The Sun Ra Arkestra
I introduced a school friend into Sun Ra's music and he let me know about this concert in London. It exceeded both of our expectations. This is quite likely the best concert I have ever attended.
The dour thing about most rock and pop is that is largely a dour process when it comes to live performance. The performers play the repertoire largely as it is on record. They insincerely thank the audience. They plan an encore. They leave. The great thing about jazz performances - especially with an ensemble as colourful as the Arkestra - is that each performance is different.
Sun Ra played nearly every variety of jazz throughout his career. He is written off by many as a crazy shaman who just made atonal cacophony. Yet the great thing about this music - and the Arkestra have kept at it for more than twenty years since his death - is that it is firmly poised between more traditional and more avant-garde stylings of jazz. In this concert, there was a lot of swing alongside brilliant atonal effusions.
It beggars belief that most of the group are in their eighties. Marshall Allan, who leads the group, is approaching ninety-one. They played with so much energy and passion that, if you heard a recording of the music, you'd assume they were all in their twenties. One of their saxophonists started dancing and doing incredible acrobatics - in his late seventies! Sun Ra has a despotic reputation. But, unlike other 'despotic' avant-garde-musicians - Mark E. Smith, Beefheart, Zappa, Miles Davis etc. - none of his musicians seem to harbour the slightest resentment against him. They still want to preserve his legacy, celebrate his cosmic philosophy and they still want to play each gig with the utmost energy and passion.
There is such a communal feeling to an Arkestra concert. They want the audience to get involved. I giddily danced and clapped throughout the concert. Towards the end, the wind and brass and players - barring Allan - descended onto the crowd and danced and soloed around us. I've been hearing Sun Ra's music for ten years now, so it is rather emotional to witness this. Also, strangely for a concert of avant-garde music there were a lot of pretty single girls floating around! (One of them started dancing with us but promptly left before the end of the concert!)
When you read about Sun Ra's music, he is always written about in past tense. It is easy to forget that his legacy lives on. To think that he was at his peak during the 60s and 70s when you can still attend a concert as mind-blowing as this.
John Gray
I've been reading John Gray's books and his magazine articles an awful lot lately. He has influenced a lot of my thinking and was the person largely responsible to get me into reading Schopenhauer (Borges played a part in that, too). I went with Michael Brooks, author of the 'Doves Will Rust' blog and a novel I review for this blog, Digital.
Gray is, by and large, the main voice of pessimism and unreason in this country. He has been a strident criticism of Enlightenment thinking and utopianism. The main charge leveled against him is that he offers nothing positive to lead to any tangible change and improvement. To Gray's credit, I think that there is far too much optimistic thinking. In my view, it is healthy to have his commentary and analysis in public discourse. He has been advocating a similar position for a long time. (This is despite seismic shifts from being a socialist labourite, to being a Thatcherite, a brief excursion into Blarism and now finally has arrived at a red herring where he does not really espouse any political label.) Gray critiqued free market globalism in False Dawn, where he argued that is an 'unstable Enlightenment project' on the verge of collapsing. He was an early critic of the Iraq war, viewing the idea of importing western liberal democracy as hubristic and utopian. As he was saying all this stuff about fifteen years ago, after Fukuyama had pronounced 'the end of history,' he was viewed as something of a crank. Yet after the financial crash of 2007, the unraveling of the Iraq war, the failure of the Arab Spring and many other developments have largely vindicated his position. The optimism of the 90s has largely lapsed into a collective scepticism.
The main target of Gray's polemics has been the notion of 'progress.' He argues that the Enlightenment/Liberal/Marxist idea of progress was inherited from the Christian notion. Gray argues that there is progress in science, in the sense that knowledge and information accumulates. Gray argues that that such a view is a 'human myth' (like religion), one of the many beliefs which humans have. (Another argument he uses against Enlightenemnt humanism is that humans are no different from other animals.) Gray sees politics as temporary remedial expedients - hence the 'seismic shifts' I mentioned above. There is no progress in politics or ethics. This was the view of ancient antiquity, which was a circular conception of history. In the Greek/Roman/pagan etc. conception, history was viewed as being sequential. There were wars and there was strife followed by periods of enlightenment and harmony. Whilst Gray does concede that living standards have improved and that we are more liberal and tolerant about civil liberties, these values and economic conditions can vanish overnight and be replaced by barbarism. (He cites the USA, the world's foremost liberal democracy, employing torture during the Iraq war.)
Gray covered some familiar ground in this lecture. He covered some of the stuff he has written about in recent articles as well as his most popular book, Straw Dogs. But the talk was at its most stimulating when he ventured into the subject of his latest book, free will. I disagreed with some of the things he had to say. Gray believes that our minds are deterministic and that we are not always conscious about our actions. In his book Straw Dogs, he argues that a pre-engineered cognitive system is essentially no different from that of humans. But, beyond that, can said cognitive system actually understand concepts like free will, morality, love beyond merely replicating them? (This has been brought up by John Searle in his 'Chinese Room' argument.)
Gray draws from examples from ancient antiquity against secular humanists who think they are more enlightened and scientific. He talked about the Gnostics and contemporary 'transhumanism.' Gnostics thought that the material world was illusory and that the afterlife was the real world (a view which has shades of Plato). By adhering to their creed and by practicing asceticism, they would enter a 'perfect' spiritual plane. Gray argues that is essentially no different from a current scientific fad that wants to load the data from our brains and to bring it back once we've passed away. We thus become 'eternal' and 'perfect.' Scientists are essentially being ascetic and austere by living so healthily that they will live until 2040 until technology has caught up with us.
Whilst I disagree with some of his arguments about free will, Gray ended his lecture on a stimulating note. He talked about the need for humans 'to live in mystery and ignorance.' Gray is less influenced by philosophers than he is by poets. There is a Romantic streak to his world-view (which I am sure he would deny). I get terribly bored by thinkers like Dawkins, Pinker and Grayling (all of whom Gray attacks on a regular basis) who preach about the need for science and 'reason.' Gray is sympathetic to religion. He wants us to preserve myths, one of the things which differentiates us from other animals. We are so sedated by consumerism and by the progress of science that Romantic concepts like transcendence and the sublime seem to have little currency. Though as Michael said once we left the lecture, we still feel the need to intellectualise these things. And we are often smug about 'ignorant' people.
Chile vs, Brazil at the Emirates stadium
I went to this game with bunch of Latin American PHD economics students whom I've developed very close friendships with. Two of them are Brazilian. They had been taunting me about what a crap Chile team before the world cup but largely retracted those statements after they saw them play in the world cup! (We were close - ever so close - of knocking them out.)
This the fourth time I have seen Chile play. (The previous time was the 2-0 win against England at Wembley.) This is the first time, though, that I saw them lose. The game ended 1-0 to Brazil.
The main reason for the disappointment was down to Dunga's negative tactics. Chile are a fast, fluid, passing side and Brazil constantly fouled them and stopped them. (They accrued a lot of cards.) Chile, despite being the better side, mustered one shot on target.
Though I did encounter something very, very suprising. A fan from my third division teach, Fernandez Vial, invaded the pithch. I am in an important European stadium, watching an international friendly and I see a Vial fan storm into the pitch. Only word could express my incredulity: SU-RRE-AL.
Vial are in danger of being disbanded. They were just promoted from the third tier and the ANFP (the football federation) has charged them a large sum they can't afford to pay. Vial are the team with most support in the region and with longest and most interesting history. They deserve a lot more. The fan went up to Bravo, who plays for Barcelona, and pleaded for his help... yep, the situation really is that desperate.
So, all in all, I had fun bantering with my Brazilian friend and witnessing that surreal incident. And I'm a passionate fan of La Roja, so it's a always a pleasure to see them play. So it was worth it.
