Commercialised art

I believe that Andy Warhol wrecked art. It was shorn from any aesthetic worth. You can now erect any random object in art gallery and accrue millions. It was mollified to the point of inanity. Warhol made art cute and cudly. Gone was the passion and hubris of the Renaissance, the Romantics and the Surrealists. Art became as cute - and disposable - as a coca-cola bottle or a cuddly toy.

When Andy Warhol arrived on the scene, it changed art irrevocably. His ilk dominate the market. People who dominate this market know how to control precisely because they are business people, not artists. What they offer isn't art. It is a vacuous commodity to be sold for billions. Warhol turned art into an advertisement and commodity. It tapped into the free market in a jiffy. Warhol revelled in the inanity of the free market. Unlike a great painter like Caspar Friedrich, he didn't discriminate from the drudgery of contemporary life. He merely swallowed it and regurgitated more pointless drudgery. I would take any day an artist who forensically examines phenomena and selects the remarkable, the transcendent. We are saturated with rubbish all the time by advertising. We don't need to go the art gallery to see more of it. If you want to use art to comment or critique the inanity of advertising - that's great. You shouldn't, however, mimic it.

Andy Warhol

The fact remains that these are businesspeople, not artists. 'Artists' like Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst are seen as exemplary by David Cameron. They are business people working in the private sector who make billions. They are reticent to pay tax. They just want to accrue as much wealth as possible, spend it as lavishly as possible, gain cachet and surround themselves with a coterie of sycophantic yes-men. Thatcherites see them as exemplary because they have managed to have some influence on the free market. Like a truly great businessperson, they have made billions out of something farcical.

There is a new breed of business fundamentalist/entrepeneur who is poisoning both culture and politics. It is the same sorry story as positivists and 'scientism,' but it is more sinister because it has a far wider reach. Business has to be applied to education. As soon as you sell education, it turns it into a worthless commodity. Education should be a right. Universities are now virtually shopping centres. With little wisdom or knowledge to impart, they are awash with business courses and shopping precincts. Ludicrously, they seem to have more clubs and dance halls than library space. Instead of teaching how to think critically or originally, universities just teach students to be consumers. This malign 'business positivism' has also crept into 'high' art. You don't sell art which tackles big social/existential/moral topics; you sell gimmicky products to be scrutunised by bearded hipsters.

These 'gimmicky products' are simply kitsch with no intrinsic value. What does an unmade bed or a shark in a tank have to say? The supposed commentary in these works are shallowly imputed by critics. They are not intrinsic to the art.

In the end of the day, this will all blow over. Hirst and Emin will die with a lot of money in the pockets, but they won't go down in time as great artists. Nor will Warhol. All they can do is create zeitgeists. Most of the trends of our time will not leave a slightest dent in history. Today's painters and artists who are trackling big important questions will be remembered. They might be unnoticed now, but their work will manage to transcend time. All the likes of Warhol, Hirst and Emin can do is to conquer the free market. It is ephemeral. The outsiders and fringe artists, people who are marginalised by the bloated art market, will go down as the great artists of our day.  

My favourite films of the year, '14

There are a few films I regret leaving out. This is especially true with Frank. How could I leave out a film about an avant-garde rock band which references Captain Beefheart?! I also found it very moving. It made the point that outsider artists do not act deliberately outrageous - they are genuinely troubeled people. I regret the absence of documentaries. Errol Morris' The Unknown Known was fascinating, despite the inevitable caginess of Donald Rumsfield. Camille Claudel 1915 was an austere film on religious belief and madness - I am interested in both themes - and featured a fine performance from Juliette Binoche.

Although many of these films were released internationally in 2013, this list covers films released theatrically in the UK in 2014.

10. Calvary by John Michael McDonagh (Ireland)

Calvary is a comforting and life-affirming film about the virtues of faith in secular societies. Infused with gallows humour, it oscillates between mainstream comedy and art-house fare. Its lead character is warm, down-to-earth type who becomes a priest to get away from marital break-up and the tensions of a capitalist society. To have faith seems to invite scorn and ridicule. And, indeed, the priest is threatened with murder from the film's outset. Its only - quite major - flaw is the over-abundance of stereotypical characters.

9. The Wolf of Wall Street by Martin Scorcese (USA)

Whilst it may be a bit shallow and superficial to rank among his best films, this is certainly Scorcese's best film in a long time. It is set at the outset of the deregulation of the financial markets and 'reaganomics.' And whilst Di Caprio's character is rapaciously greedy and selfish, the film is pretty much pro-capitalist. It celebrates individualism. You could pretty much say that it has no moral core. (Scorcese, barring his gangster films, usually is quite moralistic.) But it is extremely funny whilst being lewd. He has made one of his gangster films but populated it with bankers instead. Di Caprio's hubris and fall from grace is all the more pertinent considering the number of bankers who still have not been brought to account post-2008.

8. Inside Llewlyn Davis by Coen Brothers (USA)

The Coen Brothers have been accused of repeating themselves of late and relying on the same tired formulas. But what we have in films like A Serious Man and now Inside Llewyln Davis is a subtler and more understated kind of filmmaking. No matter how much I love their earlier work, it always felt too high-octane and cartoonish. This film follows a folk singer in his peregrinations across the US. Although he is talented, he struggles to make ends meet. Set in the early 60s, it is all the more ominous considering the impact psychedelia and pop music would soon have. Folk would soon become even more irrelevant.The film follows Llewln roaming aimlessly. It has a circular quality when he ends up where he began with. The Coens once more allude to Homer's Odyssey (which they adapted in O Brother Where Art Thou).

7. Leviathan by Andrey Zvyagintsev (Russia)

Suffused with biblical overtones, this is a chilling study of corruption, abuse of power and clericalism in present day Russia. A family is forced to leave a spot of land after it has been claimed by the local mayor. Putin is a ubiquitous presence, as he hangs over the walls of politicians. Whilst the film does celebrate the religious impulse on a more personal level - it provides a sense of meaning for characters despite the bleakness of what they go through - the film is staunchly anti-clerical. The orthodox priest drives the politicians to do nefarious things. The film also alludes to Hobbes (whose most famous book is called Leviathan) in the way in which citizens lose their freedom once they have signed up to a social contract. Indeed, the characters are powerless and at the mercy of Russia's repressive political bureaucracy. There are also several lovely shots of the sea and hill-tops.

6. Maps to the Stars by David Cronenberg (Canada/USA)

Maps to the Stars is a brilliant critique on the narcissism and self-absorption of Hollywood. Instead of the parasites that feature in his horror films, here the characters are psychologically plagued by their own DNA. Hollwood is an insular place where the same people meet and the same people procreate. They are vain, neurotic and eager for nothing other than fame. Hollywood is an incestual microcosm which keeps perpetuating itself. Cronenberg hasn't merely made a film that tangentially addresses incest, he has made a film about incest. He takes a detached, scientific approach where he dissects the vicissitudes of incest and psychosis. As a result, he does not shy away from anything. This is exciting as he has not made a film as visceral as this in a long time. The film, of course, is also a satire on the cynical machinations of Hollywood.

5. Mr. Turner by Mike Leigh (UK)

This is a delightful film. It's always been said that a life of Turner would never make a good film because it was so uneventful. Leigh is a master at that kind of thing. It is mundane and quotidian, but the essence of his creative process and his idiosyncrasies are evoked wonderfully. It is set in the last years of his life when he was accused of making 'bad' art. As with all Leigh films, there is no script but the dialogue is improvised and rigorously rehearsed accordingly. The language is straight from a 19th century novel - it is very rich. It is also very funny and playful. One of the most mesmerising things about the film is the way Leigh frames landscapes as if they were one of Turner's paintings.

4. Under the Skin by Jonathan Glazer (UK)

The greatest thing about this film is its point of view and its defamiliarisation. It is from the perspective of an alien. The film does this with cinematic, not literary, language. It achieves through its framing and the use of sound (it has a brilliant dissonant soundtrack). It is ambiguous and strange. Parallels could be made with 2001. Yet, despite this, it also has a documentary feel. Surprisingly, some of the scenes really took place. Scarlett Johansan really drove past Glasgow, picked up guys and offered sex. As you watch those scenes, they really do seem authentic. It is a science fiction film set in the here and now - as such, it is very Ballardian.

3. Nymphomaniac by Lars von Trier (International co-production)

This film, being four hours long and divided in two parts, can seem like hard work. It is also obscure and sexually graphic. (So, it's not for 'philistines' or for anyone prudish it seems...) I have always being fascinated by books and films which are both cerebral and sexual. This is why I love the work of both Georges Bataille and J. G. Ballard as well as the filmography of David Cronenberg. The Gainsbourg, the nymphomaniac, character divulges her experiences to a bookish type. As she does this, her host incongruously makes connections to what he has read. (Her sexual experiences lead to huge sprawling digressions on Bach/counterpoint, fly fishing, Edgar Allan Poe and mountaineering.) As such, because of its temporal breadth, watching this film feels more like reading a novel. I really found the reaction from most critics lame. They were disappointed because they didn't find it 'shocking' enough. What did they expect? Porn?

2. Twelve Years a Slave by Steve McQueen (USA)

This film is high up this list because it is so emotionally stirring and harrowing. Shockingly, it is the first ever film made about the slavery of black people in 19th century USA. McQueen, by providing an endless onslaught of violent and disturbing images, makes you empathise. As such, the film is a resounding success. The film is still slightly problematic. By focusing on the plight of an upper-class, educated black man it might be suggesting that his particular experience is more precious than the experience of millions of other slaves. It might be questioned whether the at times gratuitous violence really is needed to elicit this 'empathy.' (Instead of a more understated, distanced approach.) Still, this is an overwhelming film - with both rich dialogue and ravishing images - and should be mandatory viewing.


1. Ida by Pawel Pawlikowski  (Poland)

Ida is a film which depicts the endurance of faith. A seventeen-year-old orphan, about to become a nun, discovers that she is Jewish. She then meets her aunt - a Stalinist with blood on her hands - to track down the remains of her butchered parents. The eponymous character has the opportunity to take on a bourgeois lifestyle and get married. Instead, she to return to a convent. The film austerely emphasises the sacred and the transcendent in a secular society. It has the deft pacing and masterly cinematographic framing of space of Bresson and Dreyer. It charts the way an ascetic woman discover love, music and loss and, once she has done so, returns to her hermitage to lead a more enriched life.

The string quartet

The string quartet is my favourite classical form. Out of all the prototypes of the eighteenth century, the string quartet is perhaps the one which continued to be fruitful for post-war composer. (Even the symphony was largely jettisoned and perceived as being archaic.) They are also overlooked. The composers' symphonies and operas are celebrated while the quartets lie dormant.


String quartets have always been a medium where a composer reflects on his own language. It is not really a major statement of intent. Beethoven was being 'heroic' with the the Eroica symphony and the 5th, 7th and 9th. Or he was being contemplative with the pastoral and the 8th. Whereas with the string quartet, he was making no bold statements. He was just self-examing and commenting on his own art. As I will explore in this blog post, string quartets can track the musical development of an entire composer's career. The examples I will use will be Beethoven, Bela Bartok and Elliott Carter. Because the composer examines his own form, string quartets are often characterised as being emotionally dry. The examples I have chosen are all expressive and can be heard for emotional enjoyment. As someone who isn't very musically literate, I can testify that this is music which can be heard without a formal grounding in music theory.


I mentioned that the string quartet was a eighteenth century 'prototype.' Mozart and Hadyn churned out many. As with most of their pieces, for me they are uninteresting. Beethoven followed in the same lineage. As with his first two 'classicist' symphonies, you can tell that he is much more playful with the staid forms of the day.


The cream of Beethoven's music, for me, are his last five quartets. (During the same period, he wrote Missa Solemnis and Symphony No. 9.) These quartets see him abandon classicism altogether and see him adopt a romantic language. It's a real quantum leap from Mozart in that it's so much more expressive. He's not afraid to make unexpected chord changes or to modulate the dynamics.


My favourite Beethoven quartet is the 15th. The main leitmotif is announced as a tremolo in muted, brooding tones. It gradually gains some intensity, like a freight train about to start (sorry about the trite language, but as I'm not a musician I have to recourse to metaphors). The tempo modulates to allegro and the motif is repeated more vigour. The motif is revisted, with several permutations, until until it is resolved. The second movement is somewhat whimsical. It is more formally rigid, until it modulates to violins/viola playing levitating trills. These are contravened by an ominous figure played by the cello and is repeated by the violin/violas. The rest of the movement alternates between these three strands. The third movement is by the most beautiful. The main theme is announced. There are a few variations until it ends expansively expressively. The fourth and fifth movements alternate between more a more classical themes and a whimsical melody I adore.






All of Beethoven's musical development can be traced through his string quartets. The same is true of Bela Bartok. His first quartet straddles the line between late romanticism and early modernism. It is actually redolent of Beethoven's 13th. His second quartet is more oblique and has fragments of a melody scattered about (which is modeled on a Hungarian one). His third quartet is modeled on Alban Berg's lyric suite.


My favourite is the fourth. Bartok's music is aggressive and punchey. It is neo-romantic in the sense that it is highly expressive. The movements are all interconnected. The first and fifth movements mirror each other, as do the second and fourth. The lone third movement is quiet and hushed and seems to be a kind of intermission. Bartok was an admirer of Debussy and his music is not atonal but hovers around several keys. The main theme - presumably Hungarian - is of an eerie strangeness. Bartok is a real jewel within the classical canon in that he is very eccentric. He has not spawned any imitators in that he was highly individualistic. At the same time, he managed to write a modernist nationalist music for Hungary.









As Bartok is seen as a development on Beethoven, Elliott Carter quartets could be seen as a development on Bartok. His first quartet does have a smidgen of romanticism. As you progress to the second, third, fourth and so on, his musical language becomes increasingly fragmented, almost pitchless. He was influenced by Ives; they were friends when Carter was a teenager. As such, Carter was interested in the notion of different strands of music going on at once in different metres, keys, etc. Whilst Bartok's music can be contrapuntal, Carter takes this to extremes. In his third quartet, he divides the two strings in two. The instrument are visceral and harsh. In multiple hearings, you can hear the voices interacting. It is highly expressive and, dare I say, as moments of lyricism.

Big band free jazz

Improvisation has always been an integral aspect of jazz. In the early 60s, it became common for jazz musician to get together in big groups and collectively improvise without any playing in any fixed key. Free jazz is largely attributed to having started with Ornette Coleman in the late 50s.

Ornette Coleman certainly was one of the revolutionaries of jazz. Bebop was a major shock to consumers of jazz after the second world war. Unlike swing - Duke Ellington Woody Herman, Stan Kenton etc. - you actually had to sit down and hear it. Over the years, the structures of bebop became looser and looser. Ornette Coleman arrived in 1959. It sounds nowhere near as shocking now as some of the music of his progenies (say, the ilk of Albert Ayler). Most of his albums have tunes and melodies. They sound like bebop melodies. However, there was no overriding tonal centre. Ornette and his superb sideman Don Cherry would play solos which would have no tonal or harmonic relation to the main melody.

Ornette's most radical album, and the one he is most renowned for, is Free Jazz. (It's odd how some artists are most well-known for their most radical stuff while their more accessible output is overlooked. Think of Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica or Ayler's Spiritual Unity.) Ornette was uncomfortable with the label as he felt that many people overlooked him as a writer of tunes. Nonetheless, the label stuck and it bred a plethora of imitators.

The idea of having a large group of players improvising was ground-breaking yet, at the same time, primitivist. It led to new directions yet it also harked back to a more primeval form of music. It was a type of music that was less rigid. It was also very communal. It was a type of workshop in which a group of players with their own unique style could share their ideas. It was dialogic. An interesting conversation would be established. Unlike the later genre 'free improvisation,' it was still very much within the idiom of jazz. The players very much stick to scales and keys. In many ways, they play what they know. (Derek Bailey called free improvisation a way of 'erasing memory.')



There is a tune to the piece, which becomes increasingly knotted and garbled. The tune is revisted later on. Otherwise, the structure generally is that there is a collective improvisation followed by a solo improv.

The ingenious production technique that this album has is that there are two quartets in each channel. It could be seen as a 'doubling' of the standard Ornette quartet (sax, trumpet, bass, drums). In addition to the classic Ornette quartet (Coleman, Cherry, Haden and Blackwell), they are joined by big names in avan-jazz: Eric Dolphy, Freddie Hubbard and Scott Le Faro. Dolphy is a highly idiosyncratic, creative and versatile player (he played three wind instruments expertly). His interactions with the rest of the ensemble are very sharp. On some occasions his bass clarinet can be heard laughing. It's an expression of joy. Hubbard was a more conventional player and he does not fit in as snugly with the rest of the msusicains. The pairing of Le Faro with Haden is particularly stimulating when they both get to solo together. They play with a bow or pluck the strings intermittently.

I mentioned in the preceding paragraph that in Dolphy's playing there is an 'expression of joy.' Coleman stated in several occasions that his saxophone playing was a way in which he could express his own feelings. Ayler said about free jazz that 'it became less about notes and more about feelings.'

Meanwhile, John Coltrane's playing was becoming freer and freer. An extremely dexterous and talented player, there was a sense that he took tonally-oriented jazz as far as it could go with his masterpiece A Love Supreme. There was always a spiritual dimension to Coltrane's playing. At this point, Coltrane was becoming more and immersed in oriental religions.  Like Ornette, he very much saw the practice of improvisation as a kind of spiritual expression. As a sideman for Davis, he once played a solo which lasted for over half an hour. When pressed by Miles as to why the solo went for so long, Coltrane replied that it took that long to express everything he needed to express. Davis understood where he was coming from and let him off the hook.

Ascencion initially can be a very intimidating album. One may buy a Coltrane record expecting it be lush and melliflous. This is anything but. The occasional tonal centres in Free Jazz are absent here. Once more, there is a peculiar structure. There is a leitmotif which I simply adore: ascending and descending lines. It is a somewhat melodic, but it all soon crumbles down. The structure is the same as Ornette's ensemble: there is a collective improvisation, followed by a solo allocated to each player. Once more, there are big names (Freddie Hubbard is on this album too). The wind instruments are the most abrasive - they squawk, shriek and wail. McCoy Tyner's piano solo is entirely tonal (it's actually hard to differentiate his playing on this from earlier Coltrane records). There is another bass duet, which is once more very stimulatingz. The chaos is resolved with a repetition of the title theme, which I characterised earlier as 'ascending and descending lines.' It is lushly embellished by Elvis Jones' crashing cymbals. Coleman's records at times sounds like a free-bop recording. This is pure, distilled free jazz.

Coltrane's premature death is something many jazz buffs plaintively mourn. What uncharted territory would he have pursued after this? Would he have reached a point of no return with his atonal playing? Had he perhaps transgressed so much, he would simply play ballads? (His record of ballads is great, by the way!) Would he take the exciting path that Don Cherry took and embrace world music? (He did this to an extent with the African polyrhythms in Kulu Se Mama.) Would he have embraced electronic music? I doubt the last possibility. Coltrane's music just does not seem compatible with electronic instruments.  



Another musician who embraced collective free improvisation was Sun Ra. He started out in the vein of swing, but very quickly become implementing exotic rhythms and unusual harmonies into his music. An Ellington-esque tune could swiftly turn into a polyphonic cacophony.

His most renowned collective improvisation is The Magic City. It is a lot stranger than the records discussed above. There are strange synth sounds which are abruptly interrupted by the squeaks and shronks of the ensemble. I obviously hate it when people like Wynton Marsalis pontificate about certain recordings that 'this isn't jazz,' but one would be hard-pressed to call this particular recording jazz. Incidentally, Sun Ra would probably pleased by that judgement. He'd rather call it 'space music.' Like a lot of Sun Ra records, it is an exhilarating practice in willful mayhem.



As you have noticed, I have embeded the YouTube videos of the full recordings. Somewhat sad that it is now quiant to recommend someone a record and to expect that person to save up money and buy it in a record store. If I had to pick a favourite from these three 'big band free jazz collective improvisations,' I'd pick the Coltrane record.

'Digital' by Michael J Brooks

This is a review I wrote for a book written by my friend Michael Brooks. You can buy it for a very reasonable price here.

Michael Brooks' debut self-published novel is a British dystopian novel the likes of which Huxley and Orwell wrote, except that it is designed for the present day. Whilst those authors were scarred by the horrors of two world wars, this novel is unhinged by the threat posed on civil liberties posed by security services. Given a number of recent incidents - the Snowden leaks, civil liberties privacy rights, Google goggles, etc. - it is a chilling vision of what would happen if this type of surveillance became even more intrusive. It also examines the effect such technology has on our ontology. `Digital' dissects the breakdown in communications and the resulting emotional coldness that results from our own over-dependence on this media.

Although everyone is wired up to each other's consciousness, and everyone can access the minutia of each other's private lives (including one's sexual life), there are no meaningful/healthy relationships. You are seeing this development right now - although everyone can access other people's private information, we all seem much more alienated from each other. There is a sense that, despite this heightened communication, people are even more alienated than ever before. It was interesting to see how the lead character, though introspective and of a thoughtful disposition, cannot free himself from these shackles. The level of the indoctrination, and the need a select few feel to dissent, certainly reminded me of Huxley's Brave New World.

Brooks treats consciousness and the way in which reality is perceived through the prism of this cyber technology. This is similar to the way the internet works today - a single image triggers a series of associative ones. This technology is wired up into the cognitive structure of the brain. The scenes with the Wheeler were very interesting. One of Brooks' several satirical bites is on the media craze on neuroscience. The new reality, superficially, is more kaleidoscopic and three-dimensional. The excesses of this result in a life bereft of inquiry, knowledge and contemplation. This is despite the fact that knowledge is far more accessible than it ever has been.

The Ballardian/Gray-esque themes on violence, primeval instincts and human progress were embedded very well. The exposure to hardcore violence, conversely, appears to dull these instincts. Again, this reflects recent phenomena where excessive exposure, instead of leading to desensitisation, seems to merely dull our appetite for adventure, freedom and excitement. Also like BNW, where everyone can engorge in an orgy and sex and drugs, the desire to dissent/rebel is vanquished. This reflects a lot of contemporary society, where rebellion is commodified as a distinct form of conformity.

In terms of the structure, the novel is holistic. The opening and the ending come full circle and complement one another (the suppression of violent impulses and, later, their realisation). The timing was excellent - particularly the way the narrative seamlessly shifts to the 2nd and 3rd parts.

The dialogue voices the thematic concerns of the novel. This is reminiscent of `the novel of ideas.' The characters are essentially ciphers through which Brooks voices his thematic concerns. This will irritate people who are interested in three-dimensional characters and naturalistic dialogue. This is, in fact, fitting - people have ceased to care and love for one another because of our increased exposure to violence and pornography. We are apathetic and numbed.

The novel is very zeitsgesty. This is why a prompt publication would be welcome. Many of its prophecies may well seem dated in twenty or thirty years' time. (Perhaps they might be prescient?) The societies BNW and 1984 have both materialised in certain societies. The former in the first world, the latter generally in the 2nd and 3rd world. However, those two novels had more timeless elements: the importance of art and Shakespeare in BNW and the idea of semantics and propaganda in 1984. Perhaps Facebook etc. will embed itself so irrevocably on our culture that it will indeed become timeless?

One of my few quibbles with the novel is that certain aspects could be developed further: its satirical swipes on the idea of `progress,' technology, `the death of affect,' etc. could be expanded on. Brooks' style is influenced by J. G. Ballard: an eye for scientific and methodical jargon yet still infused by a kind of lyricism. Whilst this works to great effect, I do find a tendency for similar lexical choices (`haemorrhage,' etc.)

These are only very minor quibbles, as this is an exciting novel - a coruscating attack on excessive surveillance and the effect technology has on human cognition.

Accepting Reality: The University Years

 Cover illustration by Sofia Lindgren.

Accepting Reality is the long-awaited (awaited by four or five people…) sequel to Confronting Reality. It was written during Saimon A.’s undergraduate studies, between 2011 and 2014. Although there is veneer of surrealism and absurdity in these stories, Saimon A. has furthered his scope. There is more satire. Warped mysteries. Dollops of pornography. There are obsessive characters. There are neuroses and psychoses. Saimon A. throws a lot of disparate elements together. Sometimes they gel, sometimes they don’t. In the preface, Saimon A. writes that ‘there is an acceptance of reality’ instead of an ‘assiduous scepticism.’ Many of these stories can be said to be an attempt to reconcile the subjective with the objective, the macro and the micro. They are interested in the ways in which broader legislative political decisions affect the ontology of individuals. A lot of these stories are set in obscure moments in history and foreign countries, continuing with Saimon A.’s interest in what he calls ‘cosmopolitan literature.’ Many of these stories are based on real life figures. Some deal with Saimon A.’s obsession with classical, jazz and experimental music. Some deal with Saimon A.’s burgeoning interest in philosophy. Saimon A. continues to be interested in outsiders and those people who subject themselves to the outer extremes of human experience. All in all, this is another eclectic and eccentric collection from one of the most eccentric writers. Whether the world is ready to accept this unusual and unclassifiable book remains to be seen.'

Preface                                                                                                                                                9

Eight PM in Buenos Aires                                                                                                        15

Francisca Franzen                                                                                                                    18

Letters to Camila Vallejo                                                                                                         24

The Murmurings                                                                                                                      27

The Hermit and the Despot                                                                                                      33

The Bridge of Time                                                                                                                 40

Desperate Lives                                                                                                                       44

The Second Death of God                                                                                                       48

Burned Manuscripts                                                                                                                 54

Consigned to Mythology                                                                                                          57

Quartet for the End of Time                                                                                                     63

Rose of the Fair State                                                                                                               66

Alone in the Cyber Age                                                                                                             70

Hit the North!                                                                                                                          73

The Sleep of Reason Produces Wonders                                                                                    76

The Tea Boy                                                                                                                            79

Valparaíso                                                                                                                               83

My Vinyl Fetish                                                                                                                       85

The Death of Labour                                                                                                               96

The Thing in Itself                                                                                                                   99

Afterword                                                                                                                                101

One copy still available to any one who shows the faintest interest. 104 A4 pages printed and bound. Completely free, including postage. This even applies if you are a complete stranger.

My vinyl fetish

I have grown to adore vinyl. I have grown to love its raw, full sound. It especially suits classical music. It feels so compressed when digitised. I inherited about forty or so classical records from my deceased Anglo-Chilean grand-uncle. My collection has grown considerably since. I scour charity shops for bargains.

I wrote a theatrical sketch recently called 'My Vinyl Fetish.' In the sketch, five surrogates of mine, and a woman (named 'Pussy'...) listen to seven of my records and discuss them. One of my fantasies is to stay up til the early hours of the morning, drink wine and listen to records with a group of people.

Below I will select a few corkers and offer brief comments. I didn't select any of the seven vinyls I wrote about in my sketch...

The collection, as seen from a distance...

This is an edition of Captain Beefheart's debut album Safe as Milk. It is retitled 'Dropout Boogie,' apparently because British distributors thought it'd more marketable/user-friendly as such.

Coltrane's Love Supreme. It is not at all controversial to say that this is quite likely the greatest jazz album ever made. It is a reissue. As such, it's digitised and it's not analogue.

Lovely packaging. These are recordings of Jelly Roll Morton at his prime (late 20s). New-Orleans/swing-inflected jazz is such a joy to listen to.

Frank Zappa's Lumpy Gravy. I believe that this edition is from the 60s! Sound-bites of verbal nonsense interspersed with Zappa's orchestra music.

This is a selection of Bach organ music. My lord, it sure is a treat to listen to this. It includes several of Bach's masterful toccatas and fugues.

Bach music for harpsichord, performed by George Malcolm. It includes 'Concerto in F major,' which is a particular favourite. 

Bach's violin concertos. Part of the canon and with good reason, too. I could have the second movement of the first concerto on repeat for hours.

I have all of Bartok's string quartets vinyl, performed by The Fine Arts Quartet. They're the cream of Bartok's music (and the cream of quartet repertoire, too). They're all exhilarating to hear and they chart the development of Bartok's career as a whole. My favourite is the 4th.

Bartok's 2nd and 3rd piano concertos. The piano parts are devilishly intricate. The pianist effectively must grow extra fingers to play them.

Beethoven's chamber music is so rich. Quite likely superior to the symphonies. These are sonatas for cello and piano.

Ach, just realised that I broke my own rules! I wrote about the 15th quartet in the sketch My Vinyl Fetish! This includes the 14th and 15th quartets. The former is one single movement, the latter a brilliantly crafted piece in A minor.

Blood and guts! This vinyl includes music by Schoenberg, Webern and Berg. I must say that I have never taken to much of Schoenberg's stuff - his disciples' music I find more interesting. Webern's concise, muted and atonal miniatures are fascinating stuff. This is classed under 'B,' 'Berg' (generally because I have more vinyls by Berg than the other 2).

These are pieces for orchestra by Elliott Carter and Aaron Copland, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein did much to promote American serious music. I love Carter's piece - a scintillating atonal feast.

These are madrigals by Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo. A composer who anticipated the development of chromaticism by more than two centuries. He was an unpleasant character - I wrote a short story about him called 'Desperate Lives.' This is an issue from the 50s promoted by Aldous Huxley! (He wrote about listening to Gesualdo whilst taking mescalin in The Doors of Perception...) To think that I bought this for 49 p!

These are several works for piano, in different genres, by the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. They are performed by Arthur Rubinstein. These pieces are delightful.

These are two choral pieces for orchestra by the contemporary German composer - Muses of Sicily and Moralities. It comes with Henze's own liner notes. This was a real find.

This is one of Liszt's literary programmatic pieces. It is based on Dante's Inferno. A real innovator as to what a symphony could do. (Like Beethoven in his day, he was regarded as a bit of a noise maker...)

Messiaen's colossal Turangalilla Symphony. There are lovely tone colours here. Messiaen includes several unusual instruments, including a theremin and a keyboard he himself built.

Debussy's and Ravel's string quartets performed by Julliard. I believe that this is an authoritative recording. I much prefer Ravel's chamber music to Debussy's (the converse is true for their orchestral music). 

Scarlatti's music for harpsichord. Baroque music at its best.

Schubert's string quartets are an emotional powerhouse. I have an awful lot of Schubert on vinyl - more than any other composer, I believe - but this is top of the pile. Schubert really broke the mould of the staid classicist forms - he pretty much wrote music just as he saw fit.

Sibelius' 4th symphony. I love the ominous first movement and the resolution of the motifs in the 3rd and 4th movements. It builds up and up and then whittles down.

Ah, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring! If some one you know is convinced that classical music is purple music for blue haired ladies, play him or her this! Classical music is wild and young! It's all the more apparent here.

These are a few pieces by Toru Takemitsu. Wonderful composer. Some of these pieces are more influenced by Oriental music, others draw more Western music.

This vinyl includes some of Edgard Varese's most important pieces. His is a truly exhilarating, oblique soundworld. Just imagine hearing Ionisation in the 20s!

Hugo Wolf was one of the greatest songwriters. Beautiful pieces. This lieder is drawn from Spanish poets - Lorca et. al.

I have quite a few vinyls which are anthologies of early music - Renaissance, early baroque. This is from Spanish medieval times, played in the - highly unusual - original instrumentation.

This is an antology of modern British piano music. I can't remember any of the composers, but certainly none of them are house-hold names. Some of the pieces here are fairly accessible, others are very harsh on the ear. They're all highly exciting, though.

Rock Bottom

Rock Bottom is my favourite record of all time. So, I feel indebted to write about it. I heard it when I was a dreamy 15-year-old. I decided then that it was my favourite record and I still have not rescinded that claim! At the time I was fed up with my formal education and had little motivation to do anything. The only thing I really felt motivated about was listening to music. Wyatt's lugubrious undulating tones, his whiskery voice and his formless structures made an irrevocable impression on me. Wyatt himself is an avowed 'dreamer' and seems to have determined never to have grown out of this state of mind.

At the time Rock Bottom was made, Wyatt's world had turned on its head. He had been the drummer of the prog-rock/jazz fusion group Soft Machine. A very free-spirited character, he was always prone to volatile experiences. He was fired from the group and dabbled in other jazz fusion projects. Around 1974 he started to contemplate recording songs for a solo project. He met 'the love of his life' Alfreda Benge. They were spending a sojourn in Venice when Wyatt, after imbibing a toxic cocktail of alcohol and drugs, jumped out of the third floor of a building. He paralysed himself.

Robert Wyatt and Alfreda Benge

He has since jokingly called this experience 'a good career move.' After being hospitalised, and awakening from a comatose state, he tinkered on the keyboard and wrote lyrics. The songs he wrote were influenced by his partner Alfreda, their experiences with their coterie in Venice and Wyatt resuming his life post-accident. The songs he wrote for this album spelled out the trajectory of his later career. It was a stripped down sound borne out of Wyatt's £40 keyboard. The songs are usually built from basic minor keys. A touch of instrumentalisation from guest musicians is added. There is some tribal drumming. And the most endearing touch of all: Wyatt's whiskery voice and idiosyncratic lyrics. 

The tones from Wyatt's keyboard have a lugubrious quality (in a positive sense) and they have the quality of awakening from a dream. The music was also borne out of his experiences in Venice and there is also a nautical feel to the album. As such, it is somewhat reminiscent of the impressionistic music by Debussy and Ravel. The songs certainly remind me of Debussy's pan-tonal orchestral textures from La Mer. There are also abrasive sounds derived from free jazz. The album was borne out of Wyatt   hitting 'rock bottom' and his later recovery. 

In 'Sea Song' Wyatt reminisces about long nights in venice with Alfreda. He whimsically muses how when she's drunk, she's 'quite all right.' He goes on about 'how your lunacy fits neatly with my own.' He plays lovely sustained tones on his keyboard. When one hears the record, one feels as though one is in a trance, a kind of stupor. There are jazzy major chords at the end of the song and Wyatt scat-sings alongside the music. In 'A Last Straw,' Wyatt sings as to how plunges 'into the water we'll go head over heel' and becomes a sea creature. Water and dreams are synonymous in that both have are a transient and have a sense of profundity. 

'Little Red Riding Hood' is a colossal track, with an overlay of trumpets either played in real time or reverb. Wyatt rambles on with some decidedly non-sensical lyrics. The next two tracks are especially stimulating - Alfib/Alfie. There are the same undulating tones from Wyatt's keys, which pulsate endlessly. There are brash tones added from a bass clarinet. Wyatt sings utter nonsense ('Nit nit not, folly bololey') The song gains some urgency and seagues into 'Alfie.' A saxophone squawks dissonantly. The song ends with menacing clusters from Wyatt's keyboard whilst Alfreda Benge tries to instil some sense of normalcy into the proceedings ('I'm not your dinner, you soppy old custard. (...) I'm not your dinner, you soppy old custard.')

In the final track, 'Little Red Robin Hit the Road,' Wyatt returns to England to lead a peaceful existence with his wife. There is a sense of renewal and rebirth. He talks about 'dead moles lie inside their hole,' a reference to his finished career as a jazz drummer and his defunct group Matching Mole. Fred Frith appears playing some quaint passages on the viola. Ivor Cutler recites some brilliant abstract lyrics. The album ends on a note of wilful lunacy, exaltation and optimism. So, there is some light in the tunnel after emerging from 'rock bottom.'     

I have been thinking about my fondness for this record recently. I just finished my BA at University of Kent. This is where the Canterbury scene took place, where Wyatt and Soft Machine were its members. In my second year I lived in Herne Bay, by the coast. Every Friday I would take the day off to go for fish and chips and coffee at the adjacent town Whistable. In this town, full of quaint little shops, there is a vinyl store named Rock Bottom! Wyatt used to frequent the area to visit the cafés, like me!

Poignantly, in my graduation ceremony, Wyatt was given an honourary doctorate. Sadly, this took place in a ceremony the day after mine when I left Canterbury. (In my ceremony it was Harry Hill that received an honourary docorate...) I felt frustrated by this. Out of all the graduates, there is no doubt that out of I am his biggest fan. It is likely that no-one in the ceremony would have heard of him. I toyed with the idea of staying in Canterbury for another day. If I had stayed, I would have seen a guy in a weelchair and I would have been shy and reluctant to approach him. I would have said one of those platitudes like 'Geesh, I really love your music.' Still, it would have really been nice to let him know just how important his music had been during my difficult formative years in which I had also hit 'rock bottom.' I recovered, graduated with a First Class degree and very nearly met one my musical idols!

The Sound and the Fury on film

It's odd. Out of all the William Faulkner novels you would consider to take to the screen, The Sound and the Fury might well be bottom of the list. Strangely, I have fancifully fantasised about my own  adaptation. As it happens, James Franco's adaptation is already in production. He beat me to it.

How can a book you have to read twice to understand make a good film? Literary novels, on the whole, generally make poor films. Literary conceits/devices are difficult to emulate. It is usually the pulpier books which improve on the screen. It is only when you get an auteur who is equally brilliant on his own right - think of Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg and Vittorio de Sica - that the film can make its source justice. I am not too convinced Franco - incidentally, I hardly knew anything about him before - has the pedigree to see this through.

It would seem that the only natural thing to do would be a linear recreation. Apparently, the 1959 adaptation did just that. The plight of the decadent Compson family, who find their fortune and emincence turned on its head, is a universal theme. It shares parallels with Orson Welles' masterful The Magnificent Ambersons. Whilst the book's technique is literary, the themes can easily be transplanted into the big screen.

Not to mention, the book has startling images that leave an indelible dent on the mind of the reader. The book germinated with a mental image Faulkner had of an innocent dread-locked girl dangling from a tree, with her brothers gazing from below. He called it an image of 'purity.' From there developed the conflicted, even incestual, relationship all three Compson brothers have with their sister. Similarly, there are images of Benjy screaming which would make stellar cinematic moments. When he clings to a fence, inarticulately beseeching his sister to return. The ending of the book, where he screams with all his force has the potential to become on the most searing endings of the history of cinema. They are very loaded moments which are not that difficult to dramatise. They hark back to Shakespeare's phrase, the novel's namesake, 'Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'.

The opening chapter, narrated by the mentally impaired Benjy, has a cinematic quality of a montage reminiscent of Terrence Malick. Yet one of the most distinctive aspects of the chapter is that it is about Benjy's defamiliarising and idiosyncratic language. There are a number of oxymorons and tautologies which characterise his unusual perceptual process. For instance, he repeatedly describes the smell of colours. The use of a voice over would never work, namely because Benjy cannot speak.

The second chapter is the most difficult of all. Again, Faulkner uses language very in a very specific way, this time recreating a mental breakdown through disintegrating syntax. Most importantly, the chapter is pretty much a treatise on the nature of metaphysical time and the decline of social patriarchies. There also a series of ruminations about his family. You cannot dramatise any of that. If he were to discuss these themes with his peer Shreve, it would feel stagy. There are a sequence of images of Quentin with an errant child which would work well cinematically, but placed after a delirous Malick-like montage it would turn the film into a cluttered mess. I think that this chapter would make a good film in its own right if it were treated in an austere way. We could follow Quentin introspecting, travelling on a train, the recurrence of ticking clocks, etc.

The third chapter I guess is less problematic than the two chapters above.  Following Jason in his perambulations would work well, I guess. Yet, once again, the chapter is very subjective. Jason's unlikeable traits are as much evinced by his razor-sharp language as they are by his actions.

The fourth chapter is the most cinematic. I already described how well the ending would well. One of the most pivotal roles of this chapter is that it ties all everything together. Everything coheres in the end and you return to the preceding chapters until everything makes sense. A film would struggle to pull that off because most of the ambiguities and asperities the reader encounters beforehand are to do with Faulkner's opaque language. The ending in the film would not resolve everything, it would just make matters more confusing.

Yet I would certainly attend a screening of this whenever it comes out. Faulkner is my favourite writer and it would be intriguing to see these neurotic, brooding characters on screen.

Music and literature

Music and literature, in many ways, seem antithetical. Whereas music is a non-representational form, literature is. Literature connotes concrete meanings. Music, as Stravinsky controversially once said, cannot really express anything other than itself. It is pure form. If a pop/rock combo claim that their latest album is a social critique, that has much more to do with the lyric sheet than with the musical arrangements.

I think that music trumps everything in the end. When literature approaches its greatness it is usually when it is like music. My favourite novels are those which are ambiguous, open-ended and self-negating (in the sense that there are elements which do not fit and which contradict each other). The feelings it elicits are close to music: what does it mean? In the case of modern/post-modern literature, you can analyse the text and offer an interpretation. The text itself has no single meaning. Music can be analysed in terms of its use of harmony, metre, motifs etc., but semantically you cannot impute a meaning onto it.

When you listen to music, you do experience those kind of mystical moments.   In many ways, science is also driven by a desire to unravel the mysterious. Quantum mechanics is especially exciting in that its field of study keeps growing and growing. Even its experts scarcely know half as much as about it as we lay-men. Yet, whatever desires lead to its practice, science classifies and codifies. The ultimate aim is to solve the mysteries which make us scratch our heads. What can music ultimately say? Not as much as literature and certainly not as much as science. When I listen to J. S. Bach pieces I feel an overwhelming urge to grab hold of something and I am unsure what it is exactly. Literature should try to elicit those reactions.

Words in many ways are inadequate. Samuel Beckett wrote 'Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.' Words often try to ascribe meaning to a world without meaning. There is no God; everything is one big mistake. If this is the case, who should care about that big teeming novel I'm keen to write? Who should care about the writing by the masters - Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Proust, etc. - when their insights are ultimately the attempt to make sense out of this meaningless wasteland called Earth?

Sadly, literature has not borrowed from music all that much. There are not that many novels about the lives of composers. The masterpiece on the subject is Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, based on the life of Arnold Schoenberg. This is the consummate novel about music in that it captures the ineffable, psychological and spiritual torments associated with it. Anthony Burgess wrote a novel - I haven't read it - about the structure of Beethoven's Eroica symphony in which he mimics the sounds of the music through language and onomatopoeia.

Before I got into writing, my desire was to become a composer. Sadly, time dragged on and on until it became too late. Composing is a lot of hard work. Also, I do not really have the kind of mathematical aptitude required. I turned to writing. Just as J. G. Ballard includes frustrated pilots because flying was his adolescent desire, my stories are crowded with frustrated composers. If I have never been able to write music, at least I have been able to pay tribute to it in some way. I have written stories about Alfred Schnitkke (my only published piece; available to purchase on the navbar to the right), Carlo Gesualdo (titled 'Desperate Lives'; available on the navbar to the right) and Olivier Messiaen.