Martin Westlake

The importance of lists

Martin — Fri, 10 May 2013 21:55:47 +0000

At a dinner table this evening we were talking about the importance of lists, but in a very specific context. Another guest had, like me, recently become an ‘orphan’ (that is, his sole surviving parent had passed away) and he had had to empty out the house and sort through his parents’ belongings. The value or significance of many of the objects was obvious or easy to establish – furniture, paintings, books. But there were others – photographs with unidentified people, for example – that would forever remain a mystery. I recounted that my sole surviving maternal aunt has started to draw up lists of objects and belongings of significance so as to help her children once she has passed away. Following her example, and with an attic full of objects inherited from my late parents, I have started to do something similar, indicating to my children what they might like to hold onto (and why) and what I felt obliged to hold onto but they can safely chuck away, if they wish. We segued onto objects with unexpected value – first editions of modern literature being a good example. And then the (Belgian) friend beside me told a little story. Her parents were in the habit of renting a summer villa in Le Coq. One summer, when she was eight years old, the villa next door was rented by a certain Georges Prosper Remi, better known as Hergé. Remi was invited to their villa when the family celebrated my friend’s ninth birthday. As a present, he gave her a complete set of Christmas greetings cards, each signed by the artist, and each featuring Tin Tin and Milou (Snowy). A few years later, the friend decided that it would be quite a novelty to send her friends Tin Tin and Milou Christmas cards, and so she sent them all off. Today, that complete, signed set would be worth a lot of money.

Morels

Martin — Fri, 10 May 2013 08:50:42 +0000

The dog was giving us a walk early this morning when, on an earthbank in a sunken lane, we came across the fellows in the picture. At first we weren’t sure, but a quick check on the internet told us we had stumbled on a late growth of morels. There were lots of them, into the bargain (and they made a delicious dish, braised with shallots and white wine). We got to playing the Noma game, which is to say what else could we find by foraging around to provide a complete meal? We had soon rustled up a hearty dinner as follows: nettle soup for starters (plenty of nettles about at the moment); morels for the main dish, accompanied by wild carrots and a dandelion leaf and wild sorrel salad, with wild strawberries for dessert, and all washed down with a dandelion and burdock cordial. I suppose the point is that we get brainwashed into believing that we can only obtain food by handing over money and receiving something wrapped up in return. We stumbled across the morels by chance (and, by-the-way, they would have been worth a tidy sum if we had sold them) but we will be more alert to the possibilities around us from now on. Indeed, it would probably do us all good to forage a little more and to shop a little less.

Hares today…

Martin — Sun, 05 May 2013 08:20:25 +0000

The hares out at Berthem have provided us with much amusement this spring. A group of three of them are pretty much inseparable (they seem to have got the boxing out of the way now) and we see the three companions every time we take this particular path. Sometimes, they come very close. One of the hares once pelted around a path and skidded to a halt a few feet away from me on a lane before making his getaway. I suspect that they recognise our dog, who is now quite an old gentleman. (He made what I would describe as a symbolic run after one of the three today.) Soon, the crops in the fields will have grown too high for the dog (and us) to see them anymore. In the meantime, though, they seem to plot surprises and ambushes, bursting out in front of the dog and then bounding away in separate directions, leaving him uncertain as to which he should follow. Johnny Morris, or his modern day equivalent, would have a field day putting voices to their antics.

The Great Degeneration

Martin — Sat, 04 May 2013 18:43:07 +0000

This evening I read Niall Ferguson’s collection of 2012 Reith Lectures, published under the title The Great Degeneration How Institutions Decay and Economies Die. By coincidence, Ferguson is in the news for all the wrong reasons at the moment. Present embarrassments not withstanding, I once heard him at Harvard, where he is Laurence A Tisch Professor of History, and found his analyses authoritatively incisive and lucid (his previous published works speak for themselves). When I saw a review of this book, I thought ‘what a great title and fascinating sub-title!’ The blurb is great as well. Symptoms of the West’s decline, long prophesied, are all about us, but what exactly is wrong? Ferguson argues that the four pillars of West European and North American societies – representative government, the free market, the rule of law and civil society – are deteriorating. We have broken our unwritten pact with future generations, burdening them with debt. We over-regulate our markets. ‘The rule of law has metamorphosed into the rule of lawyers.’ And ‘civil society has degenerated into uncivil society.’ (It was this last observation that brought me to the book.) In fact, this book might almost have better been entitled The Great Disappointment. There are some interesting arguments, but they frequently seem to lapse into polemics and frequently they are, well, arguable (as for example, when he argues that the social media undermine traditional associative life in our societies). I suspect it was the lecture format and the need to stay accessible to a radio audience that led Ferguson to adopt a more discursive style. For a quick read and some thought-provoking arguments, this book is very good, but I just wished he’d saved that brilliant title for one of his deeper and more academic works. Perhaps it’s in the pipeline?

Open Doors Day 2013

Martin — Sat, 04 May 2013 16:16:16 +0000

©EU2013

2013_05_04_Open_Doors_Day_2013" src="http://www.martinwestlake.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Open-Doors-Day-150x150.jpeg" width="150" height="150" />It was Open Doors Day in the European Union’s institutions all day today and once again the European Economic and Social Committee threw its doors open and welcomed European citizens into its Jacques Delors headquarters building – the house of organised civil society. Our new President, Henri Malosse, made a rousing speech to the volunteers – members and officials – before the doors opened at ten o’clock and then they were away! It was a beautiful day and so, understandably, visitor numbers were down compared to last year. On the other hand, the atmosphere was as good, if not better. In addition to our standard favourites – music, the computer quiz, the photo booth, send a postcard and children’s corner – this year the Committee offered a gameshow and zumba sessions. The last was infectious good fun. But there is also a pedagogic side to these occasions and our volunteer members were out in force, accompanying our guests and explaining to them how the Committee ensures that the voice of organised civil society is heard in the EU’s policy processes. All too soon, it seemed, it was six o’clock and the day was over. As we volunteers gathered for a celebratory glass afterwards, in the company of our new Vice-President for Communication, Jane Morrice, we had a satisfying sense of a job well done. It was genuinely a team effort but this post would not be complete without a complimentary mention of the excellent coordination work of our Super Fabi. Well done, everybody!

Là où sont les oiseaux

Martin — Fri, 03 May 2013 21:35:09 +0000

To Louvain-la-Neuve this evening, to the central library, for the vernissage of a friend’s latest book. Birds are never far away from Véronique Wautier’s poetry, and the title of her latest collection, Là où sont les oiseaux, would seem to confirm that tradition. Interestingly, it is a literal translation of an inscription to be found on the gateway at the entrance to a Japanese shintoist shrine. This is, writes Wautier in an introductory text, ‘belle comme un poème, car là où se posent les oiseaux il n’y a plus ni sacré ni profane, juste leur réconciliation.’ As with her previous collection, Le jour aux ignorants, Wautier’s poetry is accompanied by a set of illustrations, this time by Pierre Mainguet. The words and the images marry well. Above all, Wautier has the poets’ gift of producing striking and original imagery out of familiar words in unfamiliar circumstances, and this collection is rich in them. For example; the ‘muzzle of a book’ (la gueule du livre), ‘winter and his fist’ (l’hiver et son poing), ‘dark light’ (la lumière sera noire) and ‘shipwrecked trees’ (des arbres naufragés).

Wiels/Auerbach/Bayrle

Martin — Wed, 01 May 2013 16:43:28 +0000

To Wiels this afternoon to see the work of two artists; the American, Tauba Auerbach, and the German, Thomas Bayrle. The title of the Auerbach exhibition, Tetrachromat, refers to a theory that there may be a small percentage of people – for genetic reasons, only women – who have a fourth type of colour receptor on their retinas. The tetrachromat would have an extra variable modulating red, green and blue wavelengths, and would therefore see distinctions between colours that appear the same to the trichromat. I love the idea, but I found it difficult to see what this possibility had to do with the works on show, which mainly consisted of Auerbach’s fold paintings and weave works. Both involve trompe l’oeil effects, which linked up well with the Escher-like effects of many of Thomas Bayrle’s works on display (huge patterns composed from a multitude of tiny, identical patterns). Bayrle was born in 1937 and his work is far more conscious of the post-war periods he has lived through, with tacit commentary on the Wirtschaftswunder and the iconographies of communism, capitalism, fascism, mass production and propaganda. Auerbach’s work, which seeks to ‘collapse traditional distinctions between image, dimensionality and content’ is less political and far more esoteric but the two exhibitions go well together.

The Walkmen

Martin — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 21:44:18 +0000

You know you have reached old-fartdom when you are invited to a rock concert by your N° 1 sprog and insist on turning up early for the warm-up act (she blames it on too much opera- and classical music-going where, it is true, the doors close on the hour at the dot). Nevertheless, this was a memorable evening in a most enjoyable setting, the vk venue, in deepest, most vibrant Molenbeek. The warm-up act, garage band Mozes and the Firstborn, happily warmed us up and we occasionally caught a glimpse of a face under all that hair. And then on to the main act, indie rockband, The Walkmen, and since we had arrived so early, we were right up close to the stage, which was fun. They played most of the tracks off of their Lisbon album and many more besides, including The Rat. The Walkmen have a very distinctive sound which is down in no small part to the voice of their vocalist, Hamilton Leithauser, but it’s perhaps only when you are up close, as we were, that you can see how much effort he puts into achieving his effects and also, therefore, how much strain he seems to be putting his voice under. In between tracks he explained that this was a long tour (they began in Stockholm in March and will end in Leeds on Saturday) but it didn’t show in his, or his fellow bandsmen’s delivery and they gave an excellent performance. Indeed, it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Thanks, E!

Devil by the Tail

Martin — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:09:00 +0000

At the writers’ workshop this evening I proudly showed off my latest acquisition, which is a 1947 novel, Devil by the Tail, by one Langston Moffett. Who might he be? No less than the son of prolific American journalist, playwright and author Cleveland Moffett (1863-1926), and the father of Cleve Moffett, an active member of our workshop. Can writing run in a family? Based on the example of the Moffetts, you’d have to say that it can, for Cleve also writes wittily and beautifully (and, happily, this evening submitted the last chapter of his current work in progress). Cleve’s father had a battle with the bottle and Devil by the Tail was, he insists, largely autobiographical. The blurb certainly makes it sound like an ‘Under Several Volcanoes‘; ‘This novel is the portrait of likeable, immature Gordon Sullivan who tried to escape the stark gray ugliness of sobriety through the dreams and refuges provided by alcohol. It is the story of his musings, adventures, futilities, and truly Gargantuan benders in Mexico, Europe, America and Canada on his long flight from the devil which he had by the tail.’ I can’t wait to read it! Langston Moffett was also a collected artist. I have not been able to establish whether this cover illustration was by him but it is certainly a pretty cover.

The Pontfadog oak

Martin — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 09:16:41 +0000

The Czech Republic has a wonderful tradition, dating from the nineteenth century, of taking its old trees very seriously (see this link, for example). There is a national list and the bigger and older trees are venerated. Things are done differently elsewhere. I was saddened to read in my Sunday newspaper that the Pontfadog oak – having been at least 1,200 years old and therefore the oldest tree in Wales, the third largest in Britain and one of the oldest in Europe – blew over last weekend in a gale. Since the oak had lost its heartwood it was impossible to tell exactly how old the tree was. But the youngest it could have been was 1,181 years, and the oldest was a staggering 1,628 years. In other words, the oak was seeded some time between AD 367 and AD 814, long before most English cathedrals were built. For a large part of its life the oak was a working tree, pollarded to produce building- and firewood. It put on six inches of growth just last year but once it had fallen the locals realised it had lost all of its main roots and was probably only still standing because of its sheer weight (in 1880 six men sat around a table inside it!). Beyond sadness at its demise I suppose my point is that it could (should?) have been better protected. A plan was drawn up by the Ancient Tree Forum. A six thousand signature-strong petition was addressed to the Welsh Assembly. But the money couldn’t be found. To the end, it was never fenced off or protected. And now it is no more.

Some Westlakes

Martin — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 21:51:12 +0000

I walked back from a Committee meeting with a Finnish member. Are you, he asked me, by any chance related to John Westlake, the chap who helped restore the Finnish constitution? I had to admit that I wasn’t, as far as I knew, related but, still, afterwards I googled the John Westlake (1828-1913) in question and was fascinated to read about this one-time influential international lawyer and progressive supporter of women’s suffrage (he was married to a suffragette) and the Christian Socialist Movement (he is considered a founder of the Working Men’s College). He even had a book written about him and his work (by John Fischer Williams, here) and there are three portraits of him in the National Portrait Gallery. Then, this evening, in Rhode-Saint-Genèse, after the concert, I was approached by an old man who asked me ‘Are you, by any chance, ‘related to Brian Westlake?’ Once again, I confessed that I wasn’t, and then he explained to me that Brian Westlake had been an imported English football player in the 1960s. Once again I googled his name and, sure enough, Brian Westlake (picture from Doncaster days) was an established centre forward in the First Division who played for Stoke City, Doncaster Rovers, Halifax Town, Tranmere Rovers and Colchester United before transferring in 1967 to Daring Club Molenbeek, one of very few foreign players to play for the club. The Royal Daring Club Molenbeek - five times winners of the Belgian first division – has long since disappeared. The name is heavily redolent of another era in sport. Westlake is not an unusual surname in Devon and Cornwall and has been steadily spreading out. It was just a curious coincidence that I should indirectly bump into two Westlakes in two days.

When Worlds Collide

Martin — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 09:52:20 +0000

This evening, in the cultural centre of Rhode-St-Genèse, I was happy to participate in the culminating event of a longstanding cooperative venture bringing together the music of composer Nigel Clarke, the conducting of Luc Vertommen, the playing of Brassband Buizingen, the ‘radio voice’ of Frank Renton, and the verses of yours truly. The occasion was a ‘champions meet’ – a try-out concert between Brassband Buizingen (the 2012 Belgian brassband champions) and Brassband Schoonhoven (from the Netherlands) – in the run-up to the 1 May 2013 European Brassbands Championship in Oslo. But it was also the occasion for the launch of a double CD, When Worlds Collide, bringing together all of the component elements listed above. Brassband Buizingen have chosen to take to Oslo as their set piece a daring new composition by their composer-in-residence, Nigel Clarke, entitled When Worlds Collide (you can hear a few clips from the work-in-progress at this link). The subtitle of Nigel’s witty piece is ‘or Little Green Men in Intergalactic Spaceships with Rayguns and Phasers‘. In the spirit of the piece, I wrote an acompanying poem composed entirely out of the titles of American 1950s science fiction B movies, and I was invited to read out the poem before the music began. (As I explained to the audience, I think the titles give an extraordinary insight into the state of mind of 1950s Cold War America.) When it was all over, Luc Vertommen had a surprise for Nigel and for me. We were each appointed honorary life members of Brassband Buizingen. I was so deeply touched by this. So talented and stylish are Brassband Buizingen that it is easy to forget that this is an amateur band (you wouldn’t think it if you heard them) and I have grown to admire them as they strive always not just for excellence but also for originality. Taking When Worlds Collide to Oslo is in my opinion a good example of that. Brassband Buizingen could have opted for a ‘safer’ piece within their comfort zone and polished it highly. Instead, they have gone for an original and provocative piece. There are six of Nigel Clarke’s compositions on the double CD, all performed by Brassband Buizingen, and all very different. Indeed, the combination of Nigel’s prolific originality, Luc’s brilliant conducting and the players’ excellence is a perfect match. I wish them every success in Oslo!

Pelléas et Mélisande

Martin — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 21:44:43 +0000

To La Monnaie this evening for another portrayal of inexorable destiny – this time Claude Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, with a libretto drawn by Debussy himself from Maurice Materlink’s symbolist play (about doomed love) of the same name. There was a sense of a circle in this performance, since the first foreign performance of Debussy’s revolutionary work was at La Monnaie (on 9 January 1907). There was also a sense of déjà vu inasmuch as Sandrine Piau, who was supposed to play Mélisande, had fallen on the set and injured herself, so she sang (beautifully) from the wings, whilst Monica Bacelli mutely acted her role on stage. Somehow, it worked well, with Bacelli’s portrayal conveying the mute suffering of her character. That Piau had fallen was maybe not so much of a surprise, since the action takes place around a most beautiful Anish Kapoor set design (see the picture) which, on a turntable and with varying lighting, effectively portrayed the various places (a forest, a castle, a rockpool) where the action is supposed to be occurring. Under Pierre Audi’s direction, Golaud (Mélisande’s husband) is portrayed as a psycho-sadist (convincingly acted by Dietrich Henschel). The key turning point in the drama, when Mélisande (earlier described by Arkel as having ‘the strange, bewildered look of someone constantly awaiting a calamity’) and her brother-in-law, Pelléas, finally admit their (unrequited) love for one another was brilliantly done: ‘Tout est perdu,’ Pelléas sings, ‘Tout est sauvé!‘ Exile is no longer an option. His fate is sealed. ‘If I were God,’ Arkel declares, ‘I would have pity on the hearts of men.’

Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex

Martin — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:43:17 +0000

To the Bozar this evening for Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex (preceded by Apollo musagète), performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and the Monteverdi Choir, with Fanny Ardant as the narrator and all under the towering baton of John Eliot Gardiner (picture). A curiosity of the piece is that it is sung in Latin. The choir were made up as assassins and Creon was also made up to brilliant effect. Here, I thought, was yet another combination of words and music (Stravinsky called it an ‘opera-oratorio) to add to the Clarke/Westlake list (see this post). Stravinsky’s music creates an authetically claustrophobic sense of inexorable destiny. We know what is going to happen to Oedipus. This is a musical description of the journey to a horrible certainty.

The last chapter

Martin — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 21:38:53 +0000

This evening, at the writers’ workshop, the last chapter of my magnum opus was presented and critiqued. It is such a relief to have got the whole of the thing down, albeit in raw form. Now the polishing begins in earnest. For, to be a little Churchillian, this is not the end, nor even the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning. I began longer ago than I care to remember but I have a hard and fast deadline before me and so I’ll just have to knuckle down, especially over the summer holidays…

O Lucky Man

Martin — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 21:29:11 +0000

Tonight we watched Lindsay Anderson’s 1973 allegory on the UK’s capitalistic decline, O Lucky Man. I saw it when it first came out. Several aspects of the film made a deep impression upon me. A first was the way Malcolm McDowell‘s everyman, Mick Travis (aka Candide), keeps bobbing back up to the surface, no matter what awful things life throws at him (and it throws plenty). This, I thought, was a message of hope of some sort. But then, right at the end, McDowell is portrayed in a casting call for the same film (it’s all very self- and other-referential, as seventies films tended to be). The director, played by Lindsay Anderson himself, asks McDowell/Travis to smile, but he can’t. The director hits him across the face with his script and a forced grimace crosses Travis’s face, thus summing up what a critic has described as being ‘a hopeless sort of optimism’. A second aspect was the way Alan price’s songs are interspliced in the film like a sort of Greek chorus. And a third was the way every cast member plays at least two and mostly three roles. The film is maybe over-long (three hours) but Anderson covers a huge canvas, taking a pop at imperialism and capitalism (and the linkage between the two, of course) and provides a sardonic portrait of British industrial, commercial and scientific decline. Travis bobs through the canvas, urged by the chorus to abandon his principles in order to succeed but also to keep his idealism high and dry and away from the evils he keeps witnessing (torture, medical experiments, napalm exports, etc). ‘If you’ve found a reason to live on and not to die, you are a lucky man,’ Alan Price sings in the title song. But does Travis find such a reason? Does the world of film provide him with such a prospect, or is the viewer just at the start of the same eternal loop? The film ends with the cast partying happily but I think Anderson knows that we know that he knows that we don’t believe this!

To the Ardennes and back/Last Man Standing

Martin — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 11:29:47 +0000

This morning I drove three young adventurers down to the deepest Ardennes, where they had to (hopefully) navigate their way across some interesting terrain as part of their Duke of Edinburgh award scheme. On the way there and back I ‘read’ an audio book that a friend had long ago given me. Last Man Standing, by David Baldacci, should really have been entitled Last Chapters Written Very Quickly, as I got the distinct sense that the author had a publisher’s deadline to meet. It was nevertheless an amusing and intriguing romp in which one member of a super elite Hostage Rescue Team, Web London, inexplicably survives an ambush in a raid on a drugs operation gone horribly wrong. His survival raises suspicions, but it also frustrates those who wanted everyone dead, and so London ends up being pursued by just about everybody. At the same time, he is determined to get to the bottom of matters, including through psychological analysis. The characters tend to be one-dimensional and workmanlike, doing their bit in the plot and then rapidly disappearing, but the underlying motives of his protagonists are well wrought. Paranoia is, in the hands of crime novelists, a wonderful tool when handled well. In the end, you don’t know who or what to believe. Friends might be enemies, enemies might be friends. You just don’t know. And where do conspiracies stop and madness begin? Oh dear oh dear. This book was perfect for a long drive and the latest news is that the adventurers are still standing.

Bruges….

Martin — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 12:42:48 +0000

Leaving aside all other aspects that will now be the subject of empassioned debate and media coverage for some time to come, who, speaking in Bruges on 20 September 1988, said the following? ‘The European Community is a practical means by which Europe can ensure the future prosperity and security of its people in a world in which there are many other powerful nations and groups.’ ‘We Europeans cannot afford to waste our energies on internal disputes or arcane institutional debates.’ ‘I am the first to say that on many great issues the countries of Europe should try to speak with a single voice. I want to see us work more closely on the things we can do better together than alone. Europe is stronger when we do so, whether it be in trade, defence or in our relations with the rest of the world.’ ‘Certainly we want to see Europe more united and with a greater sense of common purpose.’ ‘I believe it is not enough just to talk in general terms about a European vision or ideal. If we believe in it, we must chart the way ahead and identify the next steps.’ Lastly – my favourite – ‘Utopia never comes, because we know we should not like it if it did.’

Bernstein’s MASS

Martin — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 21:25:34 +0000

This evening I caught up over a beer with my friend, Nigel Clarke, on an exciting music-and-words collaborative project that is nearing completion. There’ll be more about that on this blog when it is completed on 27 April. As always, Nigel fountained musical references and ideas. We are already looking to the future. Maybe, just maybe, our next project will be on a bigger scale. In the meantime, we have both been referring to inspirational music-and-words adventures. I, for example, have developed a particular soft spot for John Adams’s I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky. But Nigel, as always, broadened my musical knowledge by leading me to Leonard Bernstein’s 1971 MASS and it has been growing on me ever since I first heard it. Commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy (to form part of the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington), it set out as a traditional mass, but Bernstein later digressed into Latin and Hebrew and all sorts of different styles, roping in Paul Simon, among others, to write the lyrics. Controversial in its time, and not a success with the concert-going public (though it sold strongly as a recording), MASS faded unfairly from popular consciousness but it really does deserve to be better known. Sadly, it is infrequently performed professionally, has rarely been recorded and is almost impossible to find on the internet. It reminded me a little of such 1970s works as Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell. Curious, I looked them all up on the internet and discovered that there was no coincidence. Godspell opened off Broadway on 17 May 1971. MASS premiered in Washington on 8 September 1971. And Jesus Christ Superstar opened on Broadway on 12 October 1971. The lyrics get a little mangled in this version but I defy anybody not to tap their foot to God said, to give just one example.

Refugees – a European creation?

Martin — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 07:07:09 +0000

BBC Radio 4′s Sunday programme this morning carried a report about the large-scale arrival of the Huguenots in England, particularly following the 1685 Edict of Fontainebleau, and about the economic and cultural consquences of such a large presence (some 50,000 Protestant Walloons and Huguenots altogether). Among other things, they gave the English language the word ‘refugee’, which came from the French refugié, a noun use of the past participle of refugier “to take shelter, protect,” from the Old French refuge. The word continued to mean ”one seeking asylum,” until 1914, when it evolved to mean “one fleeing home”, being first applied in this sense to Belgian civilians heading west to escape fighting in World War I (Europe’s first modern refugee crisis). Of course, the concept of asylum and the de facto status of being somebody recognised as fleeing persecution long predated the Huguenots, but they gave us the word to embody the concept. The Belgian refugee crisis of 1914 was swiftly followed by the consequences of the Russian civil war (about 800,000 Russian refugees had become stateless when Lenin revoked citizenship for all Russian expatriates in 1921) and the creation of the so-called Nansen passports for refugees (issued by the League of Nations and broadened in 1933 to also include Armenian, Assyrian, Chaldean and Turkish refugees). And then of course came the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees which, it is now forgotten, was initially limited to protecting European refugees caused by World War II and the Cold War (a 1967 Protocol removed the geographical and time limits). Large scale floods of refugees in Europe may now be a thing of the past, but we shouldn’t forget that the origins of the concept and the noble principles embodied in the Geneva Convention were pretty much a European creation, from both a positive and a negative point of view.

Back to the communal tent?

Martin — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 17:07:21 +0000

Another excellent counter-intuitive thesis is advanced by Gillian Tett in this morning’s Financial Times (on counter-intuitive theses, see this previous post). Now a celebrated economic journalist but originally a cultural anthropologist, Tett spent time living with, and observing, remote Tibetan communities in Tibet and Tajikistan, where ‘Each night, piles of people would all sleep in the same room, or tent. If somebody was not sleeping or eating well, it became a matter of wider knowledge and debate.’ Personally, Tett found that extremely intrusive, being used to Western-style ‘privacy’. Until recently, she writes ‘I vaguely assumed that societies tended to shed this group pattern when they got richer. After all, the broad sweep of history suggests that most cultures have become more individualistic over time, as wealth gives people more freedom to break away from the group.’ But now Tett wonders whether the digital revolution isn’t undermining such assumed trends. Over and beyond the way young people think little nowadays of posting a great deal of private information on such social networks as Twitter and Facebook, she cites a new trend in New York, whereby young professionals have started wearing monitoring devices that share information about such intimate aspects of their lives as sleeping patterns, exercise and eating habits. One can see the competitive logic and the use of peer group pressure to maintain self-discipline but, still, Tett sees this development as ‘one more sign of the degree to which most of us want to remain inside a social group.’ We are never too far, it seems, from that communal sleeping space.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Martin — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 21:33:35 +0000

Hmmm….. Somebody clearly thought this film was a good idea. Take eight top drawer actors and actresses (including stars like Judi Dench and Maggie Smith), make them show just how brilliant they are by giving them a pretty pedestrian plot reminiscent of the Carry On era, and set the whole thing in India. And it worked – at least, in the UK, from where most of this film’s gross earnings apparently came. The plot’s central device is the ‘outsourcing’ of ageing British singles and couples to a cheaper, but more anarchic and colourful, India. Cue an on form Dev Patel, hot from Slumdog Millionaire, as the eager young manager of the hotel in question, the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Why it should have been a surprise box-office hit in the UK is almost certainly down to the real star of the film: India, especially Rajasthan and Jaipur, and the magnificent swirl of colours and people and buildings. The Wiki entry cites one Liza Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly, who opined that the film achieved what it set out to do: ‘Sell something safe and sweet, in a vivid foreign setting, to an under-served share of the moviegoing market.’ That just about summed it up for us on this, our last film evening before the return to the crush. And, if I may cite one of the better lines from the script, ‘when I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you.’

Courtship dances

Martin — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 13:15:15 +0000

One of the great treats of sitting by a lake in the early spring is to watch the water birds’ courtship dances. This morning I have watched a couple of great crested grebes and then a pair of swans. In both species the dances are elaborate and the neck is the primary means of expression and, yes, sometimes they inadvertently form a heart shape, as in the illustration. These species share something else in common. They both carry their young around on their backs between their wings, and I only regret that I won’t be by the lake to see this next beautiful step as spring advances.

The Crimes of Josef Fritzl

Martin — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 11:16:50 +0000

In late April 2008 it was reported that a 73 year-old Austrian man and locally respected pater familias, Josef Fritzl, had been arrested on suspicion of having kidnapped and imprisoned his 18 year-old daughter, Elisabeth, and of having held her captive in an underground cellar complex for twenty-four years. Josef Fritzl was accused of incest, rape, coercion, false imprisonment, enslavement and negligent homicide and was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment. He had begun abusing Elisabeth, born in 1966, when she was eleven. Somehow resenting her independent spirit, he had clearly planned for her imprisonment. Once he had trapped her, he subjected her to continuous abuse and physical violence. His constant incestuous rape led to the birth of seven children (one of whom died shortly after birth) and one miscarriage. In the end, this monster’s monstrosities were uncovered when Elisabeth’s oldest daughter, Kerstin, suffered a life-threatening illness and had to be taken above ground to hospital for treatment (although, incredibly, already Fritzl had, in his manipulative madness, been planning for a ‘miraculous’ unification of his ‘underground’ and above-ground families). I have just finished reading The Crimes of Jozef Fritzl Uncovering the Truth, co-authored by a Brussels-based journalist acquaintance, Bojan Pancevski (together with Stefanie Marsh). It is a thoroughly researched and very well written study of the origin and development of this human evil. How did a monster like Jozef Fritzl come into being? What made him behave in the way he did? Why did the society around him not suspect something sooner, given his past record and the strange events that repeatedly occurred? Marsh and Pancevski seek the answers in his own horribly abusive childhood (he later turned the tables on the mother who had beaten him so mercilessly by locking her up in the attic with a bricked-up window for twenty years), the simultaneous claustrophobia and comfort of Amstetten’s wartime tunnel air raid shelters and the mores of Austria’s post-war provincial society (Fritzl, for example, was sentenced to just eighteen months in prison for a cold-blooded rape). It is page 118 (of a 294-page book) before Elisabeth is imprisoned, and the next third of the book is largely an account of his daughter’s extraordinary fortitude. Though she was frequently in despair, her spirit never broke. Her profound humanity and maternal instincts somehow reconcile the reader a little. But the last third of the book, devoted to psychiatric analyses and the trial, is perhaps the most depressing. Neighbours above the cellar prison had for many years heard all sorts of suspicious noises. But for collective incompetence, Elisabeth’s plight could and should have been brought to an end long before. As Marsh and Pancevski conclude: “Everything pointed to the fact that Jozef Fritzl was not in fact the brilliant operator that the authorities and the media had painted him. He was clumsy. He was a bad liar. He had left clues all over the place. But he had an unshakeable belief in his own fantasies, and he had been lucky. Even when everything had pointed to the fact that something very wrong was happening in the house in Ybbsstrasse, nobody had looked.”

The Thing

Martin — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:43:40 +0000

Taking a spot of lunch in a mountain refuge today we came across this photograph on the cabin wall. The mysterious thing was found, still alive, under the ice at about 1,000 metres altitude. It was not, the lady insisted, a ramaro (local dialect for a green lizard, I think). It was distinctively blue, about half a metre long and had never been seen before. They had sent it off to the University of Florence for ‘tests’, but the local theory is that it is a mutant, caused by the latent radiation, still in the soil around here, caused by the Tchernobyl dust cloud. (There are rumoured to be an abnormal number of radiation-linked tumours among people living in the Alto Lario region.) It was a sort of reminder that even in remote spots man’s deprivations of his environment are not far away. She gave another example. The beautiful Lago di Darengo, high up in the mountains at the foot of a natural rock circus, where we bathed only last summer, was found to be completely sterile and stagnant some ten years ago and had to be treated with large quantities of lime and bicarbonate of soda. The local rumour was that a civilian airliner in trouble had had to dump its fuel and most of it had ended up in the lake.

Prizzi’s Honour

Martin — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:35:06 +0000

This evening we watched a golden oldie, John Huston’s 1985 penultimate film, Prizzi’s Honour, in which his daughter, Anjelica, won an Oscar for best supporting actress. Jack Nicholson’s eyebrows play Charley Partanna, a contract killer and heir apparent to Brooklyn-based mafia family, the Prizzis. The (and his) padrino, Corrado, sends him East to ‘clip’ a gangster who has stolen from a Prizzi antennae operation in Las Vegas. Spurning the advances of his longtime sweetheart, Maerose Prizzi (played by Anjelica), Charley inadvertently falls in love with a fellow, West coast-based, contract killer, Irene (played by Kathleen Turner), whose true calling and role in the Las Vegas heist is only gradually revealed to him. He decides to marry rather than kill her and, at first, there is honour, as well as love, among thieves. But a kidnap operation for the Prizzis goes wrong and Irene shoots a cop’s wife, bringing unwanted complications to the Prizzi family’s operations. Charley and Irene hide away their kidnap victim (a banker) to extort a deal from the Prizzis and buy Irene’s protection. Meanwhile, Maerose goads her father, Dominic, Charley’s jealous rival within the Prizzi clan, into putting out a contract on Charley, and the killer he contacts is … Irene. The padrino has already decided that his godson, Charley, rather than his son, Dominic, should become the Boss. When another Family kills Dominic, the padrino accelerates his plans, which means Charley must come back into the fold, let the banker go and kill Irene. Hence the film’s central twist: two contract killers simultaneously in love with each other and with contracts to kill one another. Since the Family always comes first, there can only be one winner: Maerose!

On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

Martin — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:05:58 +0000

This afternoon I at last finished Alan Watts’s 1966 The Book On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, which has been by my bedside for several months. A British-born, later American, philosopher, Watts played a central role in introducing Eastern philosophical and religious thought to Western readers, having become a Buddhist as a teenager. This is a small book but a delightfully rich read. Watts wore his learning lightly, but his analyses were based on a wide reading of Western as well as Eastern texts together with an eclectic knowledge of different cultural, linguistic, philosophical and theological traditions, frequently leading to fascinating digressions. At one point, for example, he rails against the use of nouns and adjectives in science, pointing to the Amerindian Nootka language, which consists only of verbs and adverbs. “Thus, in the Nootka language a church is ‘housing religiously,’ a shop is ‘housing tradingly’… Everything labelled with a noun is demonstrably a process or action, but language is full of spooks, like the ‘it’ in ‘It is raining,’ which are the supposed causes of action. ” Addressing the decline in the ‘paternalistic state’, Watts tellingly points out that “the home in an industrial society is chiefly a dormitory, and the father does not work there, with the result that wife and children have no part in his vocation. He is just a character who brings in money, and after working hours he is supposed to forget about his job and have fun.” I could go on but there are, of course, websites devoted to Watts quotations, observations and aphorisms. The central purpose of the book is to examine the illusion that the self is a separate entity confronting a universe of physical objects rather than being an integral part of such a universe. Watts thus offers a different understanding of personal identity and an alternative to the feelings of alienation (also, but not only, in the Marxist sense) that have become prevalent in Western society. This is also an early ecological tract, since Watts argues that the separation of the self from the physical world leads inexorably to the misuse of technology and attempts to subjugate the natural environment. (It’s another digression but I think, through this book, that I have also found the probable origin of the first line in John Lennon’s (The Beatles’s) I am the Walrus: ‘I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.’ In his text, Watts cites James Broughton’s 1965 rendering of a Chinese Zen master: ‘This is It/and I am It/and you are It/and so is That/and He is It/and She is It/and It is It/and That is That.’) Written almost half a century ago, the analyses in this book remain entirely pertinent.

A Beautiful Mind

Martin — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 21:57:13 +0000

Tonight, thanks to a tip from MC (to whom thanks), we watched Ron Howard’s 2001 biographical drama, A Beautiful Mind, based on the life of John Nash, A Nobel Laureate in Economics (well, if improbably, played by Russell Crowe). With a brilliant mathematical brain, Nash comes under academic pressure to produce. The stress induces paranoid schizophrenia, leading on to increasingly frequent and ultimately continuous delusional episodes. His wife and young child struggle to cope. He is incarcerated, treated, released, suffers a relapse, becomes inadvertently violent, gradually comes to terms with his delusions (ultimately cohabiting with them), and in later life is rehabilitated at Princeton and awarded the Nobel accolade for his youthful original work on governing dynamics. I don’t want to give too much away, but the film uses the oldest trick in the book, POV (point of view – think The Sixth Sense or Shutter Island), to draw viewers into a delusional world, then jolt them back into reality. There was a discussion afterwards about mental illness and concepts of reality. The person suffering the delusions perceives them as being real. Which reality is the more valid and on what basis? The film also raises the issue of evolving societal attitudes. In past times a Nash might have been considered a seer or a prophet or a saint (indeed, at the beginning, at Princeton, he is half-mocked, half revered for displaying the eccentricity of potential genius). And when does treatment become persecution, or do both attitudes necessarily co-exist? The film was criticised for its ‘poetic licence’ (for example, the real Nash suffered only auditory delusions, Crowe’s Nash sees people as well as hearing them), but that debate is something of a red herring. Like Shine, the film works as a plausible portrayal of a difficult condition and reminds us that all too often genius comes at a heavy price. (Postscript: here, thanks also to MC, is an article about the real John Nash by his biographer, Sylvia Nasar.)

La vie et rien d’autre

Martin — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 21:57:38 +0000

This evening we watched Bertrand Tavernier’s magnificent 1989 film La vie et rien d’autre (Life and nothing but). It is 1920. In a northern France still bearing the livid scars of war Commander Dellaplane (Philippe Noiret at his best) is in charge of attempts to rediscover the identities of both the dead and the living (former soldiers suffering from amnesia). It is a massive task – Dellaplane cites a figure of 350,000 ‘missing’. At the other extreme, Perrin is charged with finding a genuinely unknowable corpse for the monument to the unknown soldier at the Arc de Triomphe – a task Dellaplane had refused on deontological grounds. Given the 350,000, it should be a relatively simple job, but ‘Paris’ has imposed conditions; in particular, the unknown soldier must be known sufficiently to be certain that the dead man is French. Into the desolate scenes of death and destruction wander a rich young Parisian, Irène (Sabine Azéma), looking for her husband, and a simple country girl, Alice (Pascal Vignal), looking for her lover. Irène and Alice are drawn together in their common quest, whilst Irène and Dellaplane become increasingly attracted to one another and Dellaplane gradually realises that the two women are almost certainly looking for the same man. The portraits of the three protagonists are beautifully drawn and the backdrop is poignantly portrayed. (A sculptor proclaims that never since the Greeks has there been such demand for public sculptures.) The film includes a historically faithful reconstruction of the ceremony to choose the unknown soldier – a private has to place a bunch of flowers on one of eight coffins. The government is represented by André Maginot, then the Minister of Pensions. This scene and Maginot’s presence remind the viewer that no matter how well the wounds may heal, they will be opened again less than two decades later: the protagonists’ pasts are also their futures. There is a good analysis of the film and its themes here.

Nixon and the Hiss case

Martin — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 17:36:49 +0000

Thanks to a tip from AT (to whom go grateful thanks) I am reading Richard Nixon’s Six Crises. It was written in 1962, after Nixon’s 1961 loss to John F. Kennedy and in part in response to the latter’s 1957 Profiles in Courage, which was said to have greatly improved Kennedy’s image. In a foreward Nixon explains that ‘if the record of one man’s experience in meeting crises – including both his failures and his successes – can help … then this book may serve a useful purpose. The 1948 Hiss case (the first ‘crisis’ recounted in the book) brought the then unknown junior congressman Richard Nixon into general public view for the first time. Inadvertently or not, the telling impression he gives is, in the words of Dwight D. Eisenhower, of ‘a man who has a special talent and an ability to ferret out any kind of subversive influence wherever it may be found, and the strength and persistence to get rid of it.’ (Nixon proudly quotes this description himself!) Nixon’s account faithfully reproduces the paranoid atmosperics of Washington politics in the late 1940s, in the heyday of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Alger Hiss (picture) was a high-ranking and well-regarded State Department official with a distinguished career who was suspected of being an active Communist sympathiser and alleged to have been part of a spy ring. Judging from the Wiki account, the doubts about what exactly might have occurred rumble on and may never be entirely clarified. Nixon provides some lucid insights (particularly about the judiciary and the press) and aphorisms (‘in politics, victory is never total’). There is a wonderfully unselfconscious irony when he regrets that there were so few television sets in American homes in 1948 (notoriously, his physical appearance on the now ubiquitous TV sets in US households in the first ever televised presidential debates was supposed to have cost him the 1960 Presidency race). The publicity the Hiss affair generated pushed Nixon into the Senate in 1950 and the Vice-Presidency of the United States from 1952 to 1960. He served as President from 1969 until he resigned in 1974 and died in 1994 at the age of 81. A Presidential pardon, time and his subsequent humility put his achievements into perspective and rehabilitated his reputation to some considerable extent but could never get rid of the odour of the Watergate hearings, the threat of impeachment and his resignation. Hiss, meanwhile, was sentenced to five years imprisonment for perjury in 1950 and released after 3 years and eight months on good behaviour. He published a book, re-married, crowed publicly on an ABC programme when Nixon failed in 1962 to become Governor of California, was re-admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1975 and wrote an autobiography in 1988. He died in 1996 at the ripe old age of 92, protesting his innocence to the end. That somebody will one day make a film addressing these two lives in parallel seems to me to be inevitable.

Heading South

Martin — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 17:39:04 +0000

We are at last heading south, to our Italian bolthole. At the Swiss border a guard congratulated us on our ‘collection’ before carefully placing the 2013 vignette in place on our windscreen, bringing the collection up to eight. Eight! Whatever they may say about built-in obsolescence our trusty car, with us since 2005, seems somehow so far (touch wood) to be set steady for a few years yet. I wonder if what we are doing is, from an ecological, as opposed to more narrowly economical, point of view a good thing. But we have both inherited from our parents a loathing of throwing away something that is still good or still works. Sorting out their effects after my parents died I found myself in a quandrary as to what to do with the pieces of string and old keys that my father had religiously saved and hung in his garden shed. In the end, the string went, but I still have the biggest bunch of keys you ever did see.

A beautiful life

Martin — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 12:25:06 +0000

We spent this Maundy Thursday at the funeral of a much-loved aunt-in-law, Liliane Van Gehuchten. She passed away last Sunday at the ripe old age of 87. Her husband, Pierre, passed away in October 2011, and there was a strong sense of a chapter of life being closed, for Liliane and Pierre had been a beautiful and much-loved couple. A dynamic and constantly optimistic woman with an intellectually and culturally voracious appetite, Liliane was the co-founder, in 1967, of a Belgian organisation, Connaissance et Vie that has since gone from strength to strength (and is, I should note in passing, an excellent example of a civil society organisation). The ceremony recalled, through the fond memories of her son, daughter-in-law, grand-daughter, nephews and nieces and friends, a beautiful life richly lived, full of intellectually dynamic relations with art and artists, sculptors, writers, poets, journalists, philosophers, theologians, priests and monks. Her love of music was reflected in the extracts from Bach and Pergolese sung by, among others, the daughter of a friend, Pauline Claes, and her love of literature and poetry through the reading of an extract of Yves Bonnefoy. Personally, I have great memories of Liliane and Pierre’s infectiously warm and good-humoured hospitality – dinner parties often followed by a digestif while listening to one of Pierre’s latest musical enthusiams. But if I had to sum up Liliane in one quality, it would be ‘optimism’. She always saw things positively. In a beautiful end to a beautiful life, Liliane died peacefully, surrounded by her loved ones. When the doctor passed by a few hours before the end and asked her how she was, she summoned all of her strength and said ‘Je vais très bien’.

To see Commissioner Lewandowski

Martin — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 16:40:14 +0000

This afternoon I accompanied the EESC’s Vice President with responsibility for budgetary affairs, Jacek Krawczyk (Employers’ Group, Poland) on a visit to the Berlaymont to see the European Commissioner with responsibility for budgetary affairs, Janusz Lewandowski (picture), to present the Committee’s draft 2014 budget. Jacek Krawczyk pointed out that, whilst the Committee has continued to honour its legal obligations (particularly salaries and rent payments) and continued to respect its treaty-based obligations in terms of advisory work, its budget has decreased in real terms for a third year and is now well under its 2009 level. This has not been easy but it has been done, in good faith, because the EESC’s members have collectively decided that the Committee must set a good example in a period of sustained austerity. That the Committee has been able to do such things is a tribute to its political and administrative maturity.

Leila Kurki says farewell

Martin — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 13:36:03 +0000

Two facts of political life at the EESC are that members come and go (there is about a thirty per cent turnover rate with each new mandate) and that office holders change (this is strongly ingrained in the Committee’s culture). Today I attended a bitter-sweet occasion. Leila Kurki (Workers’ Group, Finland), who has served the Committee well as a committed and active member and as a dynamic President of its Section for Social Affairs and Employment, said farewell to her staff. Leila’s term as Section President will shortly come to an end, but she will also shortly thereafter be leaving the Committee. It was typical of Leila’s attentiveness that she had a word to say about each of the members of staff who had worked with her and a simple but symbolic present for everybody. We will miss her.

The 2020 Presidential election

Martin — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 09:39:49 +0000

President Obama?

Long before Barack Obama won a historic second term as President of the United States of America, American media pundits were speculating about a Hillary Clinton Presidency in 2016, as this post recalls. But as an article by Edward Luce in this morning’s Financial Times reports, the speculation is not just about 2016 but, rather, a cycle of presidencies between two Democratic dynasties. Thus, the thinking goes, Hillary will probably win in 2016, and already has Barack Obama’s tacit support as the heir presumptive. But what happens next? Hillary will turn 69 in October 2016 and so would be 73 by the end of her first term. Assuming she were not to seek re-election, she would also want to provide a Democratic legacy. Who better than another very popular and strong woman, Michelle Obama, who would be 66 in 2020 – young enough for two terms, perhaps? And then she could be followed by Chelsea Clinton. This could go on and on!

Sand dancing

Martin — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 05:10:29 +0000

A friend and some time flat-sharer, knowing how much I like Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers’ Egyptian Reggae has found me a link that goes one better: an original sand dance, a Wilson and Keppel Sand Dance, from 1934, to be precise. I forbid anybody to watch the clip and not be cheered up. It’s an illustration of how clever and funny music hall could be and as good a way as any to start an icy Monday morning. Thank you, J!

Palm Sunday

Martin — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 07:32:10 +0000

Today, Palm Sunday, marks the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem, his humility symbolised by the fact that he rode in on a donkey, and his triumph symbolised by the palms strewn on the road before him – or, at least, that is what I always thought. That he did ride into Jerusalem is confirmed by all four gospels, but the symbolism of the episode may contain more nuances than I, at least, realised. First, that donkey. In the customs of the time, the donkey was a symbol of peace, not humility. If Jesus had been hell-bent on triggering a war or a revolution he would have ridden in on a horse. The fact that he came in on a donkey could therefore have been intended as a strong symbolic message that he came as a Prince of Peace. Second, in the traditions of the near East of that time it was customary to cover the path before somebody thought worthy of high honour. It was a sort of red carpet of the time. Only the gospel of John specifies palm fronds. Third, the palm represented triumph and victory in the Greco-Roman tradition but eternal life in the Egyptian tradition and simple rejoicing in the Jewish tradition. The palms were just as likely to have had Jewish symbolic value as Greco-Roman. All this by way of saying that somewhere around the thirteenth century the portrayal of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem became far more triumphalistic than had probably previously been the case. In the original scenario, Jesus came in peace and rejoicing and his ‘victory’ was more about souls than hearts. Whilst on the subject, in the 16th and 17th centuries straw ‘Jack ‘o’ Lent figures were stoned and abused and then burnt on Palm Sunday, as a sort of conflation of Winter and Judas Iscariot.

THX 1138

Martin — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 21:55:38 +0000

THX 1138 was George Lucas’s 1971 directorial debut. Co-written by Lucas and Walter Murch, the film grew out of Lucas’s 1967 student film, Electronic Labyrinth. It was never a box office success but, as dystopian science fiction, has a certain cult following. It came a little too early in the 1970s for me (I don’t even know if it went on general release in the UK), so tonight, in watching the film, I was catching up. One aspect of Lucas’s vision borrows heavily from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: mandatory drug use regulates emotions. And the equivalent of ‘Huxley’s Our Ford’ is ‘OMM 0910′, physically represented by reproductions of Hans Memling’s Christ Giving His Blessing. (OMM 0910 ends every ‘confession’ by declaring ’You are a true believer, blessings of the State, blessings of the masses. Work hard, increase production, prevent accidents and be happy.’) However, unlike in Huxley’s World State, passion and sex are outlawed. Everyone is controlled. Cameras are ubiquitous. And the dystopia is policed by softly-spoken, peaceful police officers (lanky androids with metallic faces). Worker LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie) has a male flatmate, THX 1138 (Robert Duvall). A disillusioned controller, LUH stops taking her medication and secretly reduces THX’s doses, so that the two discover passion, sex and love. Now prey to emotions, THX comes close to causing a disastrous accident at the android plant where he works. Meanwhile, LUH’s superior, SEN 5241 (Donald Pleasance), wants to be THX’s flatmate and illegally changes shifts. All three are arrested and confined to a directionless white limbo together with other prisoners who have apparently experienced free thought. Considered incurable, LUH is ‘consumed’ and her organs recycled. THX and SEN escape, together with a hologram star, SRT. But only THX remains free long enough to exhaust the controllers’ pre-determined budget. His android pursuer desists and THX emerges from a tunnel into what is apparently the real, above-ground world (and then the viewer, realising that there has never been any natural light, understands that the dystopia is some sort of underground escape). Consistent with the electronic world he created, Lucas edited the film in a choppy style and the viewer has to work hard to understand what is going on. The characters’ names and the long philosophical interlude in limbo probably also helped prevent this film from enjoying mainstream success. But it demonstrated Lucas’s potential to create alternative worlds and his attention to detail (in the 2004 Director’s Cut, Lucas mischievously inserts the face of C-3PO as the android THX is building, thus providing a retroactive hint about the later importance of android characters).

The social media improve writing?

Martin — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 11:31:33 +0000

I love a good counter-intuitive thesis and there is a fine one in this morning’s Financial Times. Simon Kuyper argues, convincingly, I feel, that the social media have improved writing. E-mail, he declares, kicked off an unprecedented expansion in writing, producing the most literate age in history. The use of the social media increases every month. Indeed, ‘writing is overtaking speech as the most common form of interaction’. The UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, says that ‘Britons now text absent friends and family more often than they speak to them on the phone or in person.’ To those who bemoan the decline of language he points out that such laments have been voiced since at least AD63. He cites a study that suggest texting improves children’s reading ability. Yes, punctuation and spelling are neglected, but most children grasp that the genre has different rules from school essays (older generations have greater difficulty in adjusting to punctuation-free, abbreviated text language). Texts, blogs, e-mail and Facebook are, he insists ‘making journalism, books and business communications more conversational.’ And ‘conversational prose improves your chances of being heard and understood.’ Mostly, he concludes, ‘social media have done wonders for writing’. After all, George Orwell’s ideal was writing that sounded like speech. Good fun.

The World of Livstycket

Martin — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 12:13:50 +0000

March , 22/2013

EESC

The World of Livsticket about migrant Women on Itegration .

On this picture :

2013_03_22_THE_WORLD_OF_LIVSTICKET

©EU2013" src="http://www.martinwestlake.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/LIVSTICKET-300x199.jpeg" width="300" height="199" />At lunchtime today I attended the vernissage of an exhibition at the EESC’s Jacques Delors headquarters, opened by our President, Staffan Nilsson, and entitled ‘The World of Livstycket – About Migrant Women and Integration’. The exhibition brought back to the Committee one of the winners of the 2012 Civil Society Prize – the Livstycket organisation – and its formidable founder and CEO, Birgitta Notlöf (on the left in the picture). Livstycket is a modern design and knowledge centre located in Tensta, a northern Stockholm suburb. The organisation helps to integrate immigrant women – frequently refugees – into Swedish society through pedagogical and artistic activities designed to give them linguistic skills and independent economic productivity. In her opening remarks, Notlöf asked us all to imagine being asked urgently to leave everything we knew – country, culture, language, family, friends – for another place and being allowed only to take what we could fit into one small bag (a single bag is a recurring symbol of the organisation). This was so often the lot of the women she and her organisation sought to help. I was humbled when the (Swedish) EESC member beside me, Ellen Nygren (Workers Group), recounted that this was exactly what had happened to her mother in 1944. She had been obliged to quit Estonia, urgently, with just one bag. Sometimes, Nygren (on the right in the picture) wears a red Livstycket dress to occasions like the opera. When she does so, she told me, she is declaring her mother’s survival.

The ‘Freccia del Sud’ (1952-2013)

Martin — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 10:41:13 +0000

Sadly, the BBC website reports that Pietro Mennea, 1980 Moscow Olympic 200 metre champion, and the 200 m world record holder for 17 years (with a time of 19.72, set in September 1979) has just died, far too young, at the age of 60. Only eight athletes have recorded a better time over 200 metres than Mennea’s world record, which still remains the current European record. In Italy Mennea was nicknamed the Freccia del Sud (the Southern Arrow), after the express train connecting Milan and Messina. I remember Mennea beating Scotsman Allan Wells for the gold in Moscow, hauling him in and edging him out by 0.02 seconds (you can see a clip of it on Mennea’s website – link above). It seems strange to relate now, but there was an exoticism about such a successful Italian track star at a time when the Cold War rivals were still mostly dominant. In later life Mennea was a Member of the European Parliament (1999-2004) and I knew him a little then, as he naturally gravitated to the Cultural Affairs Committee (also responsible for sport), my primary parliamentary interlocuter in those days. I remember a quiet, polite, distinguished gentleman with a receding silver hair line and an immediately recognisable smile. I got a big thrill out of shaking the hand of and talking to one of the fastest men on earth, for that was what he had been. It wasn’t the ‘done thing’ to ask for an autograph but I rather regret that I didn’t.

The Halifax explosion

Martin — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 09:15:46 +0000

Readers of this blog may remember that in my forthcoming saga I intend to encompass the 30 July 1916 Black Tom explosion in New York, the greatest incident of material damage to the city before 9/11. A reader’s letter in the London Review of Books has led me to another such wartime explosion, the 6 December 1917 Halifax Explosion, when a French munitions ship, the Mont-Blanc, drifting and on fire after a collision, exploded, killing about 2,000 people and injuring a further 9,000. The Wiki entry recounts that ‘Nearly all structures within a half-mile radius, including the entire community of Richmond, were completely obliterated. A pressure wave of air snapped trees, bent iron rails, demolished buildings, grounded vessels, and carried fragments of the Mont-Blanc for kilometres. Hardly a window in the city proper survived the concussion. Across the harbour, in Dartmouth, there was also widespread damage. A tsunami created by the blast wiped out the physical community of Mi’kmaw First Nations people that had lived in the Tuft’s Cove area for generations. There were a number of casualties including five children who drowned when the tidal wave came ashore at Nevin’s Cove.’ So many people were blinded by flying glass that the reconstructed Halifax became internationally known as a centre for the care of the blind. Wiki further records that ‘For many years afterward, the Halifax Explosion was the standard by which all large blasts were measured. For instance, in its report on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Time wrote that the explosive power of the Little Boy bomb was seven times that of the Halifax Explosion.’

The writer’s cabin as concept

Martin — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 06:31:25 +0000

Very early this morning we walked out at Berthem. I know, I know; I keep going on about the place. But this morning the weather was glorious and once again we passed the simple cabin in the picture, nestling in its pine grove, surrounded by flat, dark, freshly-ploughed earth and maize stubble and my imagination got to work. I keep picturing myself there, shut inside, scribbling away. How many books would I write, if only I could retreat to that cabin? It’s all rubbish, of course. Productivity isn’t a result of surroundings, is it? I am not even certain that the cabin belongs to a writer of some sort, and yet… And yet there is such a concept as the writer’s cabin, well-analysed in David Wood’s December journalistic essay, ‘The lure of the writer’s cabin’, in the New York Times. And the place out at Berthem fits the bill, being small, sparse and basic. (Should anybody out there know to whom it belongs, please let me know.) As Wood puts it, ‘Between world and word there is both a bridge and a chasm … we know that a manifesto, a book, even a well-turned, well-timed phrase can change the world. Writers are at times, as Pope decried, fools in dunce’s caps. But they can also be magicians, conjuring other worlds, brave new possibilities. The cabin is one culturally powerful image of that semi-detached space in which those creative discontinuities are spawned. It seems to hold a secret, but behind the first there hides another. If the first secret is that to write, one needs a blank sheet of paper, or a blank screen, the second secret, the secret of the cabin, is that one does not strictly need a mountain or a shack at the end of a trail, off the grid. Rather, a table, a chair, somewhere simple, free of distraction. For some, even a cupboard in an office building no-one is using that day will do.’

To the Staff Committee

Martin — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 15:04:46 +0000

The Staff Regulations for EU officials provide that all institutions should be assisted by a staff committee composed of representatives of the democratically-elected staff organisations. In the case of the EESC, those elections last occurred in October 2012. Since then the EESC’s new Staff Committee has established itself and come up to ‘cruising speed’ and so it was with great pleasure that I accepted an invitation to come before the Staff Committee this afternoon for an exchange of views on various topics, including work loads, promotion procedures, reform and impending challenges related, perhaps most importantly, to the envisaged reforms to the staff regulations and the implications of a sustained period of austerity. The staff committee is an integral part of the administrative life of the Committee and it is always a pleasure to go before it.

EESC March plenary session: Günther Oettinger

Martin — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:30:17 +0000

March , 20/2013

EESC

488th Plenary Session

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2013_03_20_488th_PLENARY_SESSION

©EU2013" src="http://www.martinwestlake.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/oettinger-300x199.jpeg" width="300" height="199" />This afternoon the European Economic and Social Committee’s plenary session hosted a visit from Günther Oettinger, European Commissioner for Energy Policy, who came to participate in a debate related to the Committee’s exploratory opinion on exploring the needs and methods of public involvement and engagement in the energy policy field (rapporteur: Richard Adams, Various Interests Group, UK). It was an opinion that Mr Oettinger had himself requested and he clearly valued the work the Committee had done. He described to the plenary the consequences and implications of the shift in energy requirements from the local to the regional to the continental. This ‘Europeanisation’ had to be accompanied by a concomittant democratisation, especially given much greater mobility and the larger budgetary investments involved. But over and beyond the democratisation of the market the Commissioner argued that the efficient functioning of such a market was also predicated on the proper involvement of consumers, who should be more conscious and better informed about choices. Richard Adams’s opinion similarly argues that ‘Public involvement, understanding and acceptance of the different changes which our energy system will have to go through over the coming decades are absolutely essential. In this regard, dialogue with civil society is vital, and the EESC’s membership and constituency, reflecting European society, is well placed to reach out to citizens and stakeholders in the Member States and establish a comprehensive programme embodying participative democracy and practical action.’ In particular, The EESC would take the lead in establishing a European Energy Dialogue (EED), a coordinated multi-level, action-oriented conversation within and across all Member States. The opinion was adopted with a big majority.

The EESC Bureau meets again…

Martin — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:37:59 +0000

It’s a plenary week again already and so the Committee is in the habitual rhythm of management board, pre-session and enlarged Presidency meetings (Monday) and Bureau meeting (this afternoon). All went smoothly but there was nevertheless a sad tinge to this afternoon’s meeting. It was the penultimate meeting of the current Bureau. The next meeting of this Bureau will be a special one, held on the eve of the elections of the new President and Bureau for the remaining two-and-a-half years of the current 2010-2015 mandate. Because of that, today’s meeting heard reports from the two Vice-Presidents, Jacek Krawczyk and Anna Maria Darmanin, on their presidencies of, respectively, the Budget Group and the Communication Group, and took note of the end of term reports of the the Sections and the Consultative Commission on Industrial Change and the Quaestors and the categories, and so on. There was also a full load of the Bureau’s traditional business in preparing tomorrow’s plenary session.

Encounters with civil society organisations

Martin — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 12:25:30 +0000

This morning I was happy to say a few welcoming words at a meeting of a French civil society organisation, the IRCEM Group, which is a non-profit-making organisation working on social protection and social security issues. I welcomed them to the EESC’s headquarters Jacques Delors building and brandished a copy of Jean Monnet’s memoirs, reminding them that it was in some part thanks to Monnet that the French vision of a consultative body representing civil society organisations had been reproduced at European level. It was substitute member and former colleague Jean Lapeyre who had brought the organisation to the house of civil society (as we sometimes refer to our building). Then, at lunchtime, thanks to Spanish EESC member Miguel Angel Cabra De Luna (Various Interests Group), I attended a lunch meeting of Spanish charity organisation, ONCE. Founded in 1938, ONCE organises lotteries to fund public works by and for blind people. A foundation has existed since 1988. The assembled guests heard from Miguel Carballeda Pineiro, the President of ONCE and of its Foundation, about the organisation’s good works and the challenges it faces. Both IRCEM and ONCE are examples of flourishing civil society organisations, of Europe’s civic fabric. The ONCE lunch took place at the top of a hotel sporting spectacular views, as my picture shows.

Five ideas for a younger Europe

Martin — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 16:26:51 +0000

March , 18/2013

EESC

Five Ideas for a Younger Europe

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2013_03_18_5_IDEAS_YOUNGER_EU

©EU2013" src="http://www.martinwestlake.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Five-pictures1-150x150.jpeg" width="150" height="150" />This afternoon I was happy to sit at the back of a meeting room in our headquarters Jacques Delors building that was full of young Europeans. What had brought them there was a joint initiative of Gianni Pitella, European Parliament Vice-President, and European Economic and Social Committee Vice-President, Anna Maria Darmanin, who jointly presided the meeting. They had travelled together to similar gatherings in Leeds, Cosenza, Valletta, Barcelona, Strasbourg, Salerno and Warsaw in order to hear what young people really think about Europe. This listening exercise generated five ideas, which were debated today. These were: the creation of a true European political union, including a directly-elected President; the creation of a European public employment service to guide the choices of young people in their search for work; the standardisation of human, social, civil, political and economic rights in the EU; the creation of a European Degree Programme; and the creation of a European public broadcasting company. What became apparent, as these five themes were discussed, is that while young Europeans may worry about their futures (in terms of employment, above all) they still clearly see the logicality of Europe as being the answer, or the potential answer. It was instructive to be listening in!

A thrilling 2013 six nations tournament

Martin — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 18:06:41 +0000

I just haven’t had the time to write posts about this year’s thrilling and entertaining six nations championship, which opened on 2 February and closed yesterday, with an imperious Wales putting young pretenders England to the sword at Cardiff and dashing their hopes of the Grand Slam and the Championship. In passing, Italy beat France and Ireland and showed a strong England at Twickenham that this team has to be taken seriously. Scotland played with great heart and throughly deserved their third place finish. There were so many contrasts and passages of brilliant play that the commentators produced a bumper crop of figures of speech. My favourite simile came from Jeremy Guscott, at half time between England and Scotland on 2 February. Both teams had a brilliantly ferocious first half, with furious attack matched by just as furious defence. It was, said Guscott, ‘like watching gladiators play chess.’ As always, there are parallels and metaphors in sport. My favourite in this championship came from the 24 February match between Scotland and Ireland at Murrayfield. The Irish camped out near the Scottish tryline and were 8-0 up at half time. Despite keeping the pressure on for most of the remainder of the match, the Irish could not convert their chances and Scotland won the match 12-8, through four penalties. There are times in life when all we seem to do is to defend, defend, defend, but the moral of that match is that even rare opportunities can be enough if the defence is strong and the chances, when they come, are recognised and taken.

Marelle/Play Time/Ars Musica 2013

Martin — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 21:39:59 +0000

To the Maison de la création – Centre culturel Bruxelles Nord (the former Laeken town hall) this evening for one of the parcours in this Ars Musica event. We’d come to see a friend, Pauline Claes, singing in an extract from John Adams’s opera, I was looking at the ceiling and then I saw the sky. The Song about the bad boys is a wonderfully lively, jazzy, gospelly infectiously cheerful piece (three voices and a piano). It was but an aperitif for our musical evening. We were led by a guide from floor to floor and room to room and treated to a series of short performances. Thus, we saw Louis Preudhomme play Eric Sammut’s Ameline (marimba); Myriam Graulus and Pascale Simon play Joji Yuasa’s Interpénétrations (two flutes); Laurent Houque play Mladen Tarbuk’s Danza di corde (violin); Kobe Van Cauwenberghe play Fausto Romitelli’s Trash TV Trance (electric guitar); and, to round the evening off, Josep-Maria Balanyà conducted the Dizôrkestra in Improvisations (an exercise in sound painting for voices and instruments). The clips are from what I could find on You Tube, but they give an idea about how rich and varied the evening was. As for the venue, the former Hotel Communal, built in 1907, is an imposing piece of civic architecture. The central staircase sports panels urging ‘L’obstination, l’emportement, le courage, la meditation, l’exaltation, l’inspiration’, and I spotted the following Condorcet quote under an art deco painting in one of the grand rooms; ‘Dans la domaine des sciences, la perfectibilité humaine est indéfinie.’