trilogy a couple of years ago, and it has relatively quickly been brought to the stage.  I'm reviewing it now at BQ's recent suggestion, having just yesterday seen the second helping of the two-part, seven hour epic which is based on two-and-a-bit of the three books.  (A bit late, I know, because it comes to the end of its London run early next month.)

RSC

Two-and-a-bit?  Well, the first volume, Imperium, gets just a five-minute summary by way of a flashback in Part 1.  The play starts, as does the second novel Lustrum, just before Cicero's accession to the consulate.  Even with seven hours available, compression is inevitable; indeed significant chunks (the downfalls of Clodius, Pompey and Crassus) of Dictator, the third volume, get summarised in a brief narrative passage.  This still leaves no shortage of epic material with which to develop three main themes: the equivocal character of Cicero, decidedly slippery for a man of integrity; the Rule of Law - his ostensible passion, though he plays fast and loose when he needs to;  and that what endures is what gets written down.

As with the film of 2001: A Space Odyssey, another broad and epic story rendered down impressionistically for the viewing audience, I'm wondering what anyone would make of it if they haven't read the books beforehand.  However, there is one aspect over which there isn't much doubt about how the audience takes things, because frequent outbreaks of laughter give it clean away.  As with many (most?) writers, Harris of course very deliberately selects and treats his subject matter in order to comment, inter alia, on our own times; and it is striking how often the audience immediately sees present-day connections - in particular, with Brexit.  In part, the stage production has annoyingly tweaked the original for this effect - a slightly modified phrase here, a wink at the audience there - but the assassination of Caesar is one example where no such deliberate pitching is required.  As in the novel, Cicero berates the conspirators for having set out on a fateful course of action with no serious thought as to what happens next, and the audience recognises an allusion immediately.  Given that the book easily predates the referendum, we may safely credit Harris with doing what he obviously intended: showing that the lessons of history are timeless.

(Another episode where the audience feel they recognise a deliberate allusion is when Pompey first struts bombastically onto the stage, complete with prominent Trumpian quiff and tan.  But that is exactly how he is described in the book, and indeed as he was played by Kenneth Cranham in the BBC/HBO Rome back in 2005 - again, greatly predating the presidential rise of the Donald.)

If I have any other complaints against the production, the biggie is how the books' narrator Tiro, Cicero's brilliant amenuensis, is played for laughs - rather like the Common Man in A Man For All Seasons (stage version, not the film).  That doesn't do him justice.  And Harris does a lot better with the characters of Mark Anthony and his wife Fulvia than does the stage play.

But these gripes are to be set alongside the bravura spectacle and excellent set-pieces, particularly at the end.  The seven hours went a lot quicker than some turgid offerings that are two-thirds shorter.  I was left with one abiding impression, and it very much centres on the Rule of Law which Cicero pontificated upon so frequently.  

Rule of law was clearly a major article of public faith in Cicero's time.  It was in Tudor times too - another era of life-and-death personality politics** - even Henry VIII had to suffer abject humiliation in the courts when he wanted to divorce Anne of Cleves.  We like to think we can rely upon it today.  How - in the teeth of ferocious and unscrupulous politicians - is to be upheld?  Is it proof against the excesses of a Trump in the USA, or a Selmayr in the EU?  Will it be proof against Corbyn/McDonnell?  We may be fascinated by watching the fall of the Roman Republic or the House of York: but we may not feel so comfortable living in such times ourselves.

ND

Postscript:  after the performance, who should hurl himself panting onto our No.38 bus from the theatre but the actor Richard McCabe - Cicero himself, featuring in almost every single scene across the two plays.  (A tour de force - has anyone ever learned more lines?)  I can report he is a most personable chap!  Oh - and he could play Alex Salmond to complete and utter perfection (he's even a Scot): an idea for someone there ...

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** Something else.  When re-reading the Harris books, I was very struck by how similar is the tenor of the Wolf Hall would-be trilogy:  a clever, diligent, ambitious lawyer of non-aristocratic origins, with a hand-picked, tight-knit and hardworking team around him, makes massive strides in public life during lethally tumultous times - and comes to a sticky end. And Wolf Hall has also been staged by the same playwright who brings us Imperium.  Note: Harris got there first.  Oh - and Harris actually completed that final volume ... get on with it, Hilary Mantel!

Marx @ 200: Concluded

So now for an assessment of anything we can salvage from Marx**.

Firstly, he is clearly right that capitalists often seek to establish monopolies.  Maybe all capitalists dream of cornering their markets.  But this is hardly unique to capitalism.  Monarchs since time immemorial have either maintained for themselves, or sold to others, monopolies on all manner of goods, generally with serious profit in mind.  Any intelligent ‘capitalist’ government - and indeed intelligent business people themselves – know this and, for the long-term good of the system, resist it.  (On a personal note I have spent a large part of my commercial career fighting monopolies in the energy sector, and the constant threat of their re-emergence.)  We may agree that, on a cyclical basis perhaps, there are periods in the history of the last 200 years when some pretty baleful monopolies have taken root – often in newly-hatched industries when governments and regulators were not on their guard (e.g petroleum in the Rockefeller era; and various aspects of IT more recently).   But it’s a big stretch to say that capitalism (or any other system harbouring greedy people) moves inevitably towards its own destruction because of this ‘tendency’.

Secondly, Marx’s colourful account of how the Revolution comes about has an exciting narrative flow, with some obvious points of contact with the here-and-now.  With some fairly extreme (though hardly unprecedented) concentrations of wealth forming after a period of relative egalitarianism, and plenty of dramatic developments in automation to be cited, several of the revolutionary preconditions Marx listed could be seen as starting to stack up.  Given the seriousness of what's at stake - and with John McDonnell waiting in the wings, Heaven help us - it behoves us to do a bit more than dismiss it all outright.

But, frankly, Marx's 'decline and fall' prediction has the ring to it of one of the more grandiose science-fiction plots set in a galaxy some little distance away.  One can certainly see some localized issues that may be described under the headings of his preconditions for Revolution – particularly in ‘the west’; and, yes, there’s political turmoil aplenty.  But there have been several even more scary periods of political crisis in the past 150 years.  Technology and automation have been steadily marching forward for centuries, without any manifest self-destructive end-game in sight.  ("Drones predicted to give British economy a £42bn lift by 2030" - from today's Grauniad!)  And – gigantic surpluses?  Wholesale unemployment among the 99%?  Worsening immiseration on a global scale?  Elevate your gaze from parochial worries, you western lefties: a large part of the globe is getting steadily better off!

We are no more compelled to accept Marx’s prediction for how all this ‘inevitably’ plays out, than we are to buy Plato’s account of how “tyranny naturally arises from democracy”.  We can, in the spirit of heeding the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, find the respective accounts salutary, and hopefully recognize the potential dangers being described - so as to avoid them by adroit political actions.  But there is no obvious reason to accept any of Marx’s forecasts as being preordained.  (Quite the reverse: the history of capitalism has been one of endless surprises, mutations and adaptability, to the dismay of embittered lefties. As the more-or-less-marxist American philosopher Brian Leiter acknowledges: “Marx misjudged the smarts of the capitalist class”.  It’s worth noting also that marxists’ belief that history is on their side can be a major psychological weakness, since it gives them an excuse for taking their feet off the pedal just when they may be in danger of nosing ahead.  I have long thought that one of the reasons the Soviets didn’t come across the IGB at their point of maximum pre-Reagan military advantage – pace Mr BQ - was that the risk seemed altogether disproportionate when they ‘knew’ it would all come their way eventually in any case.)

Finally, and for me the most interesting, we come to Marx’s thesis that wage-slaves can be (and maybe mostly are) fundamentally deluded about what’s really going on as regards both their own exploitation and their best economic and human interests.  In this, he is adding to a characteristically C19th strand of new(ish) thinking emanating most notably from Nietzsche, Marx himself and Freud.  These Germanic gentlemen all surmised that in important ways we have reasons to be systematically suspicious about what people say – and indeed what they actually believe - about themselves and their own feelings, drivers, reasons, motives etc.  Each thinker has a different angle, and they are all well worth considering.  Freud emphasizes the importance of ‘suppressed’ sexual drives and childhood experiences.  Nietzsche is difficult to summarise but, in just a few words, reckons that what we might term the articulated conscious is, for complex reasons he discusses at great length, a systematically warped version of what is ‘really going on inside’.

And Marx, of course, thinks that the ‘false’ consciousness of the proletariat has been systematically moulded to suit the economic and survival interests of a manipulative capitalist class, aimed in particular towards a compliant quietism amongst the workers in the face of their own growing misery.  (Personally, I suggest that underpinning all of these three accounts in their Victorian context is the work of Darwin, establishing the idea of blind, unconscious processes affecting the fates of organisms and species, ‘whatever they think is happening’.  Marx explicitly acknowledged Darwin’s contribution to his own thinking: his work “is most important and suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle”.)

Darwin aside, though, just how new is Marx’s economic determinism as it impacts subliminally on individuals and classes?  There are clear pre-echoes in Adam Smith (another authority recognized by Marx), for example when he writes that “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest” – however much the butcher may protest to his customers, or indeed to himself, of a higher purpose (or “mission”, as so many companies these days fatuously term their commercial motivation) behind his business endeavours. 

We can accept Marx’s far-ranging social-psychological insight on these matters at face value, without imagining he has come up with the most profound, innovative or definitive contribution on the subject.  It isn't the preserve of lefties to be caustic about Rupert Murdoch, or the BBC, or any other agency seeking to throw a warm suffocating blanket over honest efforts to see the truth prevail, whether those efforts be directed towards economic relationships or anything else an ‘establishment’ would choose to deflect attention from.

So: an interesting thinker, is old Karl - but the aspects of his voluminous output that survive critical review are not particularly, ahem, revolutionary.  Nor does his fame rest upon those; but rather, on the overblown 'scientific' political predictions he makes that are such tosh, so gratifying and stimulating for all manner of bitter social malcontents, and that have made him a quasi-religous cult figure. 

We may yet, however, have to suffer once more from his baleful cult.   

ND 

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**If it seems a bit rich to summarise in a few paragraphs the work of a man that some spend their whole lives studying - then take a look at Don Cox's comment on yesterday's thread ...

Weekend Essay: Marx @ 200

May 2018 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx.   Not so many years ago, just about the only mention you’d find of the man was in Marxism Today edited for decades by Martin Jacques. Nowadays of course Marx has a serious revival, nay, a positive vogue.   Lefties from John McDonnell, Paul Mason, Little Owen Jones, all the way to Brian Leiter and Chris Dillow – are pleased to associate themselves to a greater or lesser extent with the bearded one. 

So – given C@W’s declared interest in Kapital, what do we think?  Marx 1.01 starts nicely with his opening paean to capitalism.   “What did the capitalists ever do for us?”  He had a fulsome answer for that and credited capitalism with relieving the western world from the horrors of the peasant way of life.  Plus a whole lot more achievements and public goods besides – science, technology, enlightenment, the lot. 

From this perceptive and auspicious start, he headed off in two directions: some absolute dead-ends, and some useful insights. It’s not hard to be dismissive of several of his most famous themes: the ‘labour theory of value’; his historical determinism and belief in ‘dialectical materialism’ as a science (taken from Hegel, always a risky move); and of course his view on the timing of the Revolution - like early Christians and the Second Coming, he saw it as being pretty imminent. (This latter error indicates in turn that he was not at all capable of good judgement regarding the implications and outworkings of his own theories: he should have recognised that the pre-conditions he laid down were nowhere near being met in C19th.) 

For all his overblown theorizing and system-building, there is no merit in throwing the insights out with the turgid bathwater. I would highlight two, before getting back to the good old Revolution again.  

The first is a matter of social psychology.  Marx identified the phenomenon whereby capitalism’s wage-slaves fundamentally fail to recognize what’s really going on as regards both their own exploitation and their best interests.  There could be a lot of factors at work here but the main interest for Marx is how the ruling class reinforces its own interests by instituting a popular culture to mislead the workers systematically, and neutralize discontent.  “Religion is the opiate of the people” is perhaps the simplest way of summarizing a diagnosis that extends more broadly than religion, of course.  Another important coinage is “false consciousness” which bears reading up on, and to which we will return.  And, bridging the first and second insights, he also describes the “alienation” of the worker from his true humanity and potential.  

The second interesting strand of observation, then, is a view on how capitalism evolves in terms of a cluster of market dynamics. Capitalism tends to foster monopolies and concentrations of ownership.  At the same time, it leads to ever greater technological advances, not least in the means of production and, importantly, automation; so that it is capable of generating the most extraordinary surpluses of goods with an ever smaller workforce.  But the flipside of this impressive coin is that the 99% become ever more alienated, immiserated and – perhaps most problematically for the 1% - impoverished, so that ultimately there is no-one left to sell all that superabundant stuff to.  Capitalism sows the seeds of its own downfall.

So where does Marx think this all ends – and how?  Well, Revolution of course: but the precise answer is quite important.  Recall that, thanks to religion, false consciousness etc, the workers don’t actually have a good grasp of what’s really going on.  Nevertheless, driven by their increasing misery, they eventually intuit - I think we are invited to see this in a Darwinian kind of way as a broadly unconscious evolutionary process - that (i) the 1%-99% split of ownership is so extreme, and (ii) the surplus of productive capacity and stuff is so great, that (iii) any change whatsoever in the socio-political set-up must leave them better off than they are at that point in time.  With the added rider that Marx anticipated this would happen globally all at the same time, this folks is the Revolution. 

The final Marxist kicker is that all this is absolutely inevitable under his supposed ‘science’ of the direction of human history.  It’s not difficult to see how attractive this is to a certain kind of Murdoch-despising malcontent, and how easily it translates into an ideology for a bitter, revanchist political programme. 

Tomorrow, assuming the Revolution isn't set for the Bank Holiday, I’ll come back with some thoughts towards putting all this heady stuff into context, and offer my own humble evaluation.  In the meantime, with the caveat that Blogger has changed some of its functions post GDPR - Comments is open …

ND

Blast from the Past: Pete & Dud - Glidd of Glood

The Capitalists are rather busy just now, so here's a pot-boiler for y'all.  One of the all-time classics from Pete 'n' Dud.  Many of you chaps will be too young to have seen this first time around - or maybe ever!

(And it's SFW ...)

ND

Weekend Review: Chess (the musical)

One of my most treasured possessions is an old 78 of Rhapsody in Blue, Paul Whiteman's orchestra with Gershwin lui-même at the keyboard**.  Even through the crackles, we can tell how it's supposed to be played!   Which means there is always scope for instant disappointment when hearing a new performance, however open one tries to be to new interpretations. 

Mrs D and I went to see the revival of Chess this week with much the same trepidations, having been enthralled first time around.   Like Bruckner symphonies, Chess is very rarely staged because technically it is fantastically difficult, and a lot of effort has gone into this new ENO / Michael Grade production.   Matters were not helped by the late withdrawal of Murray Head, part of the original 1980's crew - for 'personal reasons'; thirty years on, perhaps he can't manage the songs any more, which wouldn't be a big surprise.  His replacement did OK, but hadn't had time to learn all the words, which doesn't help in songs as well-known as One Night in Bangkok and Pity The Child, with words that are so good and surely so, errrr, memorable!   One assumes this will be corrected night by night.

Chess is in a category with West Side Story and Oliver! - quite outstanding musicals by writers who just never delivered again (for different reasons in each case:  retirement in the case of Chess; hubris with Bernstein, and drugs'n'booze with Bart).  The score is by Benny and Björn who were at the absolute peak of their powers, just before they called it a day: several of the songs are as good as (I would say better than) anything they had come up with in ABBA.  And the lyrics are by Tim Rice, also on top form and by then newly-separated from Lloyd Webber.  Again, for my money, he was well shot of ALW who struggled to achieve one song per show that could bear comparison with at least half a dozen from Chess.  And while it's fair to say the result includes a number of pastiche set-pieces emulating Gilbert & Sullivan, Rogers & Hammerstein and Sondheim (they wipe the floor with him), also included are straight-down-the-line masterworks.  

ALW is supposed to be the classically-trained one; but there is more effective classical technique here than anything he ever managed: counterpoint, polyphony, and in Pity The Child, the best modulation you'll ever hear in the rock-pop genre.  (Paul McCartney was pretty good at it, but how much he owed to George Martin I'm not sure.  The BeeGees were exceptionally good but they threw it off for fun [Chain Reaction].  Pity The Child uses it for awesome emotional effect.)  And the outright orchestral pieces are as good as any film music ever written.

So how does the revival do?  The critics have been fairly harsh, but if you read them carefully they are really saying they don't like the musical itself, or the SFX.  The Murray-Head replacement can be forgiven for his slips, but the ENO Chorus cannot and their evident lack of rehearsal was a bit of a shocker.  But the set-piece songs were mostly done very well.  Michael Ball is a helluva pro.  We give it 8/10 and considered it an evening well-spent.  In a week or two it may be even better.

ND

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** You can check Gershwin out too for yourself on youtube