My Cultural Lowlights: GRETA GERWIG

Please do not consider this an indictment of Greta Gerwig. Rather, it is an indictment of the world that has made people act in a way that is both ugly and totally uncalled for. It just so happens that Greta Gerwig embodies that world - possibly by accident, possibly against her will.

Recently, Hachette Book Group has dropped Woody Allen's memoir titled Apropos of Nothing. Apparently, some of the staff walked out in protest against the publication, and in the end it was Arcade Publishing that agreed to release the book. Let us set aside the fact that this is an egregious act of censorship. Instead, let us think of those righteous and uber-sensitive Hachette employees. Let us try to understand what exactly they were protesting against. Because I do not believe that their arguments would survive the mildest scrutiny. Because yes, sure, we have Ronan Farrow's widely publicised testimony that Woody Allen abused his own daughter, but then what are we supposed to do with Moses Farrow's account (this is his blog) that pretty much refutes Ronan's words? And that is without even getting into the court's decision which acquitted Allen of all the charges.

But - they walked out, incensed and scandalised. They have no evidence, these lovely people, but in a world ruled by who shouts the loudest, you might as well show how principled you are. It is wherever the wind blows, really, and it just seems pathetic. Doubly so, in fact, when we are dealing with people like Greta Gerwig and Timothée Chalamet (a passable actor at best) who first play in a Woody Allen movie and then let everyone know that they donate their salary elsewhere and will never act in his films again. Gerwig, for her part, has repeatedly stated how deeply she regrets taking part in To Rome With Love. Regret why exactly, Ms Gerwig?

I find this hypocritical at best, and stories such as these are appearing everywhere these days. These days, you cannot say that you like Morrissey's new album unless you first denounce the man who recorded it (truly it has got to the point where Johnny Marr will soon have to say how sorry he is for playing guitar on The Queen is Dead). People you would think reasonable lump together Roman Polanski and Harvey Weinstein and claim Kevin Spacey can never be forgiven. In the end, you have to admire the courageous few who caution against blanket accusations and hasty judgements. If we get back to Allen's case for a second, Kate Winslet and Alec Baldwin have to be applauded for stating the obvious. 

As for Greta Gerwig herself, I quite enjoyed seeing her in films like Damsels in Distress and Frances Ha (unforgettable scene), and I honestly do not mind the two films she has directed so far. Lady Bird was an enjoyable, if thoroughly unremarkable, coming-of-age drama, and last year's Little Women was a lovely, if horribly overrated, adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel. It is the stupid claims that get me, and the nagging sense that she would not have succeeded if she had not made them.

My Cultural Highlights: THE MADNESS OF CROWDS by Douglas Murray

It has become fashionable to recommend things to do in self-isolation. Movies to watch. Wines to drink. Music to listen to. Books to read. Some of the suggestions seem perfunctory (God knows you will forget that TV show by the end of the week, and most of those YouTube channels are fucking twaddle anyway), but I would seriously consider books. Thick books, slim books. Books. After all, there might never come a better time to read Anna Karenina.

As I began thinking about it, my first thought was John Niven's Fuck-It List. But then it would beat the purpose, wouldn't it? Niven's latest is the sort of novel one reads over 24 hours, and perhaps even faster than that. No, sure, it does have to be captivating - but it also has to fill up your thinking time entirely, it has to suck all the air from your room. It has to leave you breathless for days, and in complete mental agony. Such book is The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray.

My first encounter with Mr. Murray was a rather odd one. It was a high-profile public debate, and the odd part was that Douglas was not an opponent but rather a moderator of a religious discussion between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson. The discussion was fascinating (I love Harris, and my feelings towards Peterson are somewhat too complex to be put in one sentence), but something drew me to the moderator. Not least because the moderator sounded bigger than the modest role he was given. And indeed he was. The next video I saw of him was shot in the city of Florence, and it was a much more becoming setting. It was Douglas Murray talking about his brilliant book titled The Strange Death of Europe. 

I guess following the death of Christopher Hitchens I will always be looking for someone who could at least partially give me that sense of charisma and boundless, fearless wit that I saw in the great man. Douglas Murray's two latest books certainly qualify, and try as I might - I cannot think of a recommendation stronger than that. 

The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017) was a brave and dangerous book, dealing as it did with all those uncomfortable questions and ugly truths of mass migration to Europe, but then so is The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (2019). Perhaps even more so. After all, your life may be spared if you go against the policy line on the former issue (unless you are an EU politician), but if you find yourself on the wrong side of the latter, then God help your soul. Twitter will crush you, and Google will shame you for life. If you think you might survive, then the numerous examples that Douglas Murray is providing in the book will beat your arguments into pulp.

Because there are crowds, and they are mad. They will simplify and accuse to avoid difficult discussions. They will get offended and they will never forgive. They will tell you that race is a social construct. They will give you words like 'intersectionality' and 'gender fluidity', and they will keep making it all up as they go along. They are women who want to be sexy but not sexualised. They are huge tech companies who will treat you like sheep (type 'European art' into Google, and see the first choice it will give you). They are straight white men who will tell you they are sorry for being straight white men. This is pure undiluted madness, and The Guardian review of this book is one good example of that. 

Murray is doggedly trying to explain it all, and if in The Strange Death of Europe one of the conclusions he makes is that Europe has some sort of fucked-up death wish, then surely in The Madness of Crowds it has to be this insane drive for authoritarianism. It is like we really want this Orwellian thought police that would tell us what to think of race, gender and identity. Apparently, freedom is just not good enough for us. 

There are many important questions which Douglas Murray is asking here, but the main one is the very same question he asked in his previous book. The question is very simple, and yet most people fail to ask it: okay, but what next? So you have taken in all those immigrants, but what next? Where is the final point? What is the plan? Okay, so you call yourself 'they' and you hold your professor hostage (the Evergreen College story is frankly hair-raising) and you have fired people beyond forgiveness for a drunken tweet written ages ago and you have made Scarlett Johansson apologise for being white - but what next? Where is this ship going? Where is the point at which you stop? 

It is questions like these, as well as hundreds of others, that you will be asking yourself while reading this book. You will be exhausted and exasperated when you reach the end, but you will find the journey ultimately satisfying - because there is nothing quite like a face of sanity amid the multitude of woke people. 

travelling notes (cxxii)

I could do a Sartre and overtip, I could fake my way through saying the cocktail was nice when it was not. Still, whatever I do, nothing will ever stop me from being haunted by the look on the face of that Austrian waiter when I got up from the table of a small Viennese cafe without finishing the impossibly tough schnitzel and without leaving a tip. 

Скетчи про Минск. Улицы, на которых нет людей.

В последнее время я часто вижу фотографии безлюдных городов. Это стало чем-то вроде увлечения или даже необходимости. Пустая неаполитанская улица со свисающей корзиной для бедных, лондонский Сент-Джеймс парк без медлительных апрельских разговоров, лиссабонская площадь с двумя или тремя силуэтами в печальных весенних плащах. 

А еще: Нью-Йорк, Рим, Барселона. Так, меня поразили недавние кадры того, как Франциск проезжает по широким, пустынным римским улицам. Его религиозная миссия не интересует меня; я вижу то, что проступает над его головой и за его плечами. Улицы, на которых нет людей. И, черт возьми, к тоске по недавнему прошлому примешивается чувство восторга.

Наверное, это извращенное чувство, но ведь и восприятие вещей изменилось. В те моменты, когда выходишь на улицу, или когда остаешься дома, возникает таинственное ощущение, что смотришь в объектив камеры Бунюэля. Квадратное кажется круглым, молчаливые фонтаны бьют ключом, а теплые дни бросают в озноб. Наверное, только запах свежего хлеба рядом с колледжем искусств на Коммунистической улице возвращает к жизни.

И все же есть в этом какое-то волшебство. Дело даже не в том, что в Венеции снова начала водиться рыба, в Лос-Анджелесе рассеялся смог, а Миланский собор виден от основания до самой верхушки шпиля. Просто оказывается, что все это самодостаточно и может существовать само по себе. Так что я, конечно, задумываюсь о Минске и начинаю представлять себе аллеи и площади, на которых не вырастают люди. Одни деревья и фонари. Фонтаны, цветы, скамейки. Воображение полнится этими образами, и даже если они лишены римского волшебства (в конце концов, Минск вряд ли выстоит без людей, и нет в нем ни Марсова поля, ни площади Св. Марка), тут все равно есть мрачный трагизм, от которого захватывает дух.

О да, я хотел бы прогуляться по пустынному Минске - не в четыре утра, а в самый обычный день. Чтобы светило солнце и в спину дул легкий ветер. Я хотел бы остаться один на один с этим городом. Я хотел бы сказать ему все, что я о нем думаю. Возвращаясь с работы, я хочу резко обернуться и вдали рассмотреть бесподобный фасад, который все это время был скрыт чьим-то пошлым фиолетовым зонтиком... 

Пустынный город - это редкий кадр, несбыточная мечта цивилизации, и насладиться им по-настоящему невозможно. Только на расстоянии. Только через объектив Бунюэля, плечо папы римского или глаза полного идиота.

Album of the Month: BEAT POETRY FOR SURVIVALISTS by Luke Haines & Peter Buck

Let us be clear on this. Peter Buck's guitar (which is very much stuck in that pleasantly distorted Monster mode) certainly adds juice to the proceedings, but make no mistake: Beat Poetry for Survivalists is a Luke Haines solo album through and through. It is the same voice of utter spite (an acquired taste, granted, but you would be a fool not to acquire it), the same nastiness in pretty melodies and the same preoccupation with cultural icons (some obscure, some less so) of the past. The recorder has not gone anywhere either. 

It is a very good Luke Haines solo album, too, with what I believe to be his best songs since The North Sea Scrolls. Infectious, glammy stuff that should get a lot more recognition than it will.

The story behind the way this LP came about has been recounted quite a few times now, but the gist of it is that Peter Buck bought a Luke Haines painting of Lou Reed and one thing led to another. 'Another' being this album that was recorded almost entirely by correspondence. The correspondence must have been good, though, because the whole thing sounds delightfully homogenous, and Peter Buck's guitar seems to be the most natural continuation of Haines's songwriting. Plus, the stuff he does on, say, "Last Of The Legendary Bigfoot Hunters" is fascinating in its own right.

The anthemic "Jack Parsons" about the American occultist-researcher (how else?) is the perfect start, but it is the second song, the Donovan-referencing "Apocalypse Beach" that is the high point of the album. There is just something about the "Radio waves in my head..." chorus that literally takes me someplace else. A Luke Haines classic, that one, worthy of anything he has ever written. Other personal favourites include the criminally catchy "Witch Tariff" (reminds me of his Rock'n'Roll Animals album, in fact, either due to 'the cats' or the fucking recorder*), the deliberately ugly "French Man Glam Gang" (oddly, this one makes me think of The Fall's "Jetplane") and the playfully sinister "Bobby's Wild Years". The latter has to be about Robert Forster, of course, as anyone who has read the brilliant Grant & I memoir would figure out. I particularly like how Haines rhymes 'genius' with 'genius' - something Forster, too, did so beautifully in "You've Never Lived" (my favourite Go-Betweens song, no less).

Excellent album. In fact, my one complaint would be the relative absence of variation. "Rock 'N' Roll Ambulance" is a wonderful closing ballad but I would argue the album is in need of another one at some point after "Andy Warhol Was Not Kind". Still, this is but a minor quibble that should in no way detract from the fact that these are some of the best songs from one of the world's greatest songwriters. And now that my vinyl copy has finally arrived, I think I will join the survivalists. Times being what they are, etc.

*I love the recorder. I mean, I hate it, of course, but I do also love it. Unconditionally.


MARCH ROUNDUP:


Luke Haines - Beat Poetry For Survivalists

See above.

Stephen Malkmus - Traditional Techniques

Think "Church On White" but lacking a bit of spark.

Monophonics - It's Only Us

This one sounds like a lost psychedelic funk classic from the 60s. Delightful. 

Paul Heaton - Manchester Calling

An uncool album from an underrated songwriter. Very good. Overlong, too. 

Boomtown Rats - Citizens Of Boomtown

Glam trash of the highest order. Occasionally brilliant, occasionally tasteless. Mostly both. 

Morrissey - I Am Not A Dog On A Chain

Hopefully, the world will come round eventually. The music is too good. 

The No Ones - The Great Lost No Ones Album

Another Peter Buck featuring album with beautiful psychedelic melodies from days gone by.

Baxter Dury - The Night Chancers

The perfect marriage of Sleaford Mods and Serge Gainsbourg. "Baxter loves you". 

Carla Bley Trio - Life Goes On

Superior jazz for a late night. Seriously, this is the best I can do. 

Rustin Man - Clockdust

This time, it felt to me that he chose atmosphere over songs. Still good though.

My Cultural Highlights: TRUCKLOAD OF SKY: THE LOST SONGS OF DAVID McCOMB VOL.1 by The Friends Of David McComb

I have always believed that David McComb is an artist worth obsessing over. The very idea of him seems so remote and yet so powerful that there is no escaping a certain David McComb cult. I joined it fifteen years ago, back when I first heard Born Sandy Devotional (a top ten album, still) and then rejoined it for Calenture and his criminally underappreciated solo album. Christ, I was even obsessed with "Memories" once, the Leonard Cohen cover from The Blackeyed Susans' excellent All Souls Alive which I could not stop playing back in my troubled late teens. I might say my obsession was due to Warren Ellis's infectious violin or Leonard Cohen's sex-possessed lyrics - but, really, how could it ever be anything other than that voice?..

Which makes it inevitable, really, that each time I play this record (and I have been doing it quite a lot over the last month), I imagine that it is David himself who is singing these songs. I imagine a lost Triffids tape or else an unreleased second album - whatever it is, I hear a classic David McComb LP fucked up by providence. By doing that, I am not willing to denigrate any of the musicians behind the album - I am sure that David's friends would not mind. If anything, that has to be exactly what they were trying to achieve here.  

The voice, however, is only one part of the story, and it would not have been the same without the songwriting. Which, if you discount the misguided last album by The Triffids, was absolutely out of this world. In fact, I would be ready to wipe out any great name you would be willing to mention with nine minutes of "Field of Glass". Needless to say, I was thrilled to find out that a few friends (mostly people from the Blackeyed Susans, plus David's brother Rob) decided to record a collection of unreleased songs written by the great man.  

An album like this is made for the listeners (mostly obsessed people like myself) as much as for those musicians who are involved in it. There is a great warmth to the whole thing, and you are just happy to be part of it. Because of course the songs are great, and they all have that unmistakable intensity which can be playful one moment and tortured the next. The opener "Kneel So Low", for instance, is every bit as good as David's "Setting You Free" single from 1993. The utterly charming Angie Hart-sung "Second Nature" is everything you need to know about McComb the pop songwriter. Other personal favourites include the laidback "Look Out For Yourself" and the spirited "Thanks For Everything".

Again, imagining David McComb singing these songs is absolutely fucking euphoric. Sad, too, but very often in life you have to take those things together. In the end, all that counts is that these are eight (eleven, if you buy the CD version) lost songs from one of the greatest songwriters who ever lived. A miracle, really, and the fact that this is Volume One only adds to the wonderful sensation of discovering something that could have been gone forever.

My Cultural Lowlights: FLEABAG

Sometimes I think it is all about the sense of humour. Really. The whole shebang. You can fake it through a decent relationship with different tastes in movies and different political views. Different gender, too, is still acceptable. It is the disparity in what makes you laugh that will be your downfall. Equally, a comedy that does not make me smile once reveals a certain incompatibility. Also, it brings up the following dilemma: either it is me who is humourless or the world. And, being the reasonable person that I am, I strongly believe it is the latter.  

Still, fifteen minutes spent in the culture sections of most newspapers will tell you the inevitable: Fleabag season 2 is the greatest thing ever and Fleabag season 1 is the second greatest thing ever. The TV show is a triumph and Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a national treasure. The hype is nauseating. I try again and yet again I fail. Twenty minutes in, I raise my eyes to the fucking ceiling: where are the jokes? Surely it cannot be my inability to grasp British humour that won't allow me to enjoy this. Peep Show, The Thick Of It and Black Books have me in fits pretty much all of the time. Fleabag has me bored as a comedy and completely unmoved as a drama.

Perhaps the worst thing about Fleabag is that it desperately tries to shock you (it does seem like a conscious attempt, I am afraid to say) and the result is horribly flat. It is childish and crass but never shocking. All you see is a middle-class character of Waller-Bridge wandering around middle-class London trying to solve her middle-class issues that you do not really give a damn about. And then there are all these excruciatingly 'clever' asides where she just looks into the camera and says something cynical or vulgar or heartbreaking. Something that should make you laugh. Or cry. Or whatever.