She might be in Tangiers

This blog has gone on holiday for a couple of weeks.  You can have a taste of the fun it's having by clicking this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_w3UG6C_Mo

Love is what you need

I love everything in the Tracey Emin show – I’ve been twice now, and although the shock's gone the second time, the deep and poignant truths are just as strong.

I love her blankets with their intimate personal tales told in cramped handwriting; I love her fluorescent phrases glowing from the walls; her line drawings, as fragile and vulnerable and broken as their subject matter and her extraordinary artefacts, her chairs, beds, sofas, boxes.

But I’m going to pick out three things, two are films and the other is … hard to describe.

Why I Didn’t Become a Dancer, is one of those stories that speak of despicable injustice that turns it into triumph.  Tracey describes her early teenage in Margate and how at 13 she started having sex with older men.  It was free and fun, as indeed, by the sound of it, was she.  And then at 15 it started not being so much fun.  She was disillusioned both with these older men who shouldn’t have let her do all this, and fed up with Margate, and turned to dance as her escape.  She entered a disco competition which might have catapulted her away from the tedium of her seaside town.  It was going well, the audience was loving her, clapping, cheering, she knew she was going to win, then she heard a group from the audience and they were shouting, Slag Slag Slag.  Humiliated, she fled.

The film moves forward.  Tracey is dancing to You Make Me Feel, in an grand empty room, while the voiceover lists the boys’ names, “Shane Eddy Tony Doug Richard …this one’s for you.”  Tracey has transported herself into the stratosphere of fame and fortune, by talent, hard work, determination and personality, while they will still be strapped to the grim ordinariness of their lives, arguing with their girlfriends, shouting at their kids, hard up, no prospects, same low level misogynist attitudes skulking around their ugly heads.  Dressed in cut offs and a red shirt as if she’s just popped in off the street, a portable CD player in the corner, the clinching beauty is her smile.  She remembers the names of these men who should have known better, and they are, right now, the reason for her success.

The second piece I adore is the conversation that plays on the tiny TV set in the corner of the main gallery.  It’s between Tracey and her mum, presented artlessly, no interviewer, just someone with a camera, a little table and some chocolates.  Only four people can share this at one time, from headsets.  We are in the front room with them.  Mum is telling Tracey she would have been disappointed if Tracey had had children. It’s complicated, unusual, multilayered, touching truths that belong to all women.  But this piece of the conversation delighted me:

Mum:  If a cat slows you down, what would a baby do?

Tracey: You can get on a plane with a baby.  You can’t get on a plane with a cat.

Mum: Non-plussed silence

Tracey:  A baby grows up and makes you a cup of tea – a cat can’t do that.

Mum:  Are you sure about that Tracey – are you sure about that?

And lastly, The History of Painting Part 1 - used tampons, one little blackening thing in each of four perspex boxes, resting on a piece of toilet paper.  I’m not sure what it’s about, except it’s linked with pregnancy tests and abortion.  But I loved it, for its sheer brass neck. 

I just want to let you know ...

Teachers nowadays are encouraged to send motivating notes to their students just before their GCSEs.  The purpose, I presume, is to give the kid a last boost of feel-good before the big day, a pat on the back for all their hard work.  What a lovely idea.

I found out about these when clearing out my son’s room, discovering one of them in his bin.  It was a postcard, the first words I just want to let you know… were pre-printed. 

This is what the teacher had written next:   “…that you have been very lazy but if you learn the key words you should be able to get a decent grade in the exam.”

There is a sub-text to this, about the curriculum, playing into the hands of those that argue (I am amongst them, actually) that GCSEs and the modular curriculum is a dumbing down, that the stuff they have to learn is banal, boring and largely basic.  But what I tackled him about was the main event.  “Lazy!!??” I screeched.  "But I thought – you told me – don’t you realise how important these – your future - blah blah water off a ducks back blah – you said you’d pulled your socks up - blah." 

“I have,” he said, in his laconic drawl, and to prove it he fished out another of the notes he’d received and read it out to me:

“Dear [identity protected for legal reasons]

I just want to let you know that although at times you seem half asleep and ask me questions that make me worry, you have been a pleasure to teach and deserve to do very well in your exams.”

Again, there was a glaring sub-text – or not so much that, but a irreconcilable paradox. I mean, how can a kid like that be a) a pleasure to teach, and/or b) deserve to do well - very well?

"And you're trying to convince me this is proof that you’ve mended your low down ways?" I wailed.  "Don't you realise – blah – future – education opportunity – how many times do I have to - university very competitive – water off duck’s back – blah – nothing worthwhile you don't have to work for  – blah."

He looked at the note again, then at me, raising his shoulders, holding out his palms in that way that signals, how come you can't even understand this?

“Half asleep,” he said, “not actually asleep.  Seem,” he said, “not are.”  He paused to check the text.  "At times," he said, "not always."

"But that doesn't make any sense," I shrieked.  "How can you - what do you ...?"  And that was the point when I realised that the contradiction was reconcilable afterall, and that he'd demonstrated exactly how in the last couple of minutes. 

Cutting the Apron Strings

The Jane Shilling memoir I read a while back and reviewed here http://penelopeoverton.blogspot.com/2011/06/what-i-am-currently-reading-jane.html  got me  thinking about the process of letting children grow go, and what a complicated and intricate business it is.  We might think we have, but have we, can we? 

So, I thought I'd put together some questions, to see how well I was doing at letting my fledglings fly.    

1.       You are going back to work, leaving your baby with a childminder for the first time.  Do you:

a)      Fuss over him, eventually ringing the office to say you’ll have to start the next day?

b)      Throw your arms up in triumph – at last, the first bit of freedom you’ve had in six months?

c)       Leave quickly, and fall apart in the car.  You’re a thousand times more upset than he is?

2.       Your sixteen year old starts going out with a man your own age?  Do you:

 a)      Lock her in her bedroom at night, and insist on chaperoning her to school?

b)      Move out of your own bedroom on the grounds that he’ll be wanting the ensuite?

c)       Leave magazine articles around the house featuring Ron Wood and Hugh Hefner?

3.       How do you respond when your seven year old comes home from school and says everyone’s been invited Rosa’s party, except her – do you:

a)      Ring up all the parents involved, insist on a meeting with the families, the teacher, the head teacher, social services, the police and the local press?

b)      Tell her to get a grip.  When you were a kid, no one even had parties?

c)       Ask her if there’s anything else she’d like to do that day, and keep your sleepless, weeping nights to yourself, and make a mental note not to invite that child back?

4.       Your fifteen year old son wants to go on holiday with his mates, but he’s got no money.  Do you:

a)      Say absolutely not.  Holidays are for families? 

b)      Give him a few hundred quid, and say go and enjoy yourself.  It means seven days without him – that’s too good an offer to miss?

c)       Tell him you can find him plenty of work, weeding, chopping wood, mowing grass, cleaning bathroom and will pay him £3 per hour.  When he argues minimum wage, you remind him he’s too young to qualify but you agree to the rise if he gets on with the job without moaning.  Then you round up the hours from 3 to 6, and give him a bit extra because you can't believe he’s done such a good job?

5.       Your daughter makes an appointment to see the doctor, without reference to you.  Do you:

a)      Ring the nurse, she’s the cousin of your next door neighbour’s best friend.  She’s bound to be able to find out what the problem is?

b)      Ask her outright – you’re her mother, you have a right to know?

c)       Say nothing unless invited?  Actually, you've got no choice.

6.       Your firstborn is nearly at the end of the first year of college.  Do you:

a)      Ring the tutor to check his coursework’s in on time and ask when the parents’ evening is?

b)      Sell the house, move into a one bed apartment somewhere exotic and far away?

c)       Pay their rent.  Given a choice, you’d rather they were hungry than homeless? 

7.       Your daughter will get the sack if she’s late again, and she’ll be late again if you don’t give her a lift.  Do you:

a)      Take her, even though it’ll make you late for your own job.  It’s your fault for not waking her earlier?

b)      Refuse, she had it coming?

c)      Take her, but make your irritation so clear she’ll never want to go anywhere with you and then charge her for the petrol?

8.       Your thirteen year old has been invited to a party where you know there’ll be alcohol.  Do you:

a)      On no account can she go, whatever promises she makes, whatever adults will be present, however important it is to her in terms of her friendship group.  No, that’s final.

b)      Tuck a bottle of vodka in her handbag?

c)      You don’t want to say no, because that will make her even more determined.  You don't want to sanction it by offering her a lift home, but you don't want her getting in some drunk teenage boy's car.  You don't want her staying the night, but it could be safer than coming back.  You ring another kid's mum to find out what they think.  They think the same as you.  Relax, look on the bright side.  The fact that she's told you where she's going is as much as you can expect.  And you won’t discover the half of what she’s got up to until she’s well into adulthood. 

How did you do?

Mostly a)  Your child will be tied to your apron strings till he’s 60.  Either that or you’re in for some serious fireworks.  Neither of these options is pretty.

Mostly b)  Remind me again, why did you have children in the first place?

Mostly c)   Sometimes you get it wrong, sometimes you get it right.  They'll survive, and hopefully you will too.

The First Love Story

Fantastic, I see that the poet, Glyn Maxwell has been commissioned to turn Paradise Lost into an Opera.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jun/14/seven-angels-milton-glyn-maxwell

I am not a fan of Opera.  I think perhaps it’s one of those early immersion pursuits and I’ve left it too late – it’s also dashed expensive - but I am a fan of Paradise Lost.  I feel about Milton very similarly to the way I feel about Bob Dylan - prepared to snap up greedily pretty much anything by or about, even if a lot of it misfires.


James Barry
Satan and his legions hurling defiance towards
the Vault of Heaven

I did book two for A Level.  It’s really good stuff.  Satan has been expelled from Heaven for insurrectional activities against God and he’s not happy about it at all.  Apart from the discomfort of the eternal fire, his pride is hurt.  His real torture is internal – a mind game that he’ll be playing till the end of time, destined to rebel, but knowing his attempt will come to nothing.  That’s why he picks on Adam and Eve.  If he can’t hurt God, then at least he can have a go at destroying God’s toys.

I won't deny some of it is boring.  For instance, the part where a sanctimonious Son of God chats with his Father about how man will fall and then be saved (by a sanctimonious Son of God), and Raphael telling Adam how the angels were thrown out of heaven - well it's not exactly Stephen King - but they are worth it to get to the parts that are, as Maxwell says, “I mean just – wow!”

To start with, there's the description of the Creation, (anyone who’s not prepared to accept the importance of this story, even as a myth, look away now). 

Let there be light, said God, and forthwith light

Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure

Sprung from the deep, and from her native east

To journey through the airy gloom began,

Sphered in a radiant cloud, for yet the sun

Was not; she in a cloudy tabernacle

Sojourned the while.  God saw the light was good;

And light from darkness by the hemisphere

Divided: light the day, and darkness night

He named.  Thus was the first day even and morn. 

Don't you think it makes the King James version read a bit like Janet and John?   

But Milton's triumph is to turn the Fall into the first love story.  Adam and Eve, blissful in Paradise, are tricked  by Satan.  Where the bible can only offer illogic or at best misogyny, Milton’s first couple fall because of the very instincts that make them human.  Eve is moved by her boredom as Adam’s sidekick, and he is persuaded by love.  There are so many passages I’d like to quote – Adam and Eve’s canoodling in the garden; her convincing him she wants to go further afield and get on with the gardening on her own; his reluctance, but he won’t forbid it:

Go, in thy native innocence, rely 

On what thou hast of virtue, summon all.  

But the passage I love above all the rest, that makes me weep every time I read it, is this.  It’s the moment when Eve returns from taking the apple and tells Adam what’s she’s done.  And then this:

Lucas Cranach  Adam and Eve

Adam, soon as he heard

The fatal trespass done by Eve, amazed,

Astonie stood and blank, while horror chill

Ran through his veins, and all his joints relaxed;

From his slack hand the garland wreathed for Eve

Down dropped and all the faded roses shed:

I was going to stop there, but just look at what happens next:

Speechless he stood and pale, till thus at length

First to himself he inward silence broke.

                O fairest of creation, last and best

Of all God’s works, creature in whom excelled

Whatever can to sight or thought be formed,

Holy, divine, good, amiable or sweet!

How art though lost, how on a sudden lost,

Defaced, deflowered, and now to death devote?

Masaccio
Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise

Adam has a choice:  Stay in paradise, eating mangoes and talking with the tame tiger, or disobey God and face death with Eve.  You’d think he’d want a few moments to make up his mind, after all he’s only known her a few days, but it takes him five lines:

Certain my resolution is to die;

How can I live without thee, how forgo

Thy sweet converse and love so dearly joined,

To live again in these wild woods forlorn?

Should God create another Eve, and I

Another rib afford, yet loss of thee

Would never from my heart; no no, I feel

The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh,

Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state

Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.

It’s tempting but cheapening it to say it’s Hollywood.  Opera is exactly the right medium.  And I like the sound of what Maxwell’s done to it.  But there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to beat the original. 

Another big mess the Tories are getting us into

I am dismayed that Ken Clarke’s modernising proposals for criminal justice have been shelved – if only the subject could be aired in a civilised and rational way, preferably with a gagging order on the Daily Mail, it might  have stood a chance.  But perhaps even more serious, are the proposed cuts to the Legal Aid budget which might save the Treasury £350m, but it will impoverish the country way beyond that saving.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/housing-network/2011/jun/22/legal-aid-cuts-slap-ordinary-families

The Justice Secretary says that legal aid will still be available for claims where people’s life or liberty is at stake, where they are at risk of serious physical harm, or immediate loss of their home, or where their children may be taken into care.  That’s certainly reassuring, but let’s just imagine a few other scenarios where it won’t any longer be available:

A woman goes into hospital for a routine hip replacement, contracts gangrene through the hospital’s negligence, which then requires further operations to rectify, resulting in a much longer recovery period, with considerable loss of earnings, and possibly a permanent disability requiring extra care and support, not to mention months, or years of further pain and suffering.

A building firm fails to erect its scaffolding properly and a worker falls, breaking his arm.  He’s an independent contractor, so if he can’t work, he isn’t paid.  It takes him 3 months to get fit to return. 

You’re a plumber and were contracted to do a lot of work on a flats conversion project.  You’ve been engaged in it for the best part of a year.  None of your invoices have been paid, you’ve been fobbed off with excuse after excuse and now you’ve had enough.  You threatened to take him to court and now the builder turns round and says your work was substandard.

There are thousands of scenarios like this, and more controversial ones – cases involving immigration, race, sex, disability discrimination, family cases where parents are locked into disputes over the children. 

Assuming you don’t have the money to take the case to court, you will have two choices – just put up with the injustice you’ve suffered, or try to do it yourself.  And this is where the proposals really fall down.  Countries that spend less on legal aid, spend considerably more on the court system, providing supporters, assistance and guidance to litigants in person to help them through the process.  That doesn’t happen here.  Litigants up till recently have been represented by someone who knows that they are doing, who speaks the language and understands the processes.  Litigants in person require a huge amount of hand holding.  Some judges will be prepared to help these people, but the net effect will be even more of a backlog, less certainty on timings, a clogging up of the system, which will, of course mean more costs.  Judge’s time doesn’t come cheap.

But the biggest loss will be to the moral and ethical foundation of the country; the UK will become a place where only the wealthy can enforce their rights. The victims of these cuts are ordinary people to whom bad things have happened, out of the blue, through no fault of their own.  They are not scroungers, they aren’t greedy, self-serving representatives of the litigation culture who will claim a few quid for stubbing their toe on the pavement, and we must not let the government, of the Daily Mail, persuade us that they are.   Think again, you Tories.  This is a crazy mistake.

Another cushion

This is my latest cushion creation, a present for my daughter's 19th birthday (yes, that daughter).  It's not a great reproduction, it looks better in the flesh.

The baby is Imogen at two, when she sang Maria from West Side Story all the way to the Loire, well, all the times she wasn't sucking on that tee shirt - the blue one it was called, but it was really a sort of dirty grey.  Later she played the pious nun (ironically), in the Sound of Music. 

In the background are the seven hills of Sheffield where she's off to university in September.  Also are car jokes, diving jokes, an Ahead Only sign (meaning onwards and upwards rather than don't come back), and a piece of pure joyous poetry from our mutually favourite genius.  It says:

May your heart always be joyful

May your song always be sung

And may you stay forever young

It's felt and fabric applique, embroidery, and as a homage to Tracey Emin, laundry marker on an scrap of sheet for the Dylan quote.

She loved it.