THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1981 - Papa's Gotta A Brand New Pigbag - Pigbag

 

Pigbag were a large band, eight musicians based in Cheltenham. Only Simon Underwood had any previous music career, once being a member of the post punk outfit The Pop Group. They'd been highly influential, but too innovative to ever be commercially successful. In many ways Pigbag drew on a very similar rag bag of sources, combining funk, punk, ska, reggae and afro beat, to them, similar to Rip Rig & Panic, but with a much lighter hearted tone. Papa's Gotta A Brand New Pigbag's played on its James Brown antecedent and was a huge crowd pleaser at gigs and was a shoe in for their first single release in May 1981. Reaching No 3 in the charts, things were looking good. The album that followed in 1982 Dr Heckle & Mr Jive went straight to No 1. But they never seemed to be able to overcome the template that first tune laid down. In 1983 after releasing three albums within one year, the band split, all of them unhappy with the direction their music had taken.

But Papa's Gotta Brand New Pigbag was a highlight of the early eighties post punk boom. And rose to fame around the time the British Ska revival reached its peak. In many ways bands like Madness stole a lot of Pigbag's thunder in the large eccentric band slot , but were able to broaden and develop their style and transcend the ska revival they rose to fame on. Pigbag could never quite work out how to do that. So they became another addition to the long list of one hit wonders.

CAVE NOTES - Spirituality With Rigour

'The word 'spirituality' is a little amorphous for my taste. It can mean almost anything, whereas the word 'religious' is just more specific, perhaps even conservative, has a little more to do with tradition.

Religion is spirituality with rigour, I guess, and, yes, it makes demands on us. For me, it involves some wrestling with the idea of faith - that seam of doubt that runs through most credible religions. It's that struggle with the notion of the divine that is at the heart of my creativity.'

Taken from Faith, Hope and Carnage
conversations between Nick Cave & Sean O'Hagan
Published by Canongate, 2022.

GNOSTIC OPTICS - Self Knowledge

'He who understands all
but lacks Self Knowledge
lacks all.'

Taken from The Gospel of Thomas
Translated by Alan Jacobs,
Published by Watkins Media Ltd 2006

FINISHED READING - Faith, Hope & Carnage

A book of conversations between Nick Cave & Sean O'Hagan.

This book is full of constant surprises. Astonishing insights into a persons creative process. A revelatory journey through one man's grieving, the pain of it, and what he has done as a result of it. The person you see here is someone undergoing some sort of transformation. Being turned inside out, by the loss of his son Arthur. 

As a skilled songwriter you would expect him to be an adept word smith. And he his clear and lucid here even about his doubts and vagueness. Cave is never any less than honest and articulate. Yet the man you meet here is in the middle of a revolution in how he works and creates. He's throwing much of his previous way of working out the window and starting again. With the help of his chief collaborator Warren Ellis. All of these changes in one way or another a response or a ricochet with their origins in profound loss. There is no time to waste anymore. Nick Cave has always been a creative whirlwind, restlessly driven on to find fresh areas to musically explore. But now he's operating on steroids.

You don't have to be a fan of his musical output to appreciate this book. If you are it does make it all the more absorbing to read.  What comes out of these conversations is mostly just very human, and because of its universality understandable to anyone. I found his exploration of what his belief in god might consist of, the dynamic between doubt and faith, that these are really the focus of it all. When something traumatic happened, instead of being thrown out of his faith, he went deeper in. In a search for meaning, but also purpose. For him belief in god can be an effective coping strategy for dealing with tragedy.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 81 - Men & Black

We'd been preparing ourselves all the previous week. Making additional stock, and gathering our craft market accessories together. Saturday was to be our first craft market of the year. We were apprehensive anyway, because this one was a bit of a punt.  Being convinced by the organiser that a stall on the Sheringham Viking Festival site on Beeston Common could work for us - a stall full of items covered in Mid Century modern fabrics, perfumed candles and soaps etc. As long as there were other stalls like us we said, we'd be prepared to give it a go. Even though the other stalls sold things like Anglo Saxon mead and trumpets made from rams horn. The stall holders dressed in smelly furs, hank plated hair and chain mail. Both of us were, nonetheless, tense and sleeping badly, simply from apprehension.

The weather forecast at the beginning of the week for Saturday was not looking good. Bucketing it down all day, with a strong cold gale wind, nine degrees feeling like three. By the day before, this had reduced to a 50% chance of rain. In the early hours of Saturday morning it was fluctuating quite wildly, on a seemingly half hourly basis, from torrential to a mild drizzle. As we had to set off just after 8am, if we were to call it off, we'd have to do it soon. The moment we saw horizontal rain across the field opposite, we knew we wouldn't be sitting on Beeston Common trying to stop our gazebo from blowing into the village pond. 

We sent a polite text and email saying we were pulling out. Friends of ours who were due to pitch their waffle making van on the common, inspected the water logged ground and pulled out too. So we were not alone. In fact most of the non Viking related stallholders did. Customers who'd been up there told us it was like Glastonbury, slippery mud underfoot, dejected looking stallholders, all a bit yuck. Suddenly we felt an immense relief, we'd made the right decision.  Our shop, considering the day was such a total wash out, did OK.

The next day, our shop was closed anyway. We took ourselves off on a round trip. Taking in the monthly Holt Makers Market which was full of familiar stalls, a bit smaller than usual, but it was the first of the new season. Stocked up on Kimchi, Cortado and Lemon & Dill Sauerkraut from our favourite Le Digestif stall. We then progressed to Fakenham and The North Norfolk Artisan Fair which is held two or three times a year at Fakenham Racecourse. Primarily to see if we'd want to exhibit there. You paid a £6 entry fee! After this visit I'd say probably not. Calling it an Artizan Fair misrepresents what that means, and what was actually there. There was lot of bought in stuff, repackaged truckles of the same range of cheeses, manufactured cosmetics, mixed in with what was too frequently frankly a Church Fete level of craft making. There were some real artisan makers but few and far between. Artizan this was not, to portray it as such was indulging in a bit of 'craftwashing'. 

We had at least hoped there would be a good cafe with homemade cakes, but only found a couple of trailers, with a feeble offering. So we took off for Stiffkey Stores and had a decent Latte and one of their superlative peanut blondies. Whilst we were there, a little girl dressed in a pink gauze tutu with multi coloured pom poms on the fringe was trying to eat a chocolate brownie. Not sure whether she liked it or not, it appeared to be accumulating in her mouth until it reached a point where she could hold no more. Then a chocolaty river dribbled out, down her top, onto her dress. 

Dad and Grandad, left in sole charge, suddenly went into panic mode, unclear quite what you did in such circumstances. They tried to clear the mess up. But in the end the dress had to come off. 'What happened there' the Dad asked, 'Seepage' replied the child. 'Have you got chocolate anywhere else on you!' to which she replied from from out her chocolate smeared mouth a confident 'Nope' 'I thought we were going to have a truth day today' to which the Mother smirked and said 'Some hope' Dad and Grandad sat down with the stress of it all, as though they'd just survived a life threatening event.

March proved to be almost the same takings in the shop as last year. Which we happily accept with something of a thumbs up. Drawing a veil over the increased running costs and stock costs, which means this of course is falling short. But the dreadful Winter months are we hope coming to a close, with Easter being early this year we are expecting a better April. The weather is, however, not yet totally convinced and we keep slipping into perishing cold winds etc. As if a fondness for frost is this years favourite Spring accessory.

On our visits to craft and artizan fairs we are always on the look out for new suppliers or ideas for new lines. But a lot of the time it is just disheartening or annoying what folk think is a good idea. There is a difference between novelty and genuinely inventive. At the North Norfolk Artisan Fair there was one stall selling Man Soap, just man soap. Their marketing     was to have all the packaging and even the soaps themselves coloured black. I found this particularly patronising, to the point of being an insult. Making cliched assumptions about men's aesthetics preferences vis a vie soap perfumes, that they'd only find it palatable if it were packaged in black. They might just as well have called the perfumes Motor Oil or Boot Polish or Grease & Sweat. Now, there's an idea!

FEATURE - Ryuichi Sakamoto

Sad to hear of the death of Ryuichi Sakamoto who finally succumbed to the cancer he'd been living with since 2014. My first real encounter with his work was with the song Forbidden Colours in 1983.

I never really understood the appeal of the Yellow Magic Orchestra. And in his career, though electro-pop was his opening into many things, this was not where his real heartfelt interest lay. It is notable that his return to experimental collaborative work which preceded his cancer diagnosis, appeared to take on an even more diverse wide ranging musical forms afterwards. His output of work increasing phenomenally. Particularly his electronic work with Alva Noto. My personal favourite from his recent work includes Glass, a performance piece with Noto from 2018. 

There is also a superb video series from 2021 available on You Tube called - Incomplete. Short pieces of musical collaborations accompanied by rather beautiful black and white visuals.

Click here to watch - Incomplete

GNOSTIC OPTICS - Mysteries Beyond Mortal Sight

'Come unto me, and I will teach you
about mysteries beyond mortal sight.
There is a magnificent kingdom, infinite,
whose limits no angel has ever reached.
Inside dwells the Great Invisible Spirit.
No angelic eye has seen,
nor heartfelt intuition grasped,
its immensity,
nor can it ever be Named.'

Taken from The Gospel of Judas
Translated by Alan Jacobs
Published by Watkins Media Ltd 2006

MY OWN WALKING - Journal April 2023

I'm currently reading a book of conversations with Nick Cave called - Faith, Hope & Carnage. He has a loose nuanced approach to the whole issue of belief in God, a mixture of doubt and relaxed openness. He also seems in no hurry to tidy up his beliefs into neat ideological statements. God, may or may not exist, but he can see that belief in a deity could still be a helpful life strategy. 

Since I resigned from the Triratna Order five years ago, there has been, and still is, a process of quiet and slow reassessment of where I stand on some issues. I have to let go of habit and sense what is buried beneath. And sometimes I have to prompt or provoke by reading material that is not within my usual Buddhist bubble. So these things lie in pending trays. I practice within loosely and imprecise parameters. Though I've been a practicing Buddhist for over thirty years, I find that, actually, I don't have a clearly defined standpoint on God, to exist or not to exist? And in the greater picture does that really matter?

The value of something should probably not be judged through the lens of its institutional framework or past actions. Religions, Science, Politics - bad things are frequently done in their name. The fruit of anything will go rotten eventually. Just look at our present government. The speed of decline depending upon its internal or external ethical health. Things naturally lean towards arche decrepitude over time. Which is why there is often the urgency to instigate a revival or reform. Things become perverted through the imposition of doctrinal orthodoxy. What do you find if you return to a religion's first principles, and avoid getting caught up in these pre-established doctrinal standpoints or the rigidity of a dogma frozen into certainty of belief? What is it that they originaly put there faith in?

Atheism, it seems to me, simply replaces one self congratulatory and self righteous religious certainty, with another more secularly based one. Factual rectitude used as a blunt and dogmatic instrument of imposing a conformity. To be rational god damn you! As if putting your faith in anything should be based on the expert analysis of data. When there is insufficient data on anything, it doesn't necessarily mean you must infer its not true. There is simply not enough known to say one way or another. In science things are being inferred from absence all the time, particularly on a theoretical micro level. Whether one responds to lack of data by saying it does or does not exist, is at this point, and in both these cases, entirely a matter of what you put your faith in. Where and how will you find an ultimate answer that will satisfy you? In the meantime you act provisionally, continue to practice and experiment.

If you want life to existentially conform to precise predictable formulas then so be it. But, if anything sets my ears to a beware alarm its the crowing triumphalism of a prominent atheist. As if belief in divinity was just some autumnal detritus that should easily be swept away to make way for the crisp pure white snow of winter's rationale. There can be coldheartedness in this messaging. Like the school bully who snatches your ball away from you, using size or strength of view to taunt and tease. I don't appreciate the delivery of the message, because it comes wrapped in an egotistical conceit, of an obsession with the certainty of certainty itself. 

The message has so much more value than its messenger. My not liking the way the postman delivers the letters does not change what is contained within its envelopes. Is my not liking the messenger really about my not liking the message? But an unpalatable message presented unpalatably, does that ever convince anybody?  Is it that I find dogmatic certainty inherently unconvincing, whether that comes spoken in a religious, scientific or political tongue. I don't buy into that certainty. The sweeping nature of it feels misplaced. Where is the place for doubt, for uncertainty, for the unknown wrapped around in the humble cloth of faith?

Unknowing, should not be thought of as empty. What is unknowable is potent, filled with ideas, images, inspirations, feelings, impulses and intuitions. Its not a void, but a place where certainty is avoided. The place of not knowing can be an invigorating creative space to stand in. Full as it is with an overwhelming number of potentialities. If we start snatching at them, trying to capture them in prose, a poem, a piece of music, or in paint, the excitement diminishes the more we turn that unknowing into a known entity. The best poetry hovers in the space between unknowing and knowing, leaving our imaginations unsettled and questions unanswered. We capture only glimmers. Faith is a practice of how you live positively within that state of unknowing.

Nick Cave suggests that whether you are in search of a divinity or awakening - 'it may actually be the doubt, the uncertainty and the mystery that animates the whole thing'. So wondering where I am with all of this, is not some personal failing, it may be just the point of it. Its not about pinning yourself down to firmly concrete and immovable beliefs, but being willing to simultaneously inhabit absence and presence, belief and disbelief, of knowing surrounded by a mist of not knowing, of god looked at through a mirror where no god can be seen. As Dogen expresser it - Realisation is the state of ambiguity itself.'  ? The vagueness is where everything settles in the end 

FINISHED READING - The Gnostic Gospels

The discovery of the Nag Hammadhi texts in 1945 seems single handedly to have recreated the modern interest in Gnosticism. It provided other or more complete versions of texts, as well as ones unknown or known about but no text previously existed. Since then a series of translations have surfaced, including this one by Alan Jacobs. His stated aim was to make the texts more readily accessible and understandable. In order to do this he has consciously removed their more esoteric impenetrable aspects. It is probably safe to say this translation should more accurately be called a rendering. Perhaps I held an expectation of what these texts should be like. But I couldn't escape a neutered feeling about this translation I could not quite shake off. Something of their essential character having been stripped from them. Robbed of their full range of linguistic richness, the metaphors impoverished, the imagery dulled.

Apart from this sense of being too far removed from its original source, what else did I find? Well, the texts are mostly very different in character to the accepted Gospels of the Bible. Some phrases by Christ re-emerge in slightly different form or contexts. Most of these 'gospels' are not gospels in the traditional sense, but collections of reputed sayings or dialogues by Jesus or a disciple. Some resemble later commentaries or poetic evocations. There are no stories or parables. When I read them it seemed quite obvious why these would be left out of the official gospel selections. The metaphysical theology beneath them diverges significantly from the considered norm. The central idea being that we learn to become one with the Godhead, reborn as the Son or Daughter of the divine. Which gives a whole new slant to what the epithet Son of God is meant to infer. It may not be a literal, but a spiritual state.

Their outsider status, is as much to do with the Gnostic in Gospel's use of language tone, metaphorical language, symbolism and imagery of the spiritual path, which sets them apart from the New Testament texts. Without commentary or explications these would be basically indecipherable to the casual layman. These are not parables or teaching stories. They require quite a bit of unpacking. If these really are a whole other set of teachings by Jesus ( and I do say If ) then they were probably for his close and more experienced disciples only. One of whom, Mary Magdalene, has the honour of being the only female disciple of Jesus to have her own gospel, via this 'Gnostic' tradition.

Similar to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadhi texts are texts written for a particular sect of early Christianity which no longer exists. These sects are randomly grouped together under the Gnostic banner. Though it appears there was no one singular identifiable stream of  Gnostic Christianity.  There were just a bunch of unorthodox traditions, one offs so to speak, that gradually declined before history could capture their essence, or establish what teachings they may have held in common. Leaving a cache of apparently disconnected texts in pots in caves etc. The nearest living relative to these early sects is the Coptic Church in Egypt.

Gnosticism as we currently know it, is a modern reconstruction of  a tradition that most likely never existed in the form it has now been given. Which is why modern Gnosticism can appear to be such a hotch potch of Christian Esotericism, Spiritualism, the Alchemical, Occultism with a fringe of New Age mysticism, and Uncle Tom Cobbly and all and all. Perhaps they never did hang together as a coherent religious philosophy. But they do show how the early sects of Christianity absorbed a broad range of influences and were wildly eclectic with non conformist tendencies.

CARROT REVIEW - 4/8

FILM CLUB - A Matter of Life and Death

Powell and Pressburger Film - 1946

You enter the film through a voice, as a misty blue fog clears and we realise we are looking out at the expanse of the universe. As he talks, the camera scans across it until we reach our moon and an indistinct muddy coloured Earth. As we zoom in closer we start to hear radio conversation emerging from the planet's atmosphere. Then its a specific interaction between an aircraft pilot Peter (David Niven ) and a female operative June (Kim Hunter ). His plane is hit and he has no parachute, so he's decided simply to bale out rather than crash and burn to death. But before he does, he engages in a long and occasionally poetic discourse with the operative. At the end of which they both realise, were he not about to die, they could have fallen in love with each other. The pilot falls, but wakes up on a beach, thinking he's arrived in heaven. But really he has fallen back to earth near to where June lives. They meet and fall instantly in love. But he knows something is not right, he should be dead and in heaven. Can he really have cheated death?

Emerging immediately at the end of the war, A Matter of Life and Death touches on the subject of loss during wartime and creates a big what if. What if one man were to refuse to die and plead to be able to continue his life, and to fulfill his need for love?  It embraces this idea in the sort of visually bizzare way one might expect from Powell and Pressburger. You are never quite sure if the realm Peter is appealing to, is Heaven, or simply a place his own consciousness has created. Whichever it is, this realm has noted his absconding and wants him back. They send Controller 71 ( Marius Goering ) a French 18th century fop, to try to trick him into returning up a very long escalating staircase.

There is a lot of flippant wit, verbally and visually, with many a spectacular set piece. Powell and Pressburger do, as usual, pull out all the stops. Earth is against type, notably vivid in Technicolour and the heavenly realm monochromatic in black and white. That escalating staircase, that moves between, cost them £3,000 to make, and that is 1940's war prices. So this was not cheap for what was essentially a one off prop. The opening dialogue between Peter and June is certainly affecting. But after that, the films emotional heart diminishes as the movie becomes more enraptured by its own playful conceit. I began to find all that a bit tiresome. It utilises a lot of superb cinematic tricks to great effect, but I've seen the film twice now, and each time it has left me feeling a bit nonplussed. There is a coolness as it turns the wheels of its increasingly cranky fantasy storyline. .

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 80 - The Many Triumphs of Selfishness

I've returned to my usual weekly swimming pattern. Gradually increasing the number of lengths as my stamina rebuilds. The Reef which is my local pool, has become very popular. I keep having to try different times of the day as each one progressively gets busier. I guess everyone is like me in search of the quieter pool. Also as Easter approaches you get teachers swimming midday more.

Outside of holiday periods, during the day in the fast lane its usually a few regular ladies and the occasional man with flippers and a snorkel. A bad sign is when Snorkel Man is not alone. Joined by Hand Paddle Man or a gent with an energy drink, a timer and a brightly striped waffle thing he braces his testicles with whilst he swims. Sometimes its not even that eccentric, its just very stereotypically blokey. Half a dozen men, some wearing lycra swimsuits, in their late, bulging, middle age, warned by their GP about heart murmurs, intent on getting fitter come hell or high water. So they thrash about doing a rather stylistically flawed, but speedy, front crawl, up and down, cut you up, overtake you because they can't bear being behind anyone, and generally treat the swimming pool as a venue in which to entertain the selfish need of their ego for the self validation of an improved lap time. Yeh, last Friday's 1pm session was like that. I did my twenty four, then quietly left.

How does one know the shop, and my Hubhy, will not be having a good days takings? When you are walking home and hear a gaggle of old dears down for the day from Yorkshire, traveling on a coach trip, stand outside a local card shop.  

' These postcards are forty pee' ' 
  Ow much' 
' Forty pee'
 'I'm sure you'll find they're cheaper elsewhere'

Its after work last Wednesday. We're on our way to Tesco. As we are walking up Sheringham main street we notice there is a car stopped slap bang in the middle of the road. Station Road is one way and narrow. Usually parked solid on the left, its single file traffic down the right. So this car stopped in the right hand lane quickly becomes a bit of an issue. 

As we draw closer we see the drivers door is open, and the driver, a white haired older woman is faffing about in the back seat looking for something. She emerges with a greetings card. She walks over to a woman in a parked car on the left and gives the card to her. She doesn't ,however, quickly return to her car and drive off, but proceeds to engage the lady in the car in a far from brief conversation. Our jaws drop at how oblivious she appears to be to the build up of traffic behind her, that she alone is causing. Cars are quickly queuing all the way up Station Road and back as far as the roundabout right at the very top. The woman, is parked pretty much at the bottom end of the road. So its a not insignificant tail back.

By the time we've walked to the top of the street, the traffic is still being held up by the woman talking to the lady in the car. Most of the car drivers don't realise what the hold up is, they cannot see that far. Those that can are being, to my mind, far too accommodating. There are a few short paps, to no immediate response. We stand looking back down the street, unable to see for ourselves now what is going on. Somewhat aghast at the apparent blinkered nature of what we are witnessing.

Its been clear for a while that one of the aftermaths of the pandemic and its lockdowns, is that there has been an increasing incidence of self centred and abusive behaviour towards shop workers. Both the cafe and the off license, in the Courtyard, have had some very rude and angry customers. I read in the paper that its also put in an appearance in theatres and cinemas too. Where often drunken parties have had to be evicted for anti social behaviour, and have taken it out aggressively or assaulted, the often female attendants, just for telling them to be quiet.  

There have been a lot of unacknowledged consequences of the pandemic. Of how much people really struggled with feeling isolated and their mental states. The damage to peoples consideration of others maybe a continuing symptom of this. Now add in the current stresses of the cost of living crisis and you have a pretty potent situation, where some folk just crack and lash out, I guess. We already live in a fairly atomised and alienated society. When social cohesion is further weakened, whether by disease or economic circumstances, altruism and collective identity can also be undermined too. The triumphs of selfishness are never a good thing, but it is becoming noticeably more prevalent.

*********

LISTENING TO - Live at Bush Hall by Black Country, New Road

 

When the video of the Bush Hall concerts first appeared on You Tube, I was not the only one wondering what the hell this was. Other than a live album of material written in the immediate aftermath of Issac Woods departure, that is. When he left the band so unexpectedly before their 2nd album and tour were even started, that could have been the end of BCNR. No one would have blamed them if they'd called it a day. What they chose to do was hurriedly write a completely new set of songs and toured those for the rest of the year. The Bush Hall concerts appear to be an end of year shin dig to celebrate simply making it through that mess of a year.

What you are presented with is a band still in the midst of a process of change, throwing up a lot of half integrated ideas to see which ones best resemble a fruitful new direction. Its easy to yearn for the cohesive wired grist that Woods brought which seems ,by comparison, both tighter in musicality and psychology. But the songs here are clearly themed as a breakup and mend album. I do want to be wary about passing judgement prematurely here. Three of the band have taken up the responsibility for songwriting and lead vocalist, Tyler Hyde, Lewis Evans and May Kershaw. Triumvirates generally don't have a good track record for longevity in any sphere, so we will see what transpires with this collectivity.

The songs are variable in quality and ambition. Hyde is by far the most interesting songwriter and vocalist, with a fragile vocal style and song writing structure - Wont Always Love You, Laughing Song, Dancers and Up Song provide the strongest backbone to this album.  Evans contribution, Across The Pond Friend & The Wrong Trousers, are lovely genial songs but they don't quite set the place on fire, yet. The two songs written by Kershaw both have a folky tinge - The Boy - more so. After many listens I'm not sure yet if I even like this as song. It seems too fussy with its chapter headings, and meanders to no effect. Turbines/Pigs, however, is substantially different, it has a gentle waltz like lilt to it that erupts into a typically BCNR thunderous cacophony by the end of its nine minutes plus. It's an extension of that painterly vein in BCNR,'s soundscape of offbeat romanticism  If any of these songs makes it onto any future studio album then Turbine/Pigs, Wont Always Live You and Up Song should.

Ants From Up There was a triumphant high, but it proved to be the end of a particularly distinct sound and era. Any follow up album would almost inevitably struggle in the comparison. Live At Bush Hall whets your expectations for what this new format of BCNR might end up becoming, once they get over the shock and settle into it. There are tracks here that make one hopeful for their continued health and vitality. But overall Live at Bush Hall feels often as insubstantial as a cucumber sandwich. It doesn't as yet fully convince me this is going to work, even though I really want it too.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

MY OWN WALKING - Journal March 2023

When times are hard in whatever way, I've come to expect that it will cause ripples through my emotional equilibrium too. If only to rub it in that I remain human after all.  I don't, however, want to be completely consumed by worries or concerns, because that could easily lead to unclear thinking or acting less effectively in dealing with the practicalities of it all. A balance has to be struck here between awareness and distance from it, and that balance is in my experience, always a slightly wobbly one. 

Similar to being a tightrope walker. You hold yourself erect. Keep looking forward. Strongly aware of the actual experience beneath your feet. Sense where your balance is with every step forward you take. Stay alert to your emotional state and external changes, the wind and weather that might buffet you. Never allow yourself to look down, or be down. Its rarely much help to allow an internal emotional state to totally consume you. You are more likely to fall off the tightrope when you are so distracted. If you are in a bad state, its really not the right time to walk a tightrope. Know who to go to when you do need support in maintaining your balance. Try to keep the focus on where you are heading, and what the steps you will need to take in order to get there. If you do fall off balance (and you will ) know how to get back on track.

FILM CLUB - The Red Shoes

Powell & Pressburger Film - 1948 

The Red Shoes is still considered today as the finest film about dance made. It appears to be such a simple, yet tragic, tale about the conflict between the desire to dance and the desire for love. From the perspective of 2023 its easy to not realise quite how groundbreaking a movie The Red Shoes was. For a start, it created a whole sub genre of the psychological horror ballet story.  Black Swan from 2010, being the most recent reworked twist on this. 

Powell and Pressburger devotes the central chunk of this movie to the entire Red Shoes ballet, a seventeen minute long sequence. Choosing not to film it as though viewed through a proscenium arch, it employs a whole magic bag of visual tricks that are simultaneously interweaving cinematically the emotional conflicts of Vicky Page ( Moira Shearer ) into it. For this is the most metaphorical of all movies, multiple layers of allusions.

It opens at the premier of Heart of Fire, a new ballet. Julian Craster ( Marius Goering ) a music student, recognises the music as being his, that his tutor has lifted its musical themes completely.  He meets with Lermontov ( Anton Walbrook ) the company's svengali to expose the whole charade. He ends up employed to write music for a new ballet based on a Hans Christian Anderson story. The Red Shoes is about a shoe maker who makes a pair of scarlet red ballet shoes. These are enchanted and allow him to manipulate whoever wears them. Forcing them to dance and dance unto death. 

Reflecting this fantastically grim tale of obsessive control. Lermontov demands all his leading female dancers be completely devoted to a life of dance, only then can he assuredly form them into something truly great. For him dance is a religion. If a dancer deigns to get married, he sacks them. Lermontov is an archetype of the male who must have complete creative mastery over the feminine. Once he takes possession they must dance and dance and dance, for him alone. A sublimated love inhabits him. He needs Page to be entirely dependent upon him. 

When he discovers Craster and Page are in a relationship, he responds by attempting to ruin both their careers. He coerces Page, she has to choose, its either her dancing career or her lover, she cannot have both. This emotional division proves impossible to hold. She resolves it by throwing herself off a balcony onto the rail road beneath. Damaging her body and ability to dance beyond repair. The last we hear is Page's request to Craster to remove her bloodied red ballet shoes from her feet. An echo from the end of the ballet sequence.

This film fable fizzes with an intoxicated, and intoxicating, energy. Powell and Pressburger throw everything they've got at the screen. You can see the exuberance of their creativity spilling out. Its there in its endless jump cuts, overlays, swinging and swooping camera work. The style is expressionistic, all stretched shadows and exaggerated gestural movements of bodies and film. The richness of its sumptuous technicolour colour palette being mirrored in its musical score. In the way the visual image of ocean waves lapping and breaking over the stage become the audience's applause. Its romantic passion is undeniably written large across its mise en scene. 

Everyone else in the movie has scant realistic agency of their own, they are all to some extent pawns or cyphers for the underlying folklore. For as with most Powell and Pressburger movies, this is no sweet sickly form of romance, it is dark, with menacingly sharp edges. It's a morality tale with echoes of Greek mythology. For whenever humans act as if they are close to being gods, their fall back to earth is inevitable and fatal.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8