Sometimes the hype is wrong, sometimes the hype is just hype, sometimes it can be more than just cool hip hyperbole. In the case of Bait it is very definitely justifiable. To recount the narrative would provide you with only bare bones of what this film is. First impressions within the first few minutes might be that you've stumbled across an archive movie from a much earlier period in British film history. Filmed in black and white with a scratched film surface and something curiously out of sync and off about the sound quality. It echoes films like Local Hero and its earlier antecedent Whisky Galore, in its theme of locals fighting back against incomers.Whilst owing a stylistic debt to early public service documentaries.
That however is where the similarities end as Bait never lightens its bleakness with humour, its story-line is set on taking a much darker turn Where it is remarkable is in its visual composition, editing, cinematography and particularly in its use of heightened sound to be both beautiful, dramatic and yet sinister in tone. This is a contemporary movie that wears its knowing references casually, confident to seed the present moment with foreboding flash forwards, the visual premonitions of where this will all end up.
For in this Cornish sea-fishing village Martin's worldview is out of sink with the changes going on all around him. Sea-fishing is being quickly pushed aside by tourism, yet Martin is prepared to fight back even though he can't even afford to own his own boat. The tourists don't understand the rhythms and traditions of a fisherman's daily lifestyle, they own his old family home and ruffle his feathers all the time. Martin's lifestyle has a gaping fissure developing right down the middle of it, that he wants to heal by returning things to how they were.
This fissure is given aural form by the dialogue being recorded separate to the filming bringing a disjunctive unreality to it. It's as if this were a nightmare or foreign film badly dubbed into English. It also allows the director Mark Jenkins to insert and heighten the smallest noise, whatever he wishes. Sounds are allowed to stand alone and speak volumes, particularly in building up the tension or intensity of feeling a person is experiencing. This is brave film making, taking all sorts of risks by messing around with style, format and narrative sequence.
Bait is currently available to watch for free via Channel 4 for the next month, or BFI Player and Amazon Prime to rent
" What has worked for me is full commitment. Just get to the end of the 'hokey pokey' and put your whole self in... the elbow... the leg....
It doesn't mean we ever arrive perfect, there is no arrival... not even interested in perfection, and yet completely practicing in a perfectly imperfect way.
Imagine you're so sure that you think you're doing the right thing, for the right purpose and just freely giving. For me that's a beautiful example of this commitment to practice.
Its not about the form, but about how you are. How you practice, and for what."
KOSHIN PALEY ELLISON Taken from his talk Open Your Treasure House
Handsfree is a composition for orchestra written by Anna Meredith, that utilizes the seemingly endless possibilities of the human body to make sounds and rhythms. She freely admits her starting point was Steve Reich's - Clapping Music but it soon veers off taking us on a fascinating journey pulling in all sorts of references from beat-box, gospel to tribal dance. Its engaging and thrilling simultaneously. In this video from the Proms 2012, Handsfree is performed by the National Youth Orchestra for whom it was originally commissioned.
If the Mercury Prize has any use, its to points you towards interesting new performers such as Anna Meredith. A Scottish born classically trained composer, she writes very adventurous classical compositions for the concert hall utilising the possibilities of modern technology. But she also has her own band that tours and has released two albums - Varmints and Fibs. Both employ an unique mix of musical styles and filters on instruments that produce off kilter sounds. There are classical tropes, a bit of minimalism, but also folk stylings, heavy metal guitar, electronic dance and brass bands. Here is one of my favourite tunes - The Vapours
My Mother often remarked that I was a 'jam with bread' rather than 'bread with jam' person. Never let it be said that I hold back on the jam. I spread hefty amounts of jam, marmalade or ketchup on top of things, whether they be bread or chips, I drench them in it. The sweet jam on the surface infinitely more important than the hefty bread beneath. Its as if bread alone is just not going to be enough to satisfy me. I think this reflects something about my psychology too. Though the bread of my life can be perfectly fine, if there isn't enough jam, this can become a huge existential catastrophe.
After deliberating last month I've decided to take an break from attending the Zen Priory. If their approach is what I need or want I'm no longer sure. Like most folk I can tell you with greater precision what I don't want or need, but finding clarity about what I do need or want can turn into a bit of a sloppy pudding if left to swirl about for too long. A wide open horizon might suggest infinite possibilities, but it might as well be empty space as far as knowing what it is I want. The larger the range of options the more clueless I become. All I can say is there may not be enough jam, so where do I find the jam?
At present I'm seeing this as a period in which to perhaps broaden my horizons, explore other approaches in the Zen tradition, but maybe it could even go beyond that. All of this requires time, receptivity and mental space, all of which are in very short supply at present. I worry it may mean I end up just faffing about for some while to no great effect. Because I need to recognise that me making my own mind up what to do next can take an age. I'm currently in a place of emotional confusion where uncertainty reigns supreme, as though I've accidentally stepped off into a void and I'm trying to get my bearings. Oh, is this some jam!
What the Priory did provide was a structure to practice within. Without it I do feel more at the mercy of whim, circumstance and context. This isn't helped when the shop is open seven days a week and there is irregularity in my weekly work routine. The longer this pattern goes on, quite what day of the week it is shifts out of alignment with reality. In the absence of a stronger internal guiding light I tend to be a creature motivated by outward necessity and the arising of external demands. Here there is no jam, over there there might be jam, somewhere beyond the horizon there will be jam.
The shop is actually doing quite well. So much so our craft making is having to do a lot of running in order to keep up, and most of the time not quite doing so. July and August were both substantially up on last year, and September is looking promising, The sales pattern has, however, become very changeable. Trying to get a mental handle on what prompts these shifts has proved far too perplexing. I'm finding it best to just turn up, trust and remain productive.
The recent surge in Covid cases, and now the tightening of restrictions, is cranking up the general atmosphere of uncertainty and fear, which can be bad news for high street retail. Few want a return to full lockdown but we find ourselves none-the-less teetering on the edge of one. Whilst the general willingness to keep up the protective and preventive measures has lost its vigilance through sheer fatigue and. let us be honest, loss of confidence in our government.
This remains a place of practice that is unique and is distinctly uncomfortable to live within. It's all too easy to find false shelter in heightened apathy, small minded selfishness, petty rebellions, horrified anxiety or blind panic. Life has always been uncertain, but we've all put a lot of effort into a lifestyle that operates on the pretence that this isn't so. When we say we want it to get back to normal, what exactly do we think that was and what is it now?
My diet continues to proceed well. I passed a significant milestone recently of getting under 200lbs, so only another 17 lbs to go. As the weeks go on I am finding it harder to maintain, relaxing my effort a little too frequently. As the days grow shorter and the signs of autumn more pronounced one reaches for the creature comfort of food as if getting ready to hibernate. But I am on my seventh month of dieting, so it is helpful to be able to cut myself a little slack too. Though I'm not yet there I will have to address what the post-diet regimen will look like. When the focus shifts from weight-loss to stabilising at the weight achieved.
My weight loss has prompted a review and renewal of my wardrobe. Buying clothes that are now Large rather than Extra Large. I'm trying to consider more carefully the number and colour of things I buy and what a coherent basic clothes wardrobe would consist of. I've bought Summer clothes but as Winter nears what next? Most of my trousers, for instance, now only stay up due to the braces I wear with them. Jnanasalin has offered to take the waistlines in for me, but it may also require some starting from scratch. Another benefit is that beloved shirts and jackets once in danger of being donated to charity as too small for me, are now being given a fresh opportunity to shine forth upon the new me.
The regularity of my book reading is erratic and at times none-existent. I appear to just not be in the mood a lot of the time. But when I have been, I've enjoyed reading James Baldwin. He was one of the most cogent voices of the American civil rights movement in the 50's & 60's. He has a punchy eloquence which is oratorical and when you see recordings of him speaking in public, he is a mesmerising figure to watch as his mind turns on the head of an idea.
I first appreciated him through the documentary I Am Not Your Negro, which covers his experience of the civil rights movement and relationships with its significant figures. He wrote an outline and transcript before he died in 1987 which the filmmakers have further adapted and developed to award winning effect. It'll be available on some streaming platform, so seek it out. On the back of this I've read The Fire Next Time and am currently part way through Notes of a Native Son, which are both compendiums of letters, articles and essays. He is challenging and thought provoking, particularly about the co-produced nature of racial distinctions and the views and perceptions these trap us all within.
Due to the inevitable shortage of new material as a result of the lockdown and Covid, the BBC, like many companies has been buying in drama series to fill out its schedules. So we have to thank the pandemic that we are now able to watch all four glorious series of the sci-fi soap opera that is Battlestar Galactica.I'd forgotten just how good it is. So that and 'Strictly' means our evening Winter viewing is now fully booked. Frack, its so awesome!
Whenever I need cheering up its Schitt's Creek every time. Each episode is just pure joy. Here are clips of Moira and her Bebe.
Whenever I'm feeling a bit low and in need of a little bit of cheering up I switch on the Tee Vee, click on da Netaflixur, and watch another episode of Schitt's Creek, with Jonny, Moira, David and Alexis. Here's a classic bit of dialogue featuring David and his then 'Best Friend with Benefits' Stevie discussing wine preferences.
Flint-hearted, am I the one pure pebble cast amongst a whole terrace of football hooligans stratified banks of them all similarly rounded, the roughly the same, some laid intact others cracked, holed, bruised shattered in half. yet all differently coloured pattern mottled placed in ever shifting hierarchies where size matters, each prepared to surrender to the other, to rub up along with and against each stone cold cheek in tidal increments, a movement inward, along the beaches tossing and turning like opals learning how to erode and be smoothed by the hug of the moon through our collisions and encounters with the other, though causally gathered together we remain totally alone on the long long journey towards the becoming of sand locked in a ruttling percussive rumba within the sea of maracas.
I recently discovered this BBC live version from Glastonbury 2014 of Goldfrapp's Strict Machine which has a magnificence that is simultaneously triumphant and mystical. Starting, as many Goldfrapp's tunes from a certain era do, with a direct steal of its central riff, in this case from Chicory Tip's - Son of my Father. It transcends these cheap mock glam origins to be taken somewhere with much greater grandeur. I imagine this was, and still is, a bit of a showstopper. Wonderful electric indeed.
I can usually tell when I'm moving through an interesting time on an emotional or spiritual level, I write more frequently and often in poetic form. I don't believe Nietzsche who cynically thought poetry was just a way of muddying the water in order to appear deep. A little bit of muddying prevents you going mad Friedrich. It is that very 'muddying' that permits murmurings from the depths to bubble up through the gaps. The poet either is or isn't a good conduit for that. The philosopher Gaston Bachelard once said that poetry was like a pebble thrown into a deep pond, that touches the depths before it breaks and ripples the surface. Personally poetry helps establish connection with the shadowy, buried or obscured areas of my psyche. Writing puts one's soul on the table where you can get a sense for what's really going on.
I'm finding that after a lifetime of not quite connecting with the songstressing of Joni Mitchell I've suddenly become a huge fan. But then maybe there is, similar to poetry, personal depths that she plunges and lays out for all to hear that are part of everyone's human experience. She is twittering, warbling and scatting away yet I often haven't a clue what she is on about, but it remains essential soul food. I'm particularly fond of the song Don't Interrupt The Sorrow, with its defiant declamation of Anima Rising!
'Anima rising Queen of Queens Wash my guilt of Eden Wash and balance me
Anima rising Uprising in me tonight She's a vengeful little goddess With an ancient crown to fight'
* extract from Don't Interrupt The Sorrow, from The Hissing Of Summer Lawns.
Wash and balance me' chimes with the mood I'm currently in, reflective about where I've been, where I'm currently at. Washing off some of the things that have clung on, that simultaneously unbalances one's sense of oneself and where one's horizon is . Looking for a new equilibrium. It started with phasing out the public use of Vidyavajra, but what follows and where this ends is uncertain. I'm trying to remain open and let things percolate, waiting to see what shows its face next. Not rush towards the first signs of dry land and claim it for England.
Much of this was initially prompted by the recent death of a neighbour. She was a lady with a profound mental struggle going on quite a lot of the time. Whilst she didn't actively take her life, it was the consequence of stopping using her medication which precipitated a severe epileptic fit that she died from. I have known quite a few people who've committed suicide, and it has an unerring ability to deeply unsettle me. It's more than empathy, personal regret, sadness or having felt similar despair or desperation in my past. Though these are to a degree present, it's more how I imagine a bad memory from a past existence might feel.
Where I am at with my involvement with the Soto Zen group I attend, I'm currently reviewing. I've been going along for eighteen months or more and have found it at times inspiring and my meditation practice and its regularity has greatly improved. I do have areas of difficulty, finding the style of study hard to connect with, it's presentation is a bit unimaginative and dry, like skin that needs a bit of Nivea. It tends to either infuriate or bore me. It could justifiably be argued that I'm giving too much weight to personal feeling and preference here. The Soto Zen approach is many centuries older than myself, so who am I, with my track record, to argue it needs a bit of a re-visioning ?
I'm the sort of person who is quite naturally loyal, easily becoming a consistent and regular presence. I've done this with the Zen Priory without consciously making a commitment to their form of practice as my way too. I'm also at that point where going deeper in my engagement and contribution feels like it may be on the table, but it's unclear to me what that would be. There is also another side of me that wants to explore what other Soto Zen traditions are like, and not commit myself too early or maybe not at all. Questioning where that need to commit or belong is coming from.
I've recently discovered the very wonderful work of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care. It was co-founded and run by Robert Chodo Campbell and Koshin Paley Ellison. Both are truly skilled care givers and communicators, but Koshin is to my mind something quite special a person capable of really inspiring you in very simple practical ways. I've watched loads of You Tube videos, listened to podcasts, and started reading his book The Wholehearted Way. Am I a fan? Yes,I am. He appears to be providing whatever it is I'm not currently finding at the Priory. The New York Center is running some online courses in September, which time differentials and internet connection permitting, I might try attending via Zoom.
Meanwhile in the more dreary world of a pandemic and government competence. Boris Minor is again our absent PM, this time during the algorithmic mess over grades. Where the Witless Gavin clings on determined to clean up his own mess like he did when he was school milk monitor. The Cruel Pea remains free of any discernible kindness or conscience, casting her smirk upon the waters and blaming refugees for their own desperate plight. Dim Dom our Foreign Secretary has resumed hiding in a locked room now he's not forced to deputise for Boris Minor and stare frightened to death by the close proximity of a camera. We still have The Door Matt persisting in pretending he's decisively carrying out his own carefully worked out policy, when he's really just doing exactly what he's told. Then there's The Backhander, always ready to accept payments for preferential treatment, like many Tory colleagues he's blatantly unashamed of handing out cash and positions straight to sympathisers and fellow cult members. All ruled over and given a spine by Dom the Unelected who, disturbingly, seems to be the one who is really running the government at the moment. Oh boy what a mess of pottage this country is now in.
Looking forward to leaving the EU with no deal, the land of opportunity beckons for someone.
In life we belong to many things without at any point choosing them. Born into humanity, a gender, a race, a class and a culture. In all our other relationships we’re mostly free to follow up whatever we desire for ourselves. We belong to groups, gangs, clubs, political parties, religious organisations, a marriage even, because we find there similar people with similar interests or beliefs to ourselves. Its here we feel we may belong, may be content, happy even.
Occasionally though, even here, we find ourselves torn between our desire to belong and to be free. To belong often requires some curtailing of our freedom to think, behave or desire outside whatever terms for belonging we've placed ourselves in. If feelings, beliefs or desires change or chafe against this, we can always leave. Perhaps the desire to belong might keep us there, out of loyalty, the need for friendship, camaraderie or simply connection. Yet belonging without a shared belief or affinity propelling it, will be infertile ground to grow and blossom in.
At some point we need to go beyond even 'the desire' to belong. It's our freedom to desire or our freedom from desire, which is it to be?
We believe we’re free to belong or to not belong To opt in and out of engagement with ordinary life, society and other people. Maybe it’s essential for our wellbeing to take a holiday from everyone else. Yet even our 'not belonging' confirms us as being in the like-minded company of 'those who do not belong'. Everyone belongs somewhere, to something. Not belonging can be this useful pose we adopt.
To place ourselves as this maverick outsider, the ostracised, the unacceptable is a form of self-constructed belonging. Our own unique way of being a disconnected personality. Somewhere to hide ourselves away from the strictures of connectivity. The internet is a great place to hide in plain sight, to thrive in its aloof alienated state. Appearing not to belong to anything or anyone.
There are times in life when we can no longer countenance conforming, we are that proverbial misfitting wheel. Close proximity to communal life isn’t what we need right now. We have to reconnect with our individual freedom to chose. Be a free spirit, free in mind, conventions, commitments, connections, restrictions, free of the lot of them. Not belonging is existing outside of intimacy with others, in order to be more intimate with ourselves.
In the early hours of June 26th 1957 I ceased to be an imagined person. I was now born, alive to the world outside of my Mother's womb. A naked infant, pure, untainted and, for a brief time only, a nameless son to my parents - June Margaret and Lewis Lumb.
My Mother thought Dad's name was too short, over far too soon, the alliteration more a word and its echo. As had often been the case, she got her way over our Christian names, like her I was given two, so my full name is Stephen Nigel Lumb. These Christian names were not indebted to passed family members, they were entirely my parents composition.
Stephen, means a 'garland' or a 'crown' and by extension 'reward', 'honour', 'renown' and 'fame' Its popularity arose from St Stephen, the first Christian martyr who was stoned to death and is often depicted holding three stones and a martyr's palm frond.
Nigel, is derived from Nigellus, a medieval latinised form of Neil. The latin source wordbeing'niger' meaning 'champion' or 'black'.
Lumb, has its origins in an Old English term 'lumm' for a pool or lake. So the surname originally belonged to someone who lived in a clearing or dwelling by water. Lumb is also a hamlet in the Pennine Hills, and it is a very common surname in what was the West Riding of Yorkshire where I was born. My Father's family were originally Pennine farmers until his branch migrated closer to, and then into, Halifax from the late 19th century onwards. My ancestors apparently never moved far.
Despite my Mother choosing to spell Stephen with a 'ph' in an attempt to prevent it being shortened to Steve, this happened frequently. To be honest I have never minded. When people do call me Stephen, it does feel paternal and respectfully proper. Steve seems to me to have a more affable, friendly and companionable feel to it. Nigel remains quite rightly a secretive N on my debit cards .
THE PLAYGROUND NICKNAME
At primary school I would sometimes behave in a deliberately crazy idiosyncratic manner. Probably in a misjudged attempt by me to be funny or entertain, but mostly, I suspect, to get the bullies to like or lay off me. As a strategy this didn't work. Once one teacher referred to me as 'loopy' the likelihood of this word being paired with my surname became unstoppable, and I was soon taunted with it. I was stuck with this playground nickname of 'loopy lumb' for the next ten years. Only able to escape it once I went to art college.
For 43 years of my life these were the names associated with being me.
EMBODYING VIDYAVAJRA
It's early June 2000, the moment in my Buddhist ordination where I took on a new name and became a member of a Buddhist Order. At this point, spiritually speaking at least, I let go of seeing myself entirely through the lens of my old names. This didn't feel traumatic, my sights set on a higher goal, appeared to placate whatever feelings I had about no longer being referred to as Stephen day to day.
It is tempting to think of ordination as wiping the slate clean, but it does not. It's highly unlikely you'll completely let go of the identity views that cluster around your sense of who you are overnight. Made painfully apparent upon returning from four month's on the ordination retreat, as familiar ways of being reasserted themselves. Contained even within my new Buddhist name were confirmations of personal talents and qualities, some I currently possessed and others that needed to be cultivated further.
My Buddhist name - Vidyavajra, was to become as much a part of my self-view as any that preceded it.
Vidya - is quiet, subtle and suggestive, an aesthetic sensibility that is a more intuitive, instinctual and imaginatively felt form of knowing. In practice its an instinctive trust and confidence in your particular way of responding to the insights and revelations that emerge along the Buddhist path.
Vajra - provides the energy, determination and volition with which to train and pursue ones practice. The greater the confidence one has in one's vidya the more vajra you will have available.
Over eighteen years I learned to put greater trust in the name Vidyavajra as an invaluable guide to how to train myself through spiritual practice. Yet after so many years of involvement, I grew disquieted within me about being a member of the Order. I'd begun to experience strong feelings of no longer belonging there. There were a few years of prevarication and reflection prior to June 2018, when I finally submitted my resignation.
LETTING GO OF VIDYAVAJRA
I could have ceased using the name Vidyavajra right there and then. But at the time I saw Vidyavajra as a post resignation starting point from which I would move forward. Remaining Vidyavajra maintained some continuity as I passed from being an ordained person to a not ordained person. In truth I do still love the name.
Names define, and you can never really escape that, whether they are secular or religious in character. Fundamentally Vidyavajra was a name given to signify my belonging to a specific Buddhist Order. Though I am no longer physically or emotionally part of that Order, the name has its origin engraved upon its soul. I'd hoped to use the name to illuminate my way ahead, instead I've found it holding me in a position where I am backlit by it, as though it were my saintly aura.
Vidyavajra has turned into a cypher to represent twenty seven years of Buddhist practice to the outside world. So people understand I'm an experienced Buddhist, who was once ordained, without need of explanation. Without it I would be just Stephen Nigel Lumb of no fixed religious address. I've come to realise that that may just be a better place for me to be right now.
THEPOINTOFRETURNING
Names overtime harden around you, making it trickier to move on to something else if you wish. These days Vidyavajra is used by friends from my old order, in the Soto Zen group I go to, and by my Husband and his immediate family. All of these because I chose to want this to be so.
On a practical level it's not possible to remain nameless. I could have invented a new name for myself, but that seems far too precious, indulging in another type of specialness, one that glories in the power to control and self-define what I'm called.
Returning to being Stephen seems the simpler thing to do. It doesn't have to be viewed as retrograde. I do spend most of my time these days in public contexts where I'm called Steve. Though there is also a balance to be struck, because Hubby and his family have never known me as anything other than Vidyavajra, so in this private context I'll continue to use it. Vidyavajra was a significant part of who I have been, how I became what I currently am. To let go of it doesn't mean I'm required to eradicate it completely in a sort of fundamentalist purge.
The unpicking of this will of necessity be patchy, slow and gradual, I imagine. I'm familiar with the stuff that comes with being Stephen. I've spent my Buddhist life trying to fathom or come to terms with most of it. Apart from it being a Christian name with a biblical origin, its holds no other religious baggage, so it can hold me and I can hold it in a lighter way.
Let me not make too big a deal out of any name I use. Stephen can be just Stephen, in the same way that carrot can be just a name for carrot, its a name for the person who is me. It's just one small step toward returning the nameless son.
I have made some changes to this blog in its colourway and title. This is all in line with what is, for me, a decision to make a substantial personal adjustment. I have resolved, just over two years after resigning from the Triratna Buddhist Order to stop using my previous ordained name Vidyavajra in most public contexts in which I currently apply it. One of which is the title of this blog.
The background reasons for this I'll explain more fully in an upcoming Sheringham Diary blog. It's nevertheless provided me with an opportunity to review its title, layout and colourway. I like the word cornucopia as it represents a sense of lightness, abundance and rich variety, which captures something of what I'm aiming for with the blog. In line with this I also wanted to lighten the colours and general appearance of the blog.
It is proving difficult to change somethings without losing links, the blog altogether, or starting completely afresh with a new blog, none of which I want to do. So I will have to just accept this. Besides, I am not yet anywhere near becoming a trackless one, so leaving a digital history trail is still OK in my book.
