A standard account of the events of ’68 in France might focus around the release of potential; there was no classic revolution but the emergence of a culture of self realisation, one with important ethical and political impact. These same events were criticised at the time and since as self-indulgent and a threat to social stability. Such commentaries were, largely, the terrain of the right. Today, whilst such a critique still exists in some senses, by and large the right has assimilated the major part of the ideas that might be identified as of ‘68 (leaving aside one: that it is a threat to social stability although this still functions as a good marketing device). Continue reading “’68 is a lovely name for a baby”
a crafting of practice
I was speaking with a group of asylum seekers and refugees this evening. I had brought along a tin of corned beef but the little thing you use to twist/turn the top off was missing. An Iranian man, Ali, used a knife to cut the top open. All the while I was thinking how difficult it would be to explain the scene from Two Men in Boat when they struggle with comic results to open a tin of pineapple chunks when they have no tin opener. It proves impossible I believe.
Another man, Souley, was laughing at the goings on and Ali asked what a prehistoric person would do faced with such a tin. Souley misunderstood and said that there were no tins around in prehistoric times. Ali repeated the problem. Still in my mind were the two men in a boat attacking the pineapple chunks with a boat oar.
Then Souley said ‘I know how to do it. You rub it like this [and he rubbed it against the floor fast]. You keep doing this on this end [he indicated the end with the projecting lip], it will come off. Not this end [indicating the other], it doesn’t work. We used to do this with milk cans when I was a child. We’d open them up and make cars and things with them’.
That was a crafting of a practice if ever there was one.
tolerating fascists
The daughter of a friend, 13 years old, was talking to me about history at the weekend. She has been studying the inter-war years and the rise of German fascism. She told me that she had made herself unpopular in an discussion with her friends afterwards because (she said something like) she had not found Hitler that bad. Continue reading “tolerating fascists”
it’s certainly not essex
David Essex is appearing in a show at the Lyceum, Sheffield. I’ve not seen it and pretty sure I won’t. I assume it has some cheery dance scenes, young performers, period music and reflective voice of Now Old David.
The poster announces that the show is “direct from London’s West End” which means what? That it is big but not spectacular enough to stay there?
Why? That is what I thought. Why does he want to rerun this story nearly forty years later?
super 8 (2011)
Set in 1979, the film Super 8 can be read as an allegory of the American civil rights movement. The allegory is caught up in the web of a small time psychological drama. I am concerned at the way film offers grief and anger at slavery and racism as a subset of internal psychological issues.
being normal
For the past few months I’ve been accompanying a young man, originally from Zimbabwe, to the Borders Agency office in Vulcan House, near the river Don in Sheffield. It is an area that was redeveloped over the past ten years with a host of residential flats and offices being built with river frontage. It has never really appealed to me as an area, the design of the buildings always felt substandard. I didn’t have occasion to visit the area except to walk or ride along the riverside on the path until I was asked to go along with this young man.
southwold sheds
I visited Southwold, near my ex-parents-in-law last weekend. As I drove into the coastal area of northern Suffolk from the west I noticed two things: the appearance of Union Jacks in a couple of places and the presence in practically every village I passed of an independent butcher. The town itself is on the sea and has, along with the whole area, a very wealthy population. Down along the creek where a river flows in, I drove past dozens and dozens of these old sheds.
Some had been smartened up but many were ramshackle, selling fish or being used as storehouses for the fishing that still goes on from the dozens of small jetties opposite. I was told the village on the other side of the creek is the most expensive in the area, practically impossible to buy a property there. Yet here were these shacks, small businesses operating from some of them.
I assume that the wealth of the area has allowed some of the older trades to survive as effectively service trades.
the consumer is the consumed
I was talking to a friend yesterday evening and he mentioned that Facebook was for sale, or was it being floated, not sure. Impressed buy the high valuation he had heard reported we discussed how Facebook made money. He spoke about the value of information relating to the likes and dislikes of the members of Facebook which was saleable commercial knowledge. His main point however was that he found the inversion fascinating whereby the customer of Facebook had become the product itself. He said this as if it was something particular to Facebook or perhaps by implication more broadly to contemporary web business practices.
I suggested that his point was a perfect example of a philosophical statement and it seemed that this was the general situation pertaining to all commodities – the consumer becoming the consumed. It may even apply to collecting wild fruits but certainly with loaves of bread the producer becomes the baker, there may even be a discreet set of desires that are proper to the bread maker. The car I own was not made for me to drive but for me to buy to drive, the emphasis on buying being the point here: clothes are made for us. The consumable item makes the consumer, we take on aspects of identity that come with the items we believe we are consuming. Continue reading “the consumer is the consumed”
christ the worker
I was in Truro yesterday morning and I saw a painting. It is in the Chapel of Christ the Worker in Truro Cathedral. It really caught my attention because it was so well set in that realist art of the thirties. I love the way it remarks the Soviet realism of the period and found it hugely enjoyable to see. So it is a crafting of a practice isn’t it? It must be. I was laughing to myself in a sort of post-theological way, thinking that the painting is imagined to avoid the sanctimonious praise of figuring the rich and powerful in religious art (as in the Italian renaissance etc) and showing us the workers at their toil. Maybe it was sensed as somehow revolutionary even at the time with its echoes of the Soviets. However she was adumbrating, indicating before its time, the descent of the church to a point that it is only by offering images of the poor (and noble) that the church is validated in a very material, financial way. You don’t get lottery grants by promising to be nice to the local Dukes do you???
institutes
There is a great wealth of institutes in Cornwall. The countryside is densely populated compared to many areas of rural Britain, there were so many small mining communities that there are Insitutes dotted all over the place. These two are nearby. I know nothing about them as yet, I’ve seen them for years. The first one is now a garage and was at one time I am told a snooker club, apparently there is a history of it but I have yet to locate it:
The second is being restored and is near one of the entrances to the Heartlands Project in Pool. I’ll write more about that later. Anyway, nice buildings and homes of learning and self improvement, I assume…
