Ahoy Facebook #11

Amazing interpretation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuJ-LKEH6W0&t=6s&fbclid=IwAR0uZgCp_fRFL2bSWTYhe8k9F8hQ8ykqsV2NWO2WzUuE7rZifiCAi4nKslM

Love this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfVnazeA3zw&fbclid=IwAR2F4buCqum73zlrbTrEpz1D-uvGpGMi2FknX3kusqJJfQXukw6CSJBS1vk

Great column.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/30/financial-crash-capitalism-banking-crisis?fbclid=IwAR3lYedS-Om2uiUjl2QpBRlRjyK92QfGzKrPPAfMLJkO6DiqeJK2CxzW9XM

Tired as fuck, but I'm drinking wine and listening to J. S. Bach. ❤️

All right, so I've almost finished proofreading the draft of my novel, 'Planet Zhelanie.' I'll print and bind 15 copies for anyone who wants them. Since the age of 16, I've always wanted to write something 1) extremely weird, 2) extremely complicated and 3) something very good. I've most certainly achieved the first two targets, but I certainly haven't achieved the last one.I admire people like Melvyn Bragg who produce content that appears on a Friday night on ITV. He might interview some highbrow artist, but it's presented in an accessible way and everyone can understand it.

It always annoys me how certain intellectuals/leftists/some conservatives etc. complain about the corrosive effect that consumerism and democracy has on culture.

To state the obvious, both consumerism and democracy have enabled vast segments of society to encounter cultural artefacts that they otherwise would have never encountered. For example, classical music is now much more widely available thanks to consumerism. You can go online and find hundreds of recordings of classics that were previously only available to an elite minority. Democracy has enabled vast groups of previously disenfranchised people to receive a quality education that exposes them to European cultural history. Indeed, more people more than ever are aware of 'high' culture thanks to consumerism and democracy.

I admire people like Melvyn Bragg who produce content that appears on a Friday night on ITV. He might interview some highbrow artist, but it's presented in an accessible way and everyone can understand it.

Indeed, the old left were keen on democratising culture. The 1945 Labour manifesto stated the following: 'we desire to assure to our people full access to the great heritage of culture in this nation.' The Harold Wilson government of 1964-70 created the Open University, an institution that welcomed people from all walks of life and gave them the opportunity to study academic subjects.

I can't stand snotty French intellectuals who write impenetrable arcane texts and who are ostensibly on the side of the 'workers'. Culture for them is something that needs to be 'deconstructed' (whatever that means) and torn apart. The 'New Left' from the 1960s were despondent about the failure of Stalinism and wanted to critique culture to determine what was wrong about the failures of capitalism. Culture for them is an elite enterprise, must include impenetrable jargon and must critique capitalism. The underlying suggestion here seems to be that most people are too stupid to read Shakespeare or listen to classical music and hence capitalism must be critiqued.

Fun fact *: If Theresa May were to bow out now as PM, she'd be the only post-war leader apart from Anthony Eden to serve for two years.

May would be bowing out over Brexit, which some call the worst crisis that Britain has faced since Suez (the reason why Eden resigned), though arguably Iraq was worse.

* This isn't really a fact, as it hasn't happened and it's contingent

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A lot of 'alt-righters' complain as to how social justice is a threat to free speech... But isn't granting individuals/citizens the right to express themselves freely in itself a form of social justice?...

I'm travelling to Sweden tomorrow.

These are all the books that I read in 2018.

https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2018/5993530?fbclid=IwAR2lLXwHkQT4Hx9YInr8y6raWP6ManksvYSmP3F_rKjw25-T9ESs-sTby-c

MY TOP TEN FILMS OF THE YEAR *

1. Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
2. Roma (Alfonso Cuarón, Mexico)
3. First Reformed (Paul Schrader, USA)
4. Zama (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina)
5. Cold War (Paweł Pawlikowski, Poland)
6. Peterloo (Mike Leigh, UK)
7. Loveless (Andrey Zvyagintsev, Russia)
8. A Fantastic Woman (Sebastián Lelio, Chile)
9. Dark River (Clio Barnard, UK)
10. Downsizing (Alexander Payne, USA)

* This list only covers films that received a theatrical release in the UK in 2018, although admittedly Roma was released on Netflix.

I watched 10 films that were released in 2018 - but I still watched enough movies to compile my yearly list.

I am someone who values social fairness, yet many of the artists who I admire either ripped their musicians off or paid them little or no money. On top of that, their musicians even did most of the work and were not given any songwriting or arrangement credits. TMR was assembled by John French and strenuously practised by the entire band over months. 

Similarly, a lot of Frank Zappa's albums include improvised solos and many of his albums would not be the same without their contributions. The guy had a net worth of 40 million dollars when he died whilst some of the original Mothers like Jimmy Carl Black had to keep going on the road before he passed away. Shouldn't it only be fair that some of those guys received a small share of Zappa's wealth?

Beefheart and Zappa were very special people, but their visions could be realised by people who surrounded them. Beefheart could even be violent. Whilst their albums will always have a special place in my heart, I still can't quite get rid of the feeling that they were complete arseholes.



I find these kind of updates to be flamboyant/narcissistic/ostentatious in the extreme, but then it's probably much better than writing hysterical rants.

I had a doctor's appointment today, so I took the day off from work. I went to the library to work on an essay about J. G. Ballard. Objects in the photo include: notes for the essay, three J. G. Ballard books (the primary texts), a book about Heidegger (secondary text) and a memoir by Edna Healey, wife of Denis Healey, former chancellor of the exchequer (I bought this at the supermarket for a £1 earlier, as I am interested in the history of post-war British politics).

Fascinating. I wish that more contemporary TV was like this. Not even BBC 4 shows stuff like this. This kind of thing is also cheaper to make than all those flashy documentaries, where the focus is always on the individual presenter and not the actual topic. The editing/narrative structure is really creative on this, too.

This is also very reminiscent of the golden age of social democracy, when there was a lot more culture on television. A lot of publicly funded television was meant to educate people, to democratise 'high' culture and make it more egalitarian. The plummy accents are a bit silly, though.

https://twitter.com/BBCArchive/status/1100410318038085632?fbclid=IwAR0oA5E3tpyk5v2xYlbrh0H3y0yIAF4u2avERwYkSh7lmq2nRUSSgV4NE5c