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Eastern Eye London Rd; Painted Ladies, Roundhill Crescent

Wednesday 27th May. Grey, cold and wet. . .

. . .but yesterday, between showers, the sun came out. An influx of Painted Lady butterlfies, something I haven't seen for years, ten or a dozen of them, playing and feeding around Val's red valerians.

Update on the Another London Rd affair: Sunday, with Tarquin's help, Peter and I leafleted, to let the people know about the Council's consultation document, coming to this address soon. Up the hill and down the hill, then we all went to lunch at the Eastern Eye, to reward ourselves suitably*. It's important that plenty of people tell them that we want regeneration, but on a human scale: and for the work to be done incrementally, with minimum disruption. The Council's position is predictable: Tescos will provide "environmentally friendly" sweeteners downstream, if they get planning permission for their wacking big Stalinist project and huge carpark, and that should shut everybody up. But the pollution, the creation of a barren hinterland for the Superstore, the destruction of small businesses, and incidentally the defiance of the Council's own development guidelines will remain the same.

So please, if you are reading this and are local, make the effort.

*Anyway, Eastern Eye, London Road Brighton 07830204778/01273685151: an undiscovered gem, excellent South Indian food, original dishes, friendly service best Masala Dosa I've tasted in a long time. The only Indian restaurant in the area, if not in our city, that I'd reccommend.

Shostakovich

Tuesday 26th May. Rain.

[The New Shostakovich, Ian MacDonald, revised and with notes by Raymond Clarke, Random House 2006]

(Draft: Less later)

Shostakovich was born in Petrograd in 1906. His family were middleclass, educated, mildly revolutionary in sympathy; connections were more actively anti-Tsarist political. In 1917 he was in the crowds who saw Lenin arrive at the Finland station and was caught up in the euphoria (long afterward he denied this, but I bet it's true. Ten years old, with his family background. Why wouldn't he have been excited?). He was a child prodigy, his first symphony premiered in Leningrad in 1926 to instant acclaim, and recognition that here was an extraordinary, world-class talent. In the early thirties he wrote an opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk, about an "ordinary Russian family, they beat and poison one another. . .", with a free and defiant rural Soviet heroine (whose principles Shostakovich seems genuinely to have embraced) whose genius is that she breaks free from the petty oppression of bullies, and slaughters her male chauvinist oppressors. In 1936, in the opening phase of the Stalinist purges, he received a severe reprimand from the Party for this anarchic work, at a time when reprimand was a whisker away from a sentence of death; or "disappearence" avant le lettre. His response was his Fifth Symphony, subtitled "A Soviet Artist's Response To Just Criticism", which passed the censor, and was acclaimed world wide despite strange inconsistences in texture and tone; but was in fact a coded message, that the Russian people understood if no one else did. In the slow movement, the premiere audience heard the ticking away of midnight vigils, waiting for the Secret Police to knock on the door, they heard the suppression of their fear and grief, the deadening pervasive torment of constant suspicion, and when the bombastic, blaring final movement took over they all knew very well that this was not triumphalism but daring and bitter satire. They broke down in tears. They gave the composer a rapturous ovation. (Personality cult style success, to the extent of a highly dangerous standing ovation, was to greet many of Shostakovich's works).

But he walked the line, and despite a couple of further minatory brushes with the authorities he remained for his entire career the Composer Laureate of the Soviet Union, Stalin's Poster Boy, saying what he had to say, when interviewed by Western journalists on cultural trips abroad. When the pressure became too great he'd write music he knew he could never publish and put it away, and then turn in another bland innocuous socialist realism movie score. In 1975 he died of lung cancer, in an odor of Soviet sanctity. In 1979, someone called Solomon Volkov produced a work called "Testimony", published in New York, which he claimed was Shostakovich's secret autobiography, that turned everything on its head and revealed a suppressed, passionate dissident. "Testimony" has had a chequered history. Naturally Western music critics, of whatever political persuasion, didn't like being told they'd been fooled into accepting satire as pure music: naturally Communist and even some Left Wing intellectuals were furious at the slur on Russian culture. But though the authenticity of the "autobiography" has been convincingly rubbished, the "New Shostakovich" is now almost universally accepted as the real composer. Maxim Shostakovich (once he was free to speak without endangering lives of family members) has said of Testimony, "this is a book about my father, not by my father, but it gives a true picture of his life". . .


Many musicologists, even so, were unable to believe Shostakovich had devoted his towering abilities to such a weird, secret life. What? One of the greatest composers of the C20 (probably, possibly, the greatest, and he distorted every single line of his music with the secret message "STALIN STINKS". It's not possible! We know Beethoven had a crush on Napoleon and then repented of it, in public, but it was only part of the music. Shostakovich's first priority has to have been self-expression. Deep down, all great artists are selfless egotists (to coin a phrase), they don't traduce themselves. . . Glasnost came along, and the staggering extent of Stalin's Terror was finally, by degrees, revealed. "Testimony" was no longer implausible. And yet, by the way, you'll still find furious Communists, denouncing the New Shostakovich idea all over the net, check it out.

The New Shostakovich was a shock to the system. My music student son has been taught the New Shostakovich line (I checked); me, I was just curious. Long ago, I'd dismissed the man as one of the C20 Big Composers whose work was just never going to interest me. A wannabe Art of Noise merchant, prevented by politics from embracing Modernism, but making up for it with blaring, crude and clumsy dissonance in a Classic mode. Then Gabriel started playing the Preludes and Fugues (Op 87, 1950-51), beautiful, complex, serene and challenging. I loved them, and that made me wonder. . . I never read a biography that left me so interested, and yet so unsatisfied as this one. I immediately decided I'd better read Robert Conquest's "The Great Terror". R. Conquest is a pickle: a complete nutcase on the subject of how he would rule the world (a ginormous Superstate called the Anglosphere, in case you don't know: which would run the entire world, with the President of the USA as CEO, and the Queen of England as, well, Our Queen, God bless her). Also a superb investigative historian, who told the truth about Stalin forty years ago, and has since Glasnost revised and filled out the picture. "The Great Terror" is not for the fainthearted, it's a relentless, endless mass of grim facts and forgettable names, but it did give me insights on the Shostakovich enigma.

My parents (my father died recently, aged 98) were there at the time. They were Manchester Socialists in thirties, forties, fifties, they had no illusions about the Show Trials, and didn't pass any illusions on. Anyway, by the time I left school. I'd read 1984, I'd read Animal Farm. Darkness At Noon was required reading, alongside the Communist Manifesto, at my alma mater. Yet they walked, and taught me by example I suppose, the art of walking a complicated line, the art of being a Socialist, and voting the way you ought, while knowing that your leaders were to some extent corrupt (it's the nature of the beast); that the Great Socialist State over the water was a hellhole; and that many daft idealist local plans (such as the National Health Service without means testing), were bound to end in disaster. But there's a lot in Conquest that I didn't know, particularly the chunks of transcript from the Great Trials, the weirdly moving public confessions of Great Men who had finally been caught in the maw of their own hellish system. Some of them, between the stirrup and the ground, actually appear to have come to their senses under torture. They confessed, with unsettling conviction, to the "invented" crime of decades of secret sabotage; they confessed to wrecking their country.

Shostakovich didn't choose the role he played. If he'd known what was coming he'd surely have fled, but he was genuinely a socialist artist, and then it was 1930 and it was too late. So he walked a line, staying alive, never revealing his true feelings about the regime; trying not to denounce anyone, much. Same as most people of his class. But he was Shostakovich, so he allowed himself to remain a Great Soviet Artist, Stalin's pet composer, so that he could go on writing music, and being heard, at the global level he knew that he deserved; that the world deserved. No wonder he had a real breakdown when he was finally coerced into becoming a Party Member (1960); a fate than many another secret dissident had accepted with resignation. He'd survived for so long, hanging onto his selfless egotism, with honour as he believed, but in the end they beat him. They made him "sell out".

So what about the music? It hasn't changed, it's still weirdly inconsistent, sombre one minute, gruesomely jovial the next. It's still mostly programme music, not pure music, and "full of quotations" (and I think that's not coerced in either case). But surely music that can't be heard right without knowledge of a particular, isolated historical context is doomed to die? Hm. All art has historical context, and somehow the Illiad gets by. And Stalin's Russia was hardly an isolated phenomenon. Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Rwanda, Bosnia. . . And the Western Powers, who let Stalin's Russia happen because, cut the humanitarian crap, Hitler was more of a threat to "our" territories? Do you remember that secret WWII Allied pact to sacrifice Poland, to get themselves a following wind, that I fictionalised with the imaginary codeword Iphegenia in Band of Gypsys? I didn't make it up.


In the C20, Big Music moved to Russia. . . I didn't used to believe that. Movie scores, ballets, Rach2 okay, but what about the Modernists? What about Benjamin Britten? I think I'm going to have to change my mind. Listen to the Fifth. Listen to the music of the C20, the difficult, grievous, harsh, immortal music of the century when "we" reached our peak.









ATP, Sad to say. . .

Monday 25th May, downpour in the morning, fine and warm this afternoon.

ATP, sad to say, turned out a bit of a bust for us. We'd signed up aeons ago, and watched the bands we'd never heard of added to the roster without disquiet. The Breeders, post-punk, thrashy, female-ordered, what could go wrong? Unfortunately, let me see, we didn't like the music, the weather was cold and atrocious, the food on site was not cheap, not cheerful but uniformly DISGUSTING: which depressed me, to think of the poor holidaymakers, and the Butlins camp itself not as quirky and cute as you might think. Late at night, the rabbits grazed in the security lighting, and we prowled the ranks of chalets, wondering whether to go and see if anyone else had yet braved the stone-empty dance venue. . . Throwing Muses were very good on Friday. Saturday (aside from a dullish 0:0 title-clincher on Sky tv) highlichts were Teenage Fan Club, nothing special, & a disappointing set from the curators, who have grown up and cosy and do a capella alt-folk songs not very well.

Sunday, cheered by truly dreadful weather, we walked to the harbour, ate whitebait & crab, drank Doom Bar, visited the seamen's chapel and discovered, oh,the mines are in Wales across the channel, coalships used to dock here. Lying on the beach, in a gap between showers, engaged in sky-gazing yoga, we debated just going for a nice walk, but happily decided to stick it out. Melt Banana, Soft Pack, The Foals (we already knew about them) all good, and Gang of Four were great, did a terrific set. Worth the price of admission? Not really, they were playing Brighton on Friday 15th.

Maybe it's a refuge for ageing or wimpy Glasto fans, but if Reading was more to your choice when you were young enough, then ATP fest-under-cover may not be for you. Ah, well. It's nice to get out.

And back to the Commons snouts-in-trough shock horror. For heaven's sake. The idea that this Parliament is even moderately high on the historic scale of corruption at Westminster is absurd. Just shows you what gets "us" going, and what "we're" happy to ignore. Destroy their civil liberties, they couldn't care less. Show the great British public an unarmed citizen apparently clubbed to death by the police in broad daylight on the streets of London, and they aren't scared at all. A wooden duckhouse has them in a feeding-frenzy, baying for blood, defecting to the BNP, demanding a General Election. Money, money, money. Nothing else matters.

Just you wait. You'll see.

Reading: still Robert Conquest, but I've finished The Illiad in French and started the Odyssey in French. So now I know (I never could get into the English versions there are around). Fantastic. I'm not surprised that untold generations have been knocked out by the Illiad; and charmed to have learned that the traditions of adventure fantasy were in place back in Homer's day. And more than likely in the Bronze Age setting of this historical romance as well. We haven't changed. You'd have to go back a long, long way to find a viewpoint that isn't "ours". Certainly way further back than recorded text. Always, already bemoaning the hideous inequity and brutal evils of war with one hand, celebrating the glories and dwelling with detailed relish on gory injuries with the other. Achilles, weeping, with his murderer's hands, arranges his friend and lover's body on the bier. . .*

The Odyssey is very different. Same author? Why not? But of course, one of the things I've learned is that the Illiad is not intact, bears signs of multiple authors and editiors, and "Homer" is a catch-all, like saying "God" or "Moses" wrote the scriptures. There's a tradition the Odyssey was authored by a woman, on account of the domestic details, but I don't know about that. Possibly, why not, the "Homer" author thought to himself, the war book was cool, but now I'd like to get home and street with these people, take them down the shipyards, see what they used for door-latches and so on.

*Apparently, in Plato's day the Athenians tied themselves in knots trying to figure out which of this pair was the “erastes” and which the “eromenos”, as they couldn't imagine a homosexual relationship that wasn't pederastic. Later generations tied themselves in same trying to see only chaste manly affection.

Did you know that hetarios originally meant companion, not whore? But I got that from Wikipedia, so don't quote me.

Thick Cloud, thick head

Wednesday 13th May thick cloud, wind has dropped.

Thick cloud lying low over the valley, from Roundhill to Racehill, and no doubt the whole of Brighton. The swifts came out to hawk about ten thirty, like pondskaters on a grey puddle, and now they're dots, far away in the gulf outside my window. King Death's Garden, (I never knew my storybook got a mention in the Festival tourguide talk: non omnis moriar, eh) now in full leaf, a richer green against the dull sky. I like this weather, damp May much better than bitter May, but I'll like it less in Minehead at the ATP Breeders curated weekend, which promises to be a rain fest all the way to Sunday, and I already have an annoying blurry tiring cold in my head. That's ATP as in All Tomorrow's Parties by the way, not the energy molecule.

Many thanks to Jacqueline Sell and Dorothy Stringer School library. The price of your copies of King Death's Garden has been donated to the AI campaign for freedom of the press in Azerbaijan. Unfortunately, I have no more spare copies of this title.

The downloads: you're welcome, Ben. Midnight Lamp coming real soon.

Reading: Robert Conquest's The Terror; still following the Shostakovich trail.
And The Price Of Spring, Daniel Abraham, which finally landed last week.

Work related: have finally signed off the PS Publishing collection "Grazing The Long Acre". Who knows, it may even go on sale this year. Or next. Have also finished Ann Halam Gothic, Grasshopper, at last!

What's that alternate image in the entry header? It's a detail from a photo of a poppy field, my friends.

Bold As Love

Monday 11th May, bright sun, blustery wind, no rain!

Peter's added the downloads of the first two Bold As Love books to the Rock And Roll Reich pages, and here's a link: Bold As Love. & I've finally got round to making permanent links to that site and my content site: just scroll down the righthand sidebar. If you have the sound turned on, that's Gabriel playing I Vow To Thee My Country , on Spanish guitar, long ago.

The swifts

Cold, grey and blustery.

Yesterday started fair, but the sea wrack moved in during the afternoon, with a cold breeze. BY 6pm, the wrack, thick as custard, down to the treetops across the valley, I saw the first of the swifts, skating and tossing around up there in the blustery grey. Three of them this morning. They're back, one more year.

Real Festival weather. Today, out to Queen's Road in the afternoon, to talk-up the newly discovered lost John Wyndham novel for the BBC. A treat for Wyndham completists, clearly foreshadowing his best books, it's good fun in its own right after the first few pages, which are marred by a dodgy US accent.

As is well known, Wyndham tried to dissociate himself from sf, fearing the ghetto effect. But how influential he has been, in the end: particularly on UK genre tv and movies. Apocalypse with ordinary characters, hoping they'll have somewhere to sleep and something to eat. Clueless blokey heroes (who are never revealed to be the secret child of the Evil Emperor's security chief)*; with kind, competent girlfriends. Nobody knows anything, and the deep need to squabble that possesses any group of people, in any fraught situation, proves the triumph of the human spirit. . . Shaun of the Dead is a Wyndham cosy catastrophe. I like 'em.

*I tell a lie. The ordinary bloke hero of "Plan For Chaos" does indeed prove to be a close connection of the World Domination evil genius. He doesn't exactly take this ball and run with it, however.

Something intelligent

Wednesday 6th May, cold night, same sun through overcast in the morning, still no swifts.

I've had a bit of a sniffle all this week, touch of a runny nose, watery eyes. D'you think I should report myself to the government?

What's that Gordon old chap? Did someone whisper in your shell-like that now would be a good time to talk-up a pandemic, cut down on the space for talking about hm, other things? Cram the early evening news with long discussions about coughs and sneezes spread diseases?

No, this is something intelligent to say about swine flu: and something intelligent to be done about the disgusting global mess from which our tasty cheap food is extracted. It's factory farming of course. Remember that Bernard Matthews (amusing slip corrected here, corporate meatgrinder the dirty shameless old comedian eh?) thing about turkeys and bird flu, two years ago? What happened about that? Nothing, except the advertising got a greenwash, and here we are again. "Smithfield farms of Virginia say there's no sign of swine flu at their huge Mexican facility" Local reports beg to differ. . . Unsafe, filthy, hideously cruel. One day there might be real trouble. No, there already is real trouble. This is the real trouble, the death by inches that we're all aware of, and that we whisper about to ourselves in code, through all our longings for a proper big scare. Please God, we have no willpower, send us a big, terrifying pandemic, it's our only hope. . .

I stick to outdoor reared, local reared pork products, of course. And so do you, dear reader, I am sure. All the cool restaurants are doing it! (or pretending to, bless em, the H&C trade doesn't change). But suppose you can't afford that, or suppose you're one of the well-off helpless, and can't get it together to do anything but fatten Corporate Food shareholders and trust, implicitly, the early evening news? Then your only hope is that people with more resistance will make an impression, and world food production will change its ways. From each according to their abilities. Here's AVAAZ on the subject, check it out:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/swine_flu_pandemic

Bank Holiday Weather


Tuesday 5th May, sun building through overcast.

An improvement on yesterday, which was really nasty cold, grey, mean Bank Holiday weather. My friend Maude calls to tell me about heavy-handed policing at the EDO demonstration in town. There's previous between the police around here and the protestors against the EDO weapons factory, going back at least a decade, it's a fixture. The police will be out in amazing numbers, they will get heavy, and a Carnival Atmosphere doesn't impress them at all. Their minds have been made up. Tell me something new, please. Tell me the police and the EDO protestors have agreed to make peace, and embark on a relationship of mutual respect, and I'll have to start looking hopefully for other green shoots of recovery. Or flying pigs.

Saw In The Loop last week, the movie of the series, both of which might well be subtitled "This Is What Puerile Means" or "Single Sex Education Is Bad For Boys". I'm sure it's true that the corridors of power are populated by loud foul-mouthed bullies and clueless little opportunists. I'm sure it's not true that the only girls who've strayed onto the scene can do nothing but stand around looking pained (except when disgracing themselves by bleeding inappropriately in public). But the fact that this team can't cope with Condoleezza Rice, Harriet Harman, Jacqui Smith & their like isn't going to make those beauties disappear. Intermittently amusing.

Also watched Eyes Without A Face George Franju 1960. Wonderfully creepy, and stuffed with quotations; or so it seems, this movie has inspired so many. One of my better Love Film picks.

No swifts. They should be here, but have been as late as the 9th in recent years. Hope they make it.