The Procession To Calvary

There is one painting which I can’t keep away from. I return to it time after time, peering at the fantastic tapestry of detail, trying to find yet another fascinating vignette. Then I step back from it to drink in the whole wonderful composition. The Procession To Calvary by Pieter Bruegel; and one day I must make a procession of my own to Vienna, where it hangs, to see the vast canvas in the flesh.

The Crucifixion was a standard subject for the sixteenth century, of course, and Bruegel includes some conventional aspects. The weeping Madonna supported by her friends; Christ marching onwards with his cross on his shoulder. But though Mary is in the foreground the eye is sucked past her to the sprawling procession itself. This is not the orderly march the title implies. It is the sprawling, uncoordinated tramp of a crowd, some on foot, some mounted, some hitching rides on carts. They are a diverse group and they look in a relaxed, semi-festive mood. Bruegel has shown us the Crucifixion not as the salvation of mankind but as a Saturday afternoon outing for ordinary Israelites. And of course, there is a small bit of trouble. If the whole painting has a focal point it is the apparent arrest of a man on the left hand side. With great realism, the scuffle is shown to have a ripple effect on the crowd; the ones connected with the man wailing and tugging at him, those on the edges merely turning their heads to gawp. Christ himself is in the very centre of the painting. But you have to peer to actually notice him, because none of the people seem to. They aren’t jeering him or flogging him. They aren’t interested in him at all. He just isn’t interesting enough.

Why does this painting work so well? Because we’ve all witnessed this scene ourselves. The supposed homogenous crowd which is really a series of fragmented units, the semi-checked anarchy, the colours and the clutter. We see when we head to every Bank Holiday fete or car boot sale. Bruegel inserted a windmill on a hill to make his Procession more immediate to his Dutch contemporaries, but the scene remains immediate to an age when the mills have all vanished. The people he painted are the same whether they are watching men being nailed to crosses or Christians being devoured by lions or yahoos humiliating themselves on Big Brother. They are us, basically. Society has only varied the forms; the impulses have remained the same.

Bruegel didn’t like people. He didn’t like them at all. His speciality was enormous compositions demonstrating in pitiless detail how wretched we all are. Witness also The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, a collection of grotesques mocking the supposed holy occasion, or The Blind Leading The Blind, a lurid allegory showing society dragging itself into the pit. But you don’t have to share his puritanical morality to empathise with his work. Paintings like The Procession To Calvary do not preach overtly. They simply aim to show us humanity for what it really is; a gaggle of self-absorbed pleasure seekers. And it’s hard to argue with him all that convincingly. If I had been in that crowd I would probably be watching the arrest too, not some bearded pacifist carrying a cross.

Professor Meadow: One In A Million

Had one of my "What the bloody hell??" moments on Saturday. These are times when I scan a line in the paper, do a double-take, read it again more carefully and exclaim "What the bloody hell??" in a voice loud enough to attract worried looks from strangers. The latest WTBH came from the case of Professor Roy Meadow, reinstate by a High Court ruling after being struck off by the GMC. Meadow had given erroneous testimony which led to the wrongful conviction of Sally Clark for the murder of her two babies. He claimed that the chances of two cot deaths in one family are 1 in 73 million. They are in fact closer to 1 in 77.

"What the..." etc. The High Court judge claimed that statistical evidence can be difficult to interpret. Well, yes, it's a tricky beast. Being out by nearly 73 million, though, is frankly quite an alarming error. And it may be true that Meadow is overall an excellent paediatrician. I would still like him to have to sit a basic maths test before being allowed to, say, take a baby's temperature ever again. Otherwise he'll be hospitalising the unfortunate children believing they have the same temperature as an exploding supernova.

Entirely Bad Poetry Part 1

Just to make sure I'm adhering to every cliche of blog convention. The first installment of a hopefully very occasional series.

They Should Have Whips

We sit in our thickets of desks
And talk of seeing the sun
They have it on the second floor, you know
Real windows, real light
But down at the bottom of the trireme
Only the abstract glare of frost.
We bring in our little name badges
And some are able to flourish
Holiday mugs, silver-encircled lovers
All those funny, funny signs.
Potted plants, though, like sunbathers
Turn brown and drop.

A page is freed from the tray, processed
And a clone appears in its place
Gliding through the serving hatch
For the humming jaws of the computer.
Its appetite is almost infinite
Twenty billion bites to sate it.
Though sometimes it turns blue with indigestion.
Then, liberated, we sit back
And curse and curse and curse.

There should be a bell to frame the day
Maybe a great big hooter
To order us, up, down, spin around.
There should be man prowling the aisles
Whip clacking in time with clattering keys.
No more. Not nice.
We must flog ourselves, obeying only
The old urge blamed on John Knox
So we are trapped, fooled, exploited, suppressed,
Contented.

My New Friends

Every now and then I wonder why, since I clearly do believe in God, I don't just stop faffing around and become a proper Christian. A fondness for certain types of sin may have something to do with it. So too has a fantastically low level of will power. But, less reprehensibly, I'm also put off by the community I would be joined. It's hard to like some of the people I would be allied with.
We still get them, these controversies when 'free speech' clashes with religion. And the most vivid are sparked off by the most ridiculous cases. A few weeks ago, still rumbling on today, were the Muslim protests against those Danish cartoons. It's hard to understand any of the passion which has suddenly been unleashed. My bemusement has doubtless partly been caused by snobbery (they're only cartoons, for fuck's sake) and racism (who cares what the Danes do). Still, though, if I was Mohammed then I would prefer a few snide and unfunny drawings than the sight of my followers burning down embassies. And they are only cartoons. And, really, who does care what the Danes do?
The rising number of Islamaphobes have greatly enjoyed the fuss, watching their enemies dive into self-parody again. But they are not behaving any more absurdly than some Christians do on occasions. In the West, free speech has had to be wrestled not just from the political right but from our own church. And some Christians still leap out to try and reclaim it and have to be kept at bay with a whip and chair. Last year in Britain they found a target in the musical 'Jerry Springer: The Opera'. Yes, people got upset about Jerry Springer: The Opera. Despite the very title containing two of the most pointless concepts invented by modern civilization, despite the thing itself being a histrionic, flaccid and unfunny joke to which the only reaction should be one role of the eyeballs heavenwards - and even that seems a waste of good muscles - people bothered to protest. They screamed and threatened and waved their little fists. And you see them more and more, it seems. Assembled in packs, shouting vitriol at artists who dare to portray Jesus other than a Renaissance painter might or at women having abortions to avoid ruining their lives. It's hard to know whether they embraced religion to justify their bigotry, whether their 'faith' created their hatred or whether the two feed each other, bubbling away in a vile stew. But these people have become the most immediate face of modern Christianity. More than the classic innocuous country vicar, more even than the ex-Hitler Youth member promoting the spread of AIDS by hating those who use condoms.
I wish somebody would take them on. Not just the usual liberals with their mechanical arguments about individual rights. Somebody from their own church, who could rout them on their own ground. I had hopes in Rowan Williams, but sadly while he looks like an Old Testament prophet, he acts more like a New Labour politician. But just somebody, anybody, who can scream "Read the Bible, fuckwits. Not just Acts or Paul's epistle to the bloody Ephesians either. Read the damn Gospels. Read John Chapter 8."
John 8: A woman accused of adultery is taken before Jesus to be condemned. Adultery was a big deal in those days. Under Moses' law, anyone found guilty should be stoned to death. But Jesus refuses to judge the woman. Instead he confronts her accusers with the words, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." A famous line, but not one that is heeded as much as it should be by so-called Christians. Instead we get lots of stuff about what Peter or Paul may have said regarding homosexuality and the like. Now, look. Peter was a camp follower who failed his boss when it really mattered; Paul a political administrator probably so critical of others because of suppressed guilt about what he got up to before he took that road to Damascus. Neither, I think, were the Son of God. The Son of Gold said that while judgement may come, none of us are qualified to make it. And if you ignore things like Jerry Springer: The Opera, they will vanish faster than you can say "Queen: The Musical."
Reviewing this piece, it appears to be full of petulance and vitriol and, well, intolerance. I guess that if I finally take the plunge, I'll fit right in.

Dusk Of The Replicants

To fill up some space, here's an article I wrote one spiteful Sunday a few months back:

I went to school with Shed Seven. Three quarters of them at least; Rick Whitter, Tom Gladwin and Paul Banks. Two of them were perfectly pleasant, if slightly cocky, boys. The other was appallingly vain and self-regarding even as a child.. I shudder to think what years of pop stardom may have done to his already inflated ego. So if any hapless roadies are wondering: yes, he always has been like that.
Anyway, our shared background meant I saw the band in their formative years. I watched them travel through their first manifestation, Brockley Haven, and into 'The Shedders' (as nobody ever called them). Their talent was always obvious. Compared to the usual dreadful school bands, especially my own, they were slick and professional. They sounded like a proper group. Even my parents, not known for their musical perspicacity, tipped them for great things after watching Brockley Haven at a Comic Relief performance. If anybody from Huntington School was going to be a star it was Whitter, Gladwin and Banks; aided by that other one, of course.
And they did make it. They became stars. Polydor signed them in 1994. Their first hit came soon after and a lot more followed. In one year they managed more chart entries than anybody else. Combining catchy tunes and cliched phrases, their songs were also perfect for TV background music. A particular case in point was Going For Gold, which was less-than-coincidentally released just before the 1996 Olympics. Though NME once declared "There's no-one thicker than a thick Rick Whitter," he did have a few good jokes. Asked about their name once, he said there was once eleven of them but they had "shed seven members." Also breaking through at much the same time was another York denizen, the writer Kate Atkinson. Things were looking good in the old backwater. It was rather optimistic to talk about a 'scene,' but as the last celebrity to emerge from the city was Constantine the Great, we were understandably excited.
And yet, of course, and yet. The thing about Kate Atkinson was that she was brilliant. The thing about Shed Seven was that, well, they weren't. Their songs were clunky, turgid and derivative. Sometimes they were barely competent. I don't think they were ruined by fame of the evil exploits of Polydor. It was more a case of the best football player at school. He scores legions of goals, he perpetually humiliates his fellow pupils, he seems touched by genius. And after leaving school he fails trials at Torquay and Shrewsbury and ends up at Burton Albion if he's lucky. Shed Seven had a few half-decent tunes; the breakthrough number Dolphin, the slow-burning . But they rose solely because of Britpop and could only fall when it did.
Britpop was the big thing of the mid 90's. For no discernible reason, mouthy, slightly grubby indie kids came into fashion and started shifting units. Some bands like Oasis were new but a telling number were ageing chancers suddenly finding a good thing. Blur, for example, were Thames Valley shoegazers until they decided to be East End cockneys. Radiohead worked through various personas before settling on the style Half Man Half Biscuit labelled 'Moodychops.' I say 'telling' because, unlike grunge, house, rap, punk and virtually every other movement, Britpop had absolutely no innovations. It mostly just marked a return to four-piece guitar bands singing simple love ditties. Although it got associated with that ludicrous post-Blair election 'Cool Britannia' thing, Britpop first emerged in the Major years; and so was fittingly Back to Basics. All it did was briefly allow the rock boys to outsell the R & B girls. Now the R & B girls dominate again and it's hard to see why anybody bothered.
The best thing about Britpop was that genuinely talented artists – Pulp, Cornershop, PJ Harvey – could use it as a Trojan horse to sneak into the charts. The worst thing, as with any trend which overstays its welcome, were the coat tail hangers. Oasis and Radiohead would have probably flourish in any climate. But there were an awful lot of outfits who would otherwise have, deservedly, remained in the early afternoon slots at the festivals and occasional Steve Lamacq plugs. For example Dodgy, authors of chirpy, hummable and spectacularly unimaginative ditties. Or the egregious Embrace, a sort of Stone Roses-Barry Manilow hybrid. But perhaps the ultimate hangers on, the scene reduced to its lowest common denominator, were… actually, it's obvious where this is going.
When did Britpop officially die? When Blur stopped plagiarising the Kinks and started plagiarising Pavement? When Liam Gallagher finally managed to get more coke crystals than brain cells inside his cranium? When Radiohead stopped bothering with all that "writing tunes" nonsense? But if Shed Seven were the embodiment, they can also be used as the barometer. So Britpop started declining in 1998 after the group were dumped by Polydor. It received its last rites in 2003 when the members elected to pursue individual projects.Of these, Rick Whitter can be seen, or not, doing DJ sets in humilatingly tiny venues. The rest is silence. But another Huntington School old boy is starting a rise to prominence; Tom Bromley, a jobbing writer who produces books of remarkable banality. The old ama meter seems very good at breeding workmanlike artists who grind out hits conveyor belt style. Having attended it for seven years, I find can fully understand why.

Babble

Like most people starting a blog, I have very little to say. So I'll start it by reacting to what other people say; in this instance, what people have said about how other people say things.

Two reviews in yesterday's Guardian caught my eye, both on linguistics. One was of a book by David Crystal who gets all tetchy about recent critics of modern language like Lynne Truss and John Humphries. These people, he warns sternly, are not linguistic experts so should not be heeded. And besides, all languages develop over time, it is an inevitable and so moral-free process. The reviewer, Ian Sansom, should take issue with the first argument but instead focuses on the second. Sometimes language is peverted, he claims, and sometimes it is anything but neutral. He cites the Nazis, whose corruption of German was a central part of their loathsome mission.

Bringing the Nazis into any argument is the equivalent of... well, whatever hand happens to always win you a game of poker. You can't contradict it whole-heartedly for fear of appearing sympathetic to the Nazis yourself. But Sansom's overkill only really shows how the whole subject is a moral blank sheet. New words or phrases are assessed according to what we think of those making the changes, and we make these judgments from their actions in other fields. Take the other review, Alastair Campbell's of a book by Steven Poole. Poole lays into assorted fatuous, deceptive phrases introduced recently by politicians. Campbell counters that a lot of political terms are actually quite useful and the real dumbing down of language has been done by the media. Poole, we assume doesn't like politicians; Campbell, everybody knows, loathes journalists. However potent a new phrase is, it will be rejected if the speaker is already mistrusted. When a novelist launches one onto the world he is deemed a genius. When a football commentator tries the same (and Ron Atkinson alone was responsible for dozens) it is cited as an example of his poor education. The process isn't a simple one-way one, because nothing is, but ultimately words really are just a tool. Which makes me think that those linguistic experts which David Crystal admires are rather wasting their time.

As, indeed, I am. This is just an opening piece, taken from the top of my head rather too early on a Sunday morning. Later entries may be more considered and clear. Or there again...