Category Archives: thoughtcat

Sliding into chaos

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According to a story on the BBC’s website today, Ry Cooder, the brilliant US slide guitarist and musicologist who assembled the legendary Cuban musicians for the Buena Vista Social Club record a few years ago, has been fined $100,000 by the US government under the – wait for it – “Trading With the Enemy” act. There has of course long been an embargo on US citizens having dealings with the Cubans, but this was temporarily lifted in Cooder’s case by Bill Clinton, who if he did nothing else at least recognised good music when he heard it. How totally impoverished must the soul of the current US administration be to fine Cooder at all, let alone under this law, at a time like this?

Elsewhere, Ananova reports that the politicians of Pennsylvania are wrangling over the “official state biscuit”. “The state Senate favours the chocolate chip cookie, but the House of Representatives wants the Nazareth sugar cookie,” reads the report. As a long-standing biscuit lover I deplore this abuse of biscuits in the so-called name of democracy. Only in America, as they say.

On beauty

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I’m currently trying to read Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine, which is beautifully written but maddeningly detailed (although that’s a bit like saying Woody Allen is neurotic). A recent Powell’s review of Baker’s new novel A Box of Matches highlighted the question of what makes things beautiful. This was strange because by coincidence “Alfie”, the classic 1966 Michael Caine film about the Cockney Lothario, was on TV the other night, I hadn’t seen it for years, and there’s a fantastic line about beauty near the end of that: “It ain’t through the eyes that you feel beauty; it’s how the heart hungers for something that makes it beautiful.” I think that stands up by itself, but what makes it even better is how it comes out of the mouth of a man you’d never expect to make that sort of observation.

Anyway, regarding Nicholson again, it was interesting to read that the main character is an early riser and likes to sit by an open fire and stoke it with apple cores and other items, because according to a recent Baker profile/interview in The Guardian, that is exactly how he goes about his writing (not chucking it on the fire, but getting up early, etc). This in turn reminded me of Russell Hoban, who often gives his main characters the same chaotic workroom full of books, videos, posters, stones, CDs and sheets of yellow paper that he himself lives and works in. Some people might say that starting with yourself, your own immediate person and environment, is a rather boring and unimaginative approach to writing, but anyone who’s tried to write will know it’s such a difficult, intense and lonely endeavour that you very often find yourself coming back to you – your abilities (or lack of them), your motivations, the fine details of your life – which, on the basis of truth being stranger than fiction, are not necessarily any less interesting than the sort of details you come up with off your own bat. Perhaps the test of this approach though is whether you can take off from the base of yourself into something completely separate from yourself, like a jazz musician launching from a set theme into an improvisation. This analogy was spontaneous but not arbitrary – I speak as a guitarist of nearly 20 years’ standing. The trouble is I often find myself writing like a guitarist, i.e. putting on a record, playing along for a bit, making a cup of tea, playing some more, putting on another record, making another cup of tea, and then finding that several hours have passed and I haven’t got any writing done… what’s it all about, eh, Alfie?

Sense of humour failure

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A really nice interview with Benjamin Zephaniah today in The Independent’s “You ask the questions” feature. Asked by one reader how he would disarm Saddam, he replies: “First, I wouldn’t have armed him in the first place. Britain went out of its way to sell arms to Saddam Hussein. I think we should be offering him a refund.” He also tells a bittersweet story about his only meeting with Tony Blair at some Foreign Office function a few years ago. Zephaniah gave a performance, and then Robin Cook gave an address. The two sat together afterwards and shared a joke ‘about how we [i.e. Cook and Zephaniah] worked really well as a team and should become a double act. So he introduced me to Tony Blair and said that we were going to go on tour together. Blair didn’t see the joke at all. He said something like, “You will do no such thing and you will report to my office tomorrow.”‘ In light of current events, it says it all, really.

On The Hours

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This afternoon we saw The Hours. A beautiful film with staggering performances, but almost unbearable to watch. Half-way through I was seriously thinking of leaving because I didn’t think I could take any more, that I’d be an emotional wreck for the rest of the week if I carried on. But I know from experience that that’s never the way to deal with things that crack you up: if you see it through to the end, you will recover, but if you run away before it’s finished the wound will stay open. True enough, walking out of the cinema, after a few tense minutes we felt fine again. It was nice to see some shots of Richmond in the Virginia Woolf sections of the film, even if she did say that great line, “From a choice between Richmond and death, I would choose death” – which incidentally was the only bit of the whole movie which got a laugh. K and I went and sat by the river with a cup of tea and considered Richmond and that line, and it conflated in my head with some of the ideas I’d had from Adaptation into the latest in a long line of semi-autobiographical stories about a frustrated young writer living in Richmond who chooses life, people. Although of course now he’d be less young than in previous, similar synopses…

Creatively adapting

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So many great films on at the moment that it’s difficult to fit them all in. Couldn’t decide whether to see Adaptation or The Hours this weekend so we bought tickets for both. Saw Adaptation late tonight at the Odeon Studio in Richmond and loved it to pieces. The scene in which panicky screenwriter Charlie Kaufman sits staring at his typewriter racking his brains for what to do is perfect: “Perhaps I should have coffee? That might help. No, I should write something first and then reward myself with coffee…” I also liked the fact that in that scene his electric typewriter is positioned not on a table but a chair, at what looks like a very uncomfortable angle, accentuating the difficulty he’s experiencing connecting with the act of writing. From the point of view of even an amateur writer like myself, the film is extremely inspiring and reassuring because it makes you laugh at your own dismal situation, a bit like Woody Allen does with relationships. I came out thinking anything was possible, which is surely the best feeling any work of art can produce in its audience.

Ignoramuses

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The governments the world over are now busy studiously “ignoring” all the demonstrations from Saturday. It really is hypocrisy of the highest order because the next time they want our votes they’ll be waving whatever carrots they can find under our noses. I don’t think people’s memories will be that short this time, though. Why don’t these dickheads just have it out between themselves in a boxing ring when it’s obvious that so many ordinary people don’t want to be part of their war? It seems clear to me that Tony Blair has had his day now. I guess the only problem is who’s going to replace him: would a new Labour leader really make a difference or would the party just eventually spin itself back up its own arse? The Tories are absolutely pointless, Duncan Smith the living definition of a platitude, and in any case I wouldn’t want them back in. Maybe Charles Kennedy’s ship really is coming in; could the Liberal Democrats really be The Third Way?

TV cookery is all wrong…

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We’ve got Martin Bashir grilling Michael Jackson, while Tony Benn slowly marinades Saddam Hussein. Surely it should be the other way around? Meanwhile, Tony Blair proves too slippery a fish even for a Paxo stuffing. Who’s going to step into the ring and make mincemeat of George Bush – “Laughing” Aynsley Harriott or “Naked” Jamie Oliver? Or could Delia Smith be persuaded to come out of her recently-announced retirement and give all these bananas a no-nonsense roasting? Yes – the global situation definitely requires the involvement of more women; Condoleeza Rice must not be allowed a monopoly. Too many men are spoiling the broth.

Proof of delivery

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The artist who sent himself up, from today’s Times, reports on an unemployed actor who posted himself to the Tate Britain in a wooden box. Dan Shelton said the idea came from the technique used by inventors who seal plans in a postmarked envelope to prove when they came up with a concept. Shelton and The Times should be aware that this technique is also used by certain writers as a cheap alternative to copyright registration: you send yourself a copy of what you’ve written and leave it unopened somewhere safe before sending it to a publisher or whoever, so that if someone else steals it and makes millions out of it you can prove the idea was in fact yours all along and sue them. Of course it’s all a bit vain because it presupposes that your idea is so brilliant that someone would want to rip you off, which nine times out of ten isn’t the case. Anyway, I hope Shelton made sure he was signed for, so that in the unlikely event that someone else claims to be him, he can sue them.

Shurely shave mishtake

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The Times reports today (“Close shaves beat death by whisker“) that “men who do not shave every day are 30 per cent more likely to die of heart disease and nearly 70 per cent more likely to have a stroke”, according to a study by the University of Bristol. Apparently this is to do with the fact that men who don’t shave regularly tend to lead more dissolute lives in general. The article ends with the mysterious observation that “men with beards were excluded from the survey”. Are the University of Bristol going to conduct a separate study of bearded men’s propensity to heart disease and strokes, or should it be understood that all men with beards are either guaranteed never to suffer from these ailments or are all about to pop their clogs? I think we (or they) should be told.