Author: bowlingatvincent

Family Fortunes?

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My dad was a great bloke whose default position for people/things that offended him, politically or morally, was to intone only mildly passionately that they should be stood up against the wall and shot. Given that he was a generous lump – six feet, fifteen stone – that may make him a sound like some rather intimidating Northern Philistine, coming as he did from Macclesfield. But though he certainly possessed that particular ability to glory in dumb-honest normalcy – a trait I am kindof proud to continue – he was Top Five when it came to harmlessness, straightness, generosity. There was not an ounce of violence within him.

I mention this because I can’t help but think of this entirely hollow threat to shoot some sharply defined perpetrator in relation to Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson’s aide/doctor/pharmacist; (you decide).

Murray would have been a candidate for the blindfold stagger, one might imagine. Hugely rich (by our standards), almost certainly conceited, professionally lazy, negligent. Arguably a parasite, arguably one of many attached to the shockingly lost pop superstar. Murray, according to reports that I haven’t bothered to check (because I am happier skimming the surface of this depressing episode) drew about 100 grand a month for his attention to Mr Jackson; this for the privilege of pretty much 24 hour drug provision. Issues thereafter become foggy, due to the very real questions around medical need as opposed to recreational use of said drugs. If there is or was an opposition.

My dad would, in his weirdly un-hip way, have loved some of Jackson’s music and even his dancing, despite the chasm of divergent realities separating MJ from Keith Winston Walton (who also died criminally young). This is perhaps one of Jackson’s triumphs – his ability to entrap much of the planet in his moonwalking, hip-twitching genius. Post 78’s Pater could no more sing or dance than imagine a blackberry but there was something Jackson had that was, for a time genuinely thrilling – revolutionary even – as well as hummable. The appallingly high-profile denudation of this gift troubled most of us at some level; it made some of us embarrassed, some angry, some sad to see the unassailable King Of Pop contort and crumble into the later model. But whose fault was it?

Murray put himself in the firing line through a combination of greed and slackness rather than evil in my view. The screaming, high-fiving, JUSTICE placard-wielding fans and family members who cheered and celebrated his conviction, enacting their champagne emotions just like they imagine real celebrities might, were depressingly appropriate players in the malodorous panto. It was America at its shrillest. No matter, no sense that Jackson drifted on some ark cobbled together in a crazy mountain kingdom and then smashed his way down hanging valleys to a limpid, medically-regulated pool, collecting kids, hangers-on and increasingly harrowing constructions of self on the awful journey. No matter that all this love for him melted away the closer you got. Murray was therefore and without question – on some merit, in fact -a burnished receptacle for blame.

Jackson’s family life -the stuff that would ordinarily be called ‘home life’ – has been heavily documented. It might be uncharitable to suggest that his family remains exhibit A in the case against singling out Murray but… where else do we need to go? It seems to be true that nobody cared enough for Michael to either guide, counsel or over-rule him. And the consequence was fatal indulgence, compounded by poor service from his private Drugs-on Wheels service. Could it be true that nobody cared? Is that what the evidence suggests? Who do we blame?

I blame lack of attention, lack of love, lack of intelligence, lack of moral fibre. I blame celebrities, I blame hangers-on and I blame American Culture (coming over here). And my dad says that they should all be stood up against the wall… and shot.

An inflammation

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LET THE MAD AND MAGNIFICENT ENERGY OF THE FUTURISTS and their ludicrously wonderful manifesto be an inspiration at this cusp of deathly inertia and foaming revelation.

Let the staccato totems and the tents and the firefly proclamations of the Occupiers and the rebellious jukeboxes and the childlike believers pitchfork those who bank on banking and this dead god of economic growth.

Let the obscenity that is market force be seen for the cheap fraud it is.

Let the conversation begin again, led by dancer-poets not lobbyists.

After Marinetti, we purr like coiled cats over the paralytic mouse that is The Market. We do not accept the pre-eminence of privilege or masculine entrepreneurship.We pogo through the doors in the lifeless boardrooms of the spineless business of truculent cash.

We, with our pumping hearts revolt against the black death of normalcy; with honour, with real sense, with a hearty handshake.

Let the good incendiaries come. We have our eleven; we count with our innumerate hearts and choose to throw coins in the fountain.

We are rising with the colours of ecstatic belief. We deny the cynicism, the ineptitude and the unambition of the normal. You the normal must change; we are changing.

So we say

1. The people have been lied to and will undo the lies… so lie no more.

2. Democracy is a fraud where privilege is bought – at private schools; by sponsorship; by ‘influence’.

3. We will usurp the machismo-heads, the infertile parliamentary fools – those who feel not our great debates, the goodness of our humour, the freedom of our thoughts.

4. We will teach them that ‘growth’ is not necessary, planning is necessary…

5. That the aim of business is not to maximise profit, it is to make enough…

6. That the aim of life is not to idly stockpile money – it is to express the fullness of the human heart…

7. And that the business of government is not to fawn before business, it is to lead, magnificently.

8. Creativity must rule because only generosity sustains; dancers and poets must therefore lead us! ( Not Sarkozy/Merkel/Cameron! They are working for Barclays! They are yesterday’s men!)

9. Women will let us talk.

10. We will learn again that work can be good; work can be good for all of us.

11. And we must learn again… to engage with the need to transform.

Standing on the world’s summit, we launch our aspiration to the stars.

A poisoned flagon?

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 2 Comments

L

I have heard, in the last few moments that there are now 2 live inquiries into the England Rugby World Cup fiasco and one dead one. (Fran Cotton is presumably grazing his four cabbages this morning with stoic indifference, having feared or expected further administrative chaos). “Cock-up – again” I hear him saying. Thus the last word kindof becomes the first?

                                    

Any time now he will get the nod. Probably initially in airless private but soon mindlessly beaming members of an alleged hierarchy will be chivvying him towards the public, grey but humming hotseat. Thus the All New England Rugby Manager will meet the press; meet us plebs.

There will no doubt follow a platitude-fest of second row proportions. Eventually, once even the journalists are bored of hearing the flawless laundry that is Managerstuff rinse and repeat relentlessly, the hierarchy (yet to be announced) will commit further overfamiliar but nonetheless profoundly inept acts of ushering to get their man out to a waiting bar – I mean car. Safely ensconced in the back of this dark but bland executive vehicle he will breathe deeply – very deeply – and then consider what the fuck he has done… as, no doubt, will the ushers.

In this rare moment of privacy The All New England Manager may reconsider his options whilst leafing through a dossier on the current playing staff, material that is unlikely to energise the soul but may – if the mood were lighter – provide a few laffs. What could be funnier than a royal wedding failure/a humiliated chambermaid/a swallow dive off a ferry? (Okay, I think the latter was mildly amusing and Tuilagi’s undeniable talent insulates him from further unnecessary flak. But the list of positives from – appropriately? – the WC is surely hysterically brief?) Of the 153,276 words featured in the review imagined by my good self, ‘crushing’, ‘boring’ and ‘he constitutes another loose cannon’ are statistically prevalent. Sensing this, the staff driver (I picture a Devonian prop with tractor driver’s sideburns and a whimsical nature) at this point knowingly produces a hip-flask and a wink. “Wait ’til you get to page 3 boss”.

On page 3 there is a discussion on the Captaincy Issue which may or may not suggest that Mad Dog Wilkinson is still considered a suitable force for er… English crypto-buddhist wholesomeness. Oh, and the captaincy. Only slightly more surprising is the revelation that the hierarchy are also looking at the following as live candidates for the role;

Andy Ripley; Fay Weldon; Julian Barnes; Mahatma Ghandi.

The driver’s eyebrows have arched.

But we, in our frothy excitement, get ahead of ourselves. Who will be choosing the captain? Woodward? Mallender? Henry? Or can talk of Johnson’s survival be right? Given that pretty immediately prior to this All New Captain thing the over-riding impulse of the (yet to be announced) hierarchy would certainly have been to find a Manager who will be a safe pair of hands whilst the team is (again) ‘in transition’, we might reasonably fear exposure to a worryingly imaginative choice scenario. In other words, a foreigner. Assuming Martin Johnson is jettisoned – on merit – the pool of realistic candidates (my cheap jibes notwithstanding) would need to include those of a Tri-Nation persuasion, surely?

Unless there’s a fait accompli favouring somebody like Clive Woodward? Or is it ludicrous to wonder if Henry has been tapped up with some elder statesman role in mind… with Shaun Edwards as enforcer? Fanciful but interesting? Gadzooks! Could English rugby turn out interesting? Contemplation of that question makes me return to the thought – already expressed in certain papers – that Martin Johnson will stay in post. This is such a laughable proposition that it fits almost perfectly the mould – giant-sized cock-up revisited.

Cream

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I imagine that in the Relatively Profound Dinner-Table Chat Olympics (being hosted all over, currently) there is an argument for the following 3 top players collaring the airtime and the awards; redundancy; waste; indulgence. Depressing perhaps, given that they are playing a similar, limited game. But talk about art might surely invoke discussion XXXVII(b) on the redundancy of painting as easily as debate over jobs lost say… in the theatre. Talk about opportunity leads to talk about waste and talk about everything from MP’S expenses to conceptual art draws us into a vortex of indulgences. Followed by something with cream.

I am happy to report that I

a) never get invited to dinner parties and

b) have always been able to deny the encroachment of virtually any kind of cynicism because of a ludicrous faith in the creativity/sincerity of people – often individually but sometimes as a group, ‘type’, band or mob.

If caught at some dizzying glacial precipice I really would throw myself off in the confidence that songs featuring Jerry Dammers/Elvis Costello/John Lydon/Tom Waits/Howard Devoto/Radiohead really would carry me off somewhere safe and then somewhere special. If about to be battered in a Catalunyan alley I really would confidently explete a surreal but beautiful cloak of words in the manner of that greatest of locals Joan Miro, turning the brute anger of the assailing docker into beery but easy fraternity. These crazy things I believe in.

Don’t get me wrong, I do not I promise you generally fawn before art or artists – how could I/we, since John Lydon magnificently forbade it? (Metal Box etc etc.) On the contrary, I am loaded with judgemental phlegm for the fakers and the impostors; and if I don’t believe you… duck. However I have learnt (and am learning) that it is essential to really attend when art coughs and stands up before me. Especially when that art lacks figurative clues.

Most recently I/we combined a long weekend in Cornwall with an admittedly rather tourist-paced visit to Tate St Ives and the Barbara Hepworth museum. (I recommend both). It would be disingenuous of me, however, to exclude mention of the fact that the stated aim of the visit was actually to come back from the British Surfing Association Championships at Newquay with a physically and emotionally undamaged son – he came 6th, spluttering slightly on regurgitation from monstrous surf, so this principal aim was achieved. And therefore my 2 hours in the Tate were a bonus and a fairly cerebral treat.

I say cerebral because the current exhibition – The Indiscipline of Painting / International abstraction from the 1960’s to now – provides a healthy challenge; (it)

reveals how painting’s modernist histories, languages and positions have continued to provide ongoing dialogues with contemporary practitioners, even as painting’s decline and death has been routinely and erroneously declared.

(Tate guide.)

You the viewer are invited to make the links; it’s pretty necessary to engage with material outside of the paintings – or through them. Accessibility and mere beauty are not paramount. New ‘disciplines’ – referencing/equivalence/the exposition of new meanings – fight their way out of the sack, or stutter and print from the digital age.

In the brief entree to the exhibition, quoted above, the word ‘problematic’ is quite rightly used to describe the state of abstract painting now. We could argue long and hard about when the first abstract paintings emerged – Turner(!), Kandinsky, Kupka, Picabia? – but we can be clear that the probing and stretching continues, decades on. The selections at Tate St Ives, by British painter Daniel Sturgis, effectively span the last fifty years and include works by 49 western artists, including Andy Warhol, Bridget Riley, Frank Stella and Gerhard Richter.

In Gallery 1 the search for new meanings – this kinetic charge to expand upon the known- is immediately and disparately evident. Michael Craig-Martin’s “Mirror Painting,” in which a mirror bisects the work, morphing red lines into black and vice-versa, cutely, sharply (and literally?) asks us ‘Where is the real?’ Imi Knoebel more confrontationally dumps or places stuff, in a clear challenge or rejection of what… artfulness? We might need to pause and reflect on deeper possibilities to get into “Black square on a buffet”. It is speaking a very different language.  We may have to work to learn it.

David Diao references 3 traceable but obscure sources; sources he knows the ‘average viewer’ might never uncover… without help from the curator. Gerhard Richter’s “2 Greys Juxtaposed” seems both an homage and an exercise in classical diptych painting about the possibilities of abstract space and depth without texture. (Does that make it dated?) Martin Barre’s “Spray Paint on Canvas” is exactly that; marks leaving a canvas, leaving us with a trace, a gesture.

These are very different responses to questions about legitimacy – about what is truest now/how that is expressed. If there is a theme of transitionality (or is that just a feeling?), if there is a conflict over avoiding ‘self-expression’ and finding or alluding to something ego-less and necessarily greater then so be it; let the broad church explode with ideas, with divergent truths. We are all abstract artists making choices and if, as the commentary suggests

                 The way paintings are made holds meanings

a central question then, might be this; if abstraction is utterly logical and necessary, how do we make it work now?

Gallery 2 is an extraordinary space. (I heroically limited myself to just a very few minutes transfixed by the epic views of epic surf and Lowryesque
dudes on screaming boards.) There is a Frank Stella here – competing for attention – colourfully and bewilderingly titled “Hyena Stomp”. My distracted notes describe it as a ‘ruptured, kaleidoscopic time-tunnel’ and that, 2 days later, seems fair. Andre Cadere’s “Round bar of Wood” is a painted stave or ornamental stick, an equivalent that has escaped canvas entirely, whilst Blinky Palermo’s “Untitled” consists of a canvas wrapped in green/blue cloth-horizons, moodily. Is there a hierarchy, you might ask, in all this breadth? (Why would there be?) (You judge).

The strength of the show is the scope of the show. There is an academic brief here, sure, but the art chatters so colourfully about individual as well as multi-layered or even universal issues that maybe my earlier dinner party allusion was spookily helpful.  And on the guest list… Tim Head; ask him exactly whom/what he is referencing in “Continuous Electronic Surveillance”. Tell him there’s something strangely attractive about it that you don’t understand.

Likewise perhaps you could slide briefly – apologetically – into Dan Walsh’s personal space to mutter charmingly that you found the colour, the pattern, the aboriginal geometry of “Auditorium” beautiful.  He might stifle a splutter but he might knock back his cocktail re-energised. And perhaps you could disarmingly slap Francis Baudevin on the shoulder whilst asking how on earth we, the average viewer could know that the flat but three dimensional triangles in the pictogram of 2011 protest issues around CO2 emissions?  Does the artist need to… I mean, how obtuse is that?

Except on reflection the triangles look like volcanoes… and the title is… oh… an Icelandic volcano. That volcano. So perhaps it does make a kind of sense?  Ah.

Just kill the bastard?

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I have (once I think?) boasted of the time when Hampstead Theatre described me as a Free-wheeling Absurdist, a description I have been tempted to put in the ‘Occupation’ column of my passport. This F w A thing implies, I imagine, a fair dose of woolly anarchism. Shockingly, it may also be that I have signed off the odd punkily pompous letter with the phrase (‘Yours, The) Rebellious Jukebox’ so as to bask in reflected but beery glory from Mark E Smith, a hero of mine. I have, in other words, an inclination towards the subversion of the monochrome, the traditional, the conservative. And yet…

And yet I am traditional as they come in some ways. Forgive the self-obsession but I am (for example) genuinely finding it difficult to reconcile my teeth-baring discomfort with poorly expressed authority – the Old Bill, maybe – and my anger-loaded queasiness over what’s recently been called, pretty fairly, The Gadaffi Gore-Fest. The exercise of law; post or during riots; post or during revolutions. Law at Peak Times, when we surely need to be bringing out ‘civilisation’s’ A Game. Look we’ve dug in deeply very early here; let’s take a breath and get specific.

Libya. How wonderful that a tyrant is overthrown. We can surely understand the foamy excitement at the edge of this surge, this people’s revolt. We can likewise have some sympathy for those families or individuals feeling justified in biting or booting the figure who so terribly and cynically and carelessly masticated (or worse) upon their fortunes. When a brutal leader falls, is it not inevitable that heavy boots feature, in a more or less lurid dance of celebration?

This may be the likelihood. But forgive the neighing of my high horse as I beg to differ with the essence of such an argument. Clearly in the Libyan case a kind of agitated but almost funky indiscipline has been characteristic of the stagger towards ‘freedom’. The rebels (whom I certainly don’t mean to generally criticise) have had a cause alright, but have only been able to advance it following irregular but critical dollops of unanswerable violence provided chiefly by Western airpower. The strategy has then been to go like hell and mop up round the craters. Presumably there has been some co-ordination with the French or U.S. Air Forces but a phrase like ‘hearty’ or even ‘heroic endeavour’ probably characterises the rebel effort better than a phrase like ‘drilled regiments’. Again, this is no complaint; it is merely a way in to describing the difficulties that have arisen once order (yawn), that singularly unattractive concept to the broiling masses, becomes unavoidably necessary.

People clearly needed to be working on the Who’ll Be in Charge question some weeks ago – and maybe they were. But it is more than just a disappointment that in the event of Gadaffi’s capture in the place he was arguably most likely to be, things descended into the aforementioned gore-fest pretty quickly. Clearly much of that would be down to those who were in the immediate vicinity of the man himself. Whether, realistically they could have been primed to deliver a live prisoner for due process is doubtful; they were not, after all, soldiers. However, given that some time did elapse – time enough for tawdry or cheesy or criminal use of mobile phone cameras – before some decision was made to move the body, I wonder if some individual with some authority might ideally have intervened.

Because this was an important time. Imagine what a profound and positive – not to say enlightening moment –might have been captured if Gadaffi had been arrested and treated with dignity. Rednecks the world over would have been choking on their burgers. Other Arab Springers would have surely felt a poignant truth land softly in their palms; a gift which when twittered or beamed abroad might even bestow a kind of credence to Arab Springness itself. A moment of calm or foresight or decency or discipline and the way Africans/Arabs are perceived in the West really might have been positively shifted. That has an importance beyond the wonderful precedent of an absolute bastard being tried not butchered by the people he kept down so heartlessly.

Instead the gore-fest wins out. Papers are sold, the web is cruised. Revenge is sweet. But let’s consider, in the common knowledge that Gadaffi was a despicable and possibly unhinged character, whether it could be still be right, by that or any other storm drain, to answer “Just kill him” to the question “What do we do now?”

Or are we all better served by taking a breath, a moment, before reading him his rights? How long – to be blunt – are we going to judge vengeance to be some kind of justice? It is not justice and it demeans us all.

France can’t win because…

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It’s the finalist of all finals, the most singularly lopsided. The homesters versus the recently unloved; the latter, (the French) having excelled themselves at the fine art of pretending to be England, minus the booze, the women (probably) and the ferries. Is there even a sort of Daily Mailized Forces of Order and Good v Dale Farm Junkies and Dishonourable Reprobates about it too, I wonder? The fearsomely beautiful and no doubt milky-lamb-cuddling ‘Blacks v the foie gras munching bootboys with no respect. With press this bad, surely even the French don’t want France to win? But could they?

The answer is a relatively confident No. And given that time is now short and that once more it feels appropriate to spill the guts of an argument rather than tease it out surgeon-like, here are a few reasons to be fearful for the French.

  • They’re outgunned in every department, pretty much, lacking the blistering intensity levels the All Blacks have copyrighted as their own since… since Agincourt. (Where’s the French Nonu or McCaw or Dagg? Etc.)
  • The All Blacks, in case it’s slipped you’re notice, are at home, with the heat of a nation – a truly great rugby nation – scorching at their backs.
  • Though we might expect a few nervous moments, a chronic and infectious bout of under-achievement should not blight the All Blacks, or enough of the All Blacks for long enough, to give the French a look-in.
  • If on the contrary the AB’s start as they did against Australia, the French capacity to sulk and even disappear may be invoked by about the 15th minute; because the cause may already be lost.
  • Whilst the French pack may be reasonably competitive in the scrum (maybe) they will surely not live with the AB’s at the line-out/breakdown/generally marauding round the park?
  • Perhaps Harinordoquy and Dusautoir aside, the French lack the crucial combination of real class and spirit. And they are relatively faceless behind the scrum.
  • Israel Dagg, I fancy, may have a field day whilst opposite number Medard is likely to wilt.
  • Whilst 9 and 10 are not special for the AB’s, they are functioning and brilliantly supported by the midfield and by loose forwards. Yashvilli and Parra have had nothing around them except chaos.
  • Most obviously perhaps the difference in belief and unity should tell; the Blacks are mighty and together and they know it; the French are cock-fighting or backing different snails.
  • Lievremont is enigmatically unloved; Henry is the Headteacher worth listening to.

Most important of all, dear reader, we the World Community of Rugby Lovers simply won’t allow it (a French win, I mean).

  • Because without any doubt the All Blacks – the New Zealanders – are fine and even magnificent exponents of and believers in rugby as an electrifying, honourable pursuit.
  • Because they will give EVERYTHING and truly, sadly, the French have given virtually nothing (and arguably therefore, have no right to represent the North. That honour should surely have ideally fallen to the Brotherhood of Redness – see 57 previous blogs).
  • Because, in other words, put crudely but honestly, the All Blacks deserve it. And we will congratulate them.

A Brotherhood of Reds?

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In my radico-sentimental revolutionary thingy, which commences immediately the stands have all been cleared of flags, corpses and Monster Energy cans (yeh, right!), Manu Tuilagi will either be Minister for Transport or Court Jester. But the significant posts in government – such as it is – will be held by Welshmen. Like Gatland, Edwards and Howley. For quite simply they have earned it, having shown leadership, guts and a flair for the inspiring word that nobody in the world (I mean this tournament) could match. They have, to paraphrase the great Confucian scholar bowlingatvinny, utterly and invincibly demonstrated how true encouragement of the truly gifted is both the essential function and the highest aspiration of coaching. That this infers an exchange of an essential trust is (only) a reflection of the need for generous hearts in the pursuit of achievement. So much of life, it seems, is about opening up.

My surreal meritocracy – administrated with libertarian aplomb from Machynlleth and let’s say… Grimsby – would certainly feature billboard poster-size recognition for a whole list of flag-bearers for natural expression through sport. Tuilagi’s easy but devastating bursts might have him on the metaphorical bench – in the same way that after this morning’s semi Barnes and O’Connor from the Australian backs warrant squad places – but the bloc itself is surely justifiably red; as in dragons; as in blood; as in heart. This is my elegy to all that redstuff flooding often majestically this last month across the consciousness of the Nations – not Six, not Tri, but many, many nations.

The Rugby World Cup is drawing to a close, an appropriately worldly close, in the sense that the ferocious and surely unbeatable South (NZ) play the strangely unloved North (France) this weekend. Circumstances have to some extent conspired for the French – a hugely contentious decision effectively gifting them their semi-final against the adored Welsh – but they have both comically and cynically fallen on their own onions too, to befuddle or bore a way through. It’s a final with only one winner and a fall guy already being slated in confident anticipation of a hopelessly inept appearance.  Ali versus Bugner, perhaps?

In fact to slalom at least a tad nearer to the point, it’s a tournament already over; the main stuff already learned; the inevitable slight anti-climax of the third place play-off played out. Whilst we now hope for a stunningly climactic exhibition of 15-man rugby from the mighty All Blacks we are not so naive as to expect it. No, we expect a relatively nervy, relatively tight final, in which further proof lumbers out of the ability of ballistically charged ‘modern’ defence to deny attacking patterns (and, incidentally, the crowd) the oxygen of excitement. France will hold out for long periods and maybe even break out. In their exasperation the AB’s will knock-on passes previously clasped whilst juggling four other passes, whilst asleep. The crowd will get restless until the dam finally bursts, in about the third minute. (If only). It could be either a close(ish) non-event or the most one-sided sporting event since Davide and Goliath. Please god deny Davide his sling.

The rugby world – the political world, the realworld! – wanted a Wales New Zealand final. As soon as the Welsh began to rise (which may have been pretty early in the South Africa game) the thing perked up. In contrast to the dour and disgraced English and the shambolic and disloyal French, Warburton’s posse planted a flag of brilliance and heart. Their spirit and their youth drove them irresistibly past a resurgent Ireland to their fateful date with the moment most of us will remember most keenly from this event; that tackle. A million words have been spent on the subject so I will find three more only; it felt wrong.

On his punishing warm-down jog (three times round the southern hemi) to the SOUNDBITE training ground, Sam Warburton will have no doubt have seen posters from the old regime saying “Warburton – the new McCaw”. In truth, the Wales skipper is such an outstanding athlete that McCaw may yet look one-dimensional in comparison. Over the natural span of a match, he is so often the difference at key phases – whether offloading, at the shoulder, or in the bone-crunching meat and drink of the breakdown – that many of us feel he would have not merely thrown a blanket over any (presumably accidental) French attacking notions, but quite feasibly effected the critical break himself. When they lost him at the 17 minute mark Wales were closer to being down to 13 than 14 and despite the gladiatorial brilliance of Phillips and Roberts amongst others, the reds were trussed up by the Lilliputian French.

But the tournament had already been graced by stellar performances from Halfpenny, North, Faletau. The world applauded as the current for allegedly “winning rugby” was stemmed, turned and embarrassed by (let’s hear it, let’s applaud it!) Welsh belief in skill over stats. Sure Gatland, Murphy, Howley did the preparation – better than everyone – but then, critically, their liberated posse played better than everyone. Until that moment. That ideal final may have served only to undermine the quality of ecstasy served up by Phillips and co. but hands up those who would’ve bellowed their support for a Welsh final opportunity. Certainly there is a consensus that a Brotherhood of Redness might have at least offered a real challenge to the wonderful and mighty bastards in the black. (No offence – imperfect gag).

Instead the hamstrung realist – poor sod – is left with the relative disappointments of a comfortable Australian win, in a bronze-rated, atmospherically flattish game which finished with a brilliantly irrelevant try for My Little But Magnificent Pony. Maybe that’s a disservice to the excellence of Barnes and O’Connor in particular, who may consider themselves honorary Lions in the new Red Occupation. Stonking tackling was not, in truth, the only thing these game Aussies brought to the party. But let’s be clear; it was a match that didn’t matter that much in a tournament illuminated by the positivity and generosity of the Welsh.

Let sleeping gods lie?

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Most of us have some understanding or some knowledge of the work and the life of Vincent van Gogh. Its essence has been reduced to a kind of coffee-table-friendly caricature of the tragic but inevitable demise of a tortured artist. Whether we as individuals see in him beast or brilliant and radical thinker and actor upon urgent truths, he remains a force; perhaps because though he may have been fauve, he was magnificently the antithesis of faux. What Simon Schama has rather beautifully called his ability to paint “the fullness of our hearts” has set Vincent the wonderstruck loner apart. I have taken no significant poll of the population but feel none is necessary for the following cornball assertion – that he is loved more by more people than almost any artist that ever lived. And this does mean something.

Now, suddenly – or it feels sudden – there is another twist, perhaps, to the story. It seems possible that van Gogh’s predictably(?) messy suicide(?) may need relieving of some of its interrogation marks. Or more likely, that newer questions might be inserted into the parable. But forgive my cynicism if I am reluctant to move from the admittedly highly coloured current understanding; that Vincent may have either accidentally or deliberately shot himself, in either an acutely disturbed moment or a moment of sensationally crystalline tragedy, compounded by poor or inadequate treatment. I simply wonder how, at this distance, safe new truths can replace the existing.

Van Gogh: The Life is an understandably epic look at the life and death of the painter of sunflowers. Authors Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith have allegedly spent ten years researching the book and have reportedly unearthed ‘thousands’ of previously untranslated letters. (Learning this, I did I confess ask myself how even given Van Gogh’s propensity to write almost daily letters, quite that many could lie undiscovered?) But perhaps there I am being cynical. May I balance that notion with the confession that I am one of those who is so drawn to the man’s fires that in my dreams I have swum and then crawled from West Wales to the Cincinnati Art Museum in order to kneel before “Undergrowth with Two Figures” and weep, cathartically. Suspicion and closed-heartedness are not, I promise my chief attributes.

However, the claim the author’s make that the art historian John Rewald, who after visiting Auvers in 1930 concluded that one of two youths is likely to have accidentally shot Vincent has some degree of plausibility. Vincent and the boys were drinking companions – or possibly adversaries. The boys had a dodgy gun; that kind of thing. But can we be sure? At all? Perhaps this theory is more appropriate than actually true; yet another level of curdling tragi-farce. There is the suggestion that Vincent may have willingly taken the rap (to his grave) rather than risk letting a comparative (or at least younger) innocent suffer any punishment. There is quite a lot, I think, of informed speculation.

Yet it may be that my own view of Vincent van Gogh is so full of the unprovable that these further contentions are veritable pillars of the narrative in comparison. I can’t prove that I was moved to tears at the sight of Cypress Trees in a chest-heavingly resonant moment aged about twenty. I can’t prove that there is something invincible in Wheatfield with Crows of 1890. My dreams of a pilgrimage to Cincinatti could be about… baseball. I just doubt it.

I am happy to acknowledge this extraordinary man in many ways – in the following way; by expressing my concern that our feelings are befuddled and interfered with unnecessarily in this matter. Vincent was at once rooted and true and radical to the point of volcanic. Better to stand before the work and be drawn in; by the greatest and most generous and – why not? – the most popular artist who ever graced the earth.

The definitive word… possibly.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 4 Comments

They lost and there is no dispute; either of that fact, or that but for the quietly shocking dismissal of the Welsh skipper Sam Warburton, they would surely have won.

It may be no surprise to hear that the post-match atmosphere in Wales is heavily loaded with a disappointment close to grief. I can, however assure you that even allowing for the wonderful absurdities of the form/ability/results relationship and yes, the keener than usual levels of malingering celtic defiance, the game would have been won by Wales had Warburton stayed on the pitch. Fact or no fact – everybody knows that, feels that.

For Wales had started comfortably and were beginning to create. Hook – who sadly went on to have a relatively poor game, in truth – had absolutely nailed a testing penalty early on and although Phillips started quietly it seemed clear that Les Bleus as a unit could not match the threat and the verve of the Welsh. It was admittedly a blow when Adam Jones retired early injured, but by the quarter hour mark Wales has settled and the critical mass of their confidence was building, ominously.

Then at around 18 minutes, Warburton was the centre of what initially seemed a simply stunning hit. But the immediate reaction of the French lock Pascal Pape, who took near-violent exception to Warburton’s challenge, suggested something had happened. TV replays showed that indeed it had. Warburton lifted the oncoming French player and drove him up and back – all of which was legal. What happened next was critically, as they say, open to interpretation.

The man whose view counted most –referee Alain Rolland – understood that the felling of Vincent Clerc was dangerous because Warburton (he judged) after having lifted him drove him down towards the ground head and neck first. Thus it constituted a spear tackle and was a red card offence. Simply and pretty swiftly and without hesitation it seemed, Rolland proffered the card. The enormity of what had happened took a few moments to settle over the watching world. The game continued, whilst we tried to counter both our alarmingly sinking feeling(s) – muscle-memory played a significant part in this -and those more intellectually articulated emotions. In other words we shouted at the telly.

For this was major. In terms of judgement and impact: major.

The referee was in my view right that it was a spear tackle. (And there is no case against Rolland for having a general ‘shocker’). But critically Warburton actively released Vincent Clerc’s legs at the conclusion of the lift in the tackle – probably because he was aware of the danger to his opponent and to himself, in terms of facing a card. There was and to my knowledge never has been any substantial malice in a tackle from the Welsh skipper, a player who is now respected as one of the finest and most athletic and skilled exponents of the art of flankerhood in the world game. (In all seriousness… he is revered as a complete and honourable and genuine modern player.)

Some of this stuff is irrelevant to that tackle, I accept that. But the absence of malice is relevant, as is the release of Vincent Clerc’s legs, as is the completely untroubling context of the match at that point from the referee’s point of view. In a world-important game (and I know, only a game) it is surely worth a moment’s reflection to put such an incident into context – perhaps via a brief conversation with co-officials – in order to avoid the spoiling of the spectacle? A yellow card would have been fair and prudent; there was no need to make an example of anybody when there was no threat or suggestion of poor sportsmanship or deliberate foul play from any quarter. That moment meant that Wales could not play; it denied all of us a fabulous contest and delivered us a stunted, unsatisfactory affair. For these reasons (too), it’s hard not to be bitter.

Inevitably, Mike Phillips had something to say. As well as enjoying colourful and no doubt fluently expletive conversations with half the French pack, he darted through for the games only score. Ludicrously Wales dominated the second half – making a mockery of the notion that they might ‘hang on’. France – reasonably cutely – hung on; and waited. Wales missed three eminently kickable kicks and My Little But Magnificent Pony (Halfpenny) narrowly undercooked an effort from practically half-way. But Wales could not either quite raise brilliance or afford to raise it, being one superman short. At the death they went into overtime seeking a drop-goal or to force a penalty for Stephen Jones. The words tense, mighty and cruel do not, believe me, do it justice. After endless phases defended competently by the French… it fizzled out.

If I was a nobler man I would refrain from asking when – if ever – a team has done as little to get to a World Cup Final as France. They were okay against a diabolical England and okay against Wales. No better. Wales in contrast have been a revelation and more importantly, they have been good for the game. Had Warburton persisted, France would not have lived with his team’s energy, or pace, or passion, or confidence. In his innocence, Alain Rolland has denied the team of the tournament the right to play on.

Anticipation is so much better?

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Phworr the frisson, the low-heat pervy distractedness of it; clock-glimpses and trouser-hitches and coughs. Waiting rooms; except no… more like changing rooms… because surely we’re in there, waiting… to play.

You can be one of the French if you like, you miserable English bastard, but I’m Roberts… or maybe Hook. And maybe when I’m Hook I’ll be the Magic Man that Hook really can be, with a wonderful throwback moment to when I/he was just that bit less muscled; when I gambolled just that touch more freely; before they got me in the gym. And I won’t break that line, I’ll glide and dance there and no-one will lay a finger.

But tough call this. When Roberts is blasting holes in the side of French Buildings tomorrow morn that might have to be me. With my head down, like a hulk-cum-baby-carrier, the ball nestling; in all that magnificent poetic violence; that bicep-fest. But I do blast through, into the mintiest, airiest low-alcohol but most intoxicating space, filled with Welsh Voices roaring and a me-like Hook in support. And we exchange passes twice and then I feint, draw half the crowd – never mind the full back – and switch to slow-mo for the moment we put them to the sword. A blind reverse pass and he dives over under the sticks. And he’s me and I’m him and we’re Wales; and there’s no answer from the French.