Culture

That’s why we love him.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

I’m still plenty daft enough to not want to know what my birthday treat is. (Not that I get loads, to be honest). So when the ‘kids’ – my wunnerful offspring, aged 21 and 25 – tell me firstly to keep Weekend X free and then ‘get my ass to London’, I do, after a week of supporting my somewhat ailing mum, Up North. There’s nearly an accommodation trauma (none of us are quite in the position to book hotels) but in fact this works out fabulously: we can stay at one of my soul-bro’s, in Walthamstow. We arrive Friday.

We do stuff; lots of walking around both locally and in the city proper. Riverside, Spitalfields, coupla bars – all that. No hints dropped *at all* and none asked for… until I hear it’s a Sunday morning do.

Oh. So not the Cure or Bunnymen gig I had maybe posted highish on the list of possibles. Sunday morning? Outdoors, I wonder? But again don’t ask. I settle into just enjoying the friends-and-family thing, with maybe just the thought that Somerset House, for a wildish and medium-dangerous dollop of skating might be where we’re headed. (We went about 15 years ago and we’ve been skating in Spain (weirdly) and Finland (I think), so the kids know I’m mad for it). That would be fun – and kinda suitably silly for a juvenile delinquent like my good self.

But no. We’re on the tube and daughter reads out part of an incoming message. With details. Wow. I learn we’re off to the Van Gogh, at the National Gallery. Oof. That’s BIG.

Another great friend, ‘knowing I like me art’ has very kindly used her membership to get us in. 9.45, Sunday morning. We fill out Saturday with more yomping and gawping and then drop into the Do Not Adjust Your Set-ville that is ‘God’s Own Junkyard’, in a spectacularly unassuming mini-industrial estate in Walthamstow, for just a couple of gobstruck sherberts. (It’s wild; it’s neon; it’s a mad treat). Then we have to be up, early-doors.

Regular readers will know I am a clown… but I do like my art. I’m both dumb and serious over that. My general punkiness means that I can’t stand the pretence and the exclusivity that separates too much art from us Normal Guys ‘ n Gals, but I have been known to attend galleries and even read – like, choose to read – cosmically deep and dense stuff about art theory and history. I find it tough, but cleansing – yup – and inspiring.

I can’t help but be drawn to relatively modern art – say from 1870-odd forwards – and this may be because I’m suspicious of allegory and pomp, finding it easier to identify with things beyond or closer than that whole history-painting malarkey. And I should say that despite being conflicted in the modern, Guardian-reading way about the Industry that is Van Gogh, I have loved the boy Vinny for decades.

So wow. Being a resident of faaar West Wales, I may have been distantly aware of the ‘exhibition of the century’ up The Smoke. Maybe. But, being privileged in so many other respects, we pseudo-taffs let these things go easily enough. It’s that other world. We only go there rarely: until we’re there, walking to Walthamstow Central; then Victoria-lining(?) it to within a coupla stops and Bakerloo-ing it the rest. Blimey. Trafalgar Square… and not many pigeons! Ten minutes early so the daughter needs a coffee. Pret, just on the corner. Then meet J and son C and in.

I did cheat the night before and have a look. But skimmed, so as not to know which of the truly big-hitters were on show. Logged that it was called ‘Poets and Lovers’: not much more.

I’d forgotten what a building this was. Like a roman town, or an empire, or some appalling/wonderful stately home. Bloody enormous – but we’re in. Inevitably, we get a strong full-frontal at the gift shop as we spin off into the gallery. It’s quiet: not for long, but it’s quiet. The ceiling is eight miles high and the space is open; until your eyes begin to train in. Ok. There are just the three paintings, here in Room 1. Do I read the bumpf? Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s crap. This is good. I’m going to use it to cut to the quick.

‘The careful planning behind Van Gogh’s art extended to creating works in groups or series, and to thinking about how these might be displayed both at his home in Arles and for exhibition in Paris. By gathering a selection of these paintings – many of which are amongst his most famous and beloved creations – and showing them alongside his carefully developed works on paper, a less familiar Van Gogh emerges; an intellectual artist of lucid intention, deliberation and great ambition’.

The lover and the poet are both in Room 1; Lieutenant Millier and Eugene Boch respectively. Between them is ‘The Poet’s Garden’, all from Arles, 1888. I’m familiar with the two portraits, as many would be. Again the wall-verbals are helpful, pointing us at what may be the central revelation (or re-affirmation) around knowledge, planning, licence, intention. These are wonderful, expressive, thrillingly ambitious symbols. Do not underestimate this man – even in the loving of his work. We are already being pointed towards the idea that despite being bi-polar/’mad’/intermittently stricken, Van Gogh was a supremely intelligent man, making brilliant, outrageous choices.

‘Boch was ideal as he had a narrow face that reminded him of the thirteenth-century poet Dante. The deep blue sky (was) intended to express a man who dreams great dreams, was essential to the symbolism of the work’.

There is knowledge here: there are things by design. This is not a loony.

Room 2 contains 17 works on the theme of ‘The Garden: Poetic Interpretations’. These include several that most of us will not have seen. (One of the glories – yes, bugger it, I WILL use that word! – of this exhibition is that the mighty National, with its world-level clout, has gathered paintings and drawings that may never be seen together again. It’s BIG; it’s astonishing; it’s expansive in a way that’s supposed to be kinda thrilling – and it is). There are inks and chalks and graphites alongside the great, gripping, three-dimensional oils, here, depicting gardens in Arles, close to Yellow House and at the asylum at Saint-Remy. Some of the oils are staggeringly loaded. (One or two *really did* anticipate Jackson Pollock for me, in their lush execution). You will need to walk in and out, to feel that texture and then ‘take in the view’.

There is melancholy, both symbolized – for example by the ‘sawn-off tree – and real and felt, through both the rhythm and energy of the pieces and through our basket of knowledge. But again and again we may note what we might rather stiffly call the technical choices amongst and arguably under-pinning the undeniable and radical creativity.

Van Gogh, in a letter to Emile Bernard, describes the sawn-off pine as ‘a dark giant – like a proud man brought low’. The accompanying notes add that he ‘detailed how he combined composition, colour and technique to convey the anxiety felt by his fellow patients at the hospital’. Things are stylised or exaggerated or invented in order to serve the academic(?)/poetic(?)/artistic intention. This is intelligent work; during or adjacent to a period of powerful turmoil.

Room 3 is dripping wonderfully with icons. We are in the Yellow House, which has been conceived in order to host certain paintings in certain places. Sure the overall intention (and here lies much of the tragedy, yes?) was to welcome and impress Gauguin, Bernard or the other painters Vincent hoped to bring to the South. ‘Van Gogh’s Chair’, ‘Starry Night over the Rhone’ and ‘The Sower’ are side by side on the same wall. They are show-stopping, of course. All are moments: ‘Starry Night’ for its beautiful, rich depth (in so-o many senses) and ‘The Sower’ for its almost shocking design – part Japonais, part colour-field.

But it goes on. ‘The Yellow House’, ‘The Bedroom’ and *that* ‘Self-Portrait’. Staggering vibrancy, simplicity and earth-shifting heft. And probably driven, essentially, by that desire to furnish the gaff with homely and appropriate pictures! Box ticked.

Room 4 features ‘Montmajour: A Series’. Done in pen or quill or with chalk, on paper (or wove or buff paper, whatever they are), these mark the artist’s fascination for the locality. The moody higher ground and ruins of the abbey stirred something, perhaps with that rich vein of landscape and history and spirituality? Whatever, Van Gogh returned many times to make strikingly different works, some alluding to Zola, some obviously redolent of Japanese art – particularly woodblock printing. But is it just me, or there a sort of equanimity about what’s going on, (in this room), at this moment? (We are still in 1888).

With Room 5 we are back with the theme of ‘Decoration’. And therefore to the idea that Vincent planned – in particular in relation to the Yellow House – but also with regard to how his art should be displayed and seen in Paris. (So more tragedy at the margins). We see two ‘Sunflowers’ pictures flanking ‘La Berceuse’, as Van Gogh intended them to be shown. If we are not blown away enough by that, we can gawp with the specifically poignant wonder that perhaps this artist alone can trigger at paintings such as ‘Portrait of a Peasant’, ‘Oleanders’ or even ‘Still Life with Coffee Pot’, none of which are sad or traumatising per se, but all of which either sink or lift us to a place where a kind of impassioned humility seems in order. Such incredible beauty! The man’s a god.

We see the final chunk of our art – paintings 47-61 (and one pencil/brown ink) – in Room 6. Again there are big-hitters (‘The Arlesienne’ x 2 and a ‘Wheatfield, with Cypresses’) plus a pleasing or revelatory bundle of lesser-known works. (Happy to repeat that this is one of the joys of this National experience). We are reminded – and I may be one who needed this – that not everything was painted outdoors. Indeed the ‘retreat’ into the studio(s), for whatever reason, may well have facilitated bolder choices – in some cases more stylised ones. The notes speak off ‘calligraphic strokes’ and ‘imagined figures’. The artist is taking diabolical liberties, editing, inventing. Meaning supremely conscious choices.

I came away from this sensational exhibition feeling tired, privileged, happy. I also felt strongly that we should be nudging the Van Gogh-ometer yet further from the dominating talk of breakdown and lunacy. This event speaks, skilfully and deliberately, to his intelligence. He may be the most intelligent human (and artist) that ever lived. Maybe that’s why we love him?

Karl Ove and me.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

The boy Knaussgaard definitely dun gud.

Have battered my way through the first two volumes of ‘My Struggle’, where he shreds and re-builds most concepts of art, truth, the human condition and that which is sayable. The word ‘compelling’ appears on both sleeves: it’s a word that might sound bland. Not here. I read these bad boys in a couple of days flat; almost impossible not to.

‘A Death in the Family’ and ‘A Man in Love’ are MASSIVE LITERATURE in the (classic?) sense of having tremendous envisioning scope, and also in terms of being unequivocally serious art. The clues are in the names – most obviously in ‘My Struggle’, which is of course a deliberately epic-sounding moniker designed to bounce through the generations. This is art with ambition (as well as scary North European normalcy), aimed at the peak, at the heart, at the authentically high and thoughtful but delivered via the contemporary and the everyday. As I say, I’ve devoured both tomes.

Now like every other schmuck doodler, and despite just diving in and never over-thinking, I’ve latched onto coupla things. Notably the fearlessness and the voice.

Knaussgaard is relentless and ruthless around honesty. This is his voice and we are compelled to believe it, for the execution, for sure – for its brilliance – but also the amorphous power, the urgency across the text. Something in the vividness and energy of the storytelling (is that what it is?) completely captures us.

His often challenging but crystalline worldview(s) will out, if you will, because he commits utterly and directly: meaning the kind of autobiography that smacks you in the face because of its combination of insight and what we might call observational truth. The fella is, as Geir remarks, an ascetic. He makes a brutally real record of things but also, critically reveals the soul – in the landscape, of the people. This is some achievement.

I have read nothing about Knaussgaard, deliberately, so far. I imagine his saying of the unsayable, for example, around caesarian births and the general liberalisation/’feminisation’ of cultures and the contempt in which he holds the Swedish worthie-intelligentsia fashionista-crew draws a heavy dollop of flak.

Maybe it’s too blokey – reactionary, even? I’m watching this… but currently in the These Are Important Issues We Must Be Able to Talk About camp. Plus he is of course right about the smugness of some of us liberals. And Knaussgaard is *at least* as excoriatingly critical of himself as of anybody else. The books are alive with opinion but too wise, I think, to document arrogance or certainty. He is observing meticulously and with vigour so as to find truth: at whatever cost.

On pages 496/7 of ‘A Man in Love’ the (ahem) *wild, hard-drinking Norwegian* writes about writing itself.

(*Absolutely in as a wind-up!* Wonder if the magazine interviews he so detests have ever described him that way?!? Anyway, onwards)…

I had increasingly lost faith in literature. I read and thought this is something someone has made up.

… the nucleus of all this fiction, whether true or not, was verisimilitude and the distance it held to reality was constant. In other words it was the same.

Knaussgaard goes on to say that he hated this sameness with ‘every fibre of his being’, because it had ‘no value’. I take this to mean that he felt it an inadequacy, a distraction, a betrayal, because art should or can offer more than this. (And Knaussgaard is unmistakably a serious artist).

I couldn’t write like this, it wouldn’t work… Fictional writing has no value, documentary narrative has no value.

Value lies in ‘diaries and essays… (which) just consisted of a voice, the voice of your own personality, a life, a gaze you could meet’.

He is talking about the direct way into truth that autobiography can proffer.

Now I am not a great writer – unlike my Norwegian brother, here. And I really don’t overthink these things: I just do. However forgive me if I did feel just a teeny bit vindicated by this argument for honesty-through-voice.

By accident this is how I’ve practised my own prattling for aeons. For always. Falling back on personal experience – the things I know and care about – because that way I might find some truth. Because I would know it was honest.

That’s as close as I get or as deep as I get into thinking about what I can or should write. Bottom line, do I know it? Can I be true? If so, all else is superfluous. Number of readers, quality of reaction, fear of judgement, all an irrelevance. I can absolutely park that suspicion that I may be a nobody and a laughing-stock as long as the voice in there feels authentically like mine. I can have some hope that things on the page, feeling genuine, can resonate, can have value.

Might sound ridiculous. To hear me paralleling-along with a properly magnificent tome (or six). But I have no delusions of grandeur, here. Neither does Karl Ove, although he plainly does have Literary Ambition. It’s just gratifying (is that too much?) to find that we share the wee recognition that maybe there IS something good about writing what you really know… in your own voice.

Postscript: in a not unrelated burst of wild confidence, Yours F Truly has landed on the notion that my vicarious upgrade via the Knaussgaard voice-authentification-assessment means I am well within my rights to claim that the Dots Will Not Be Joined/Beautiful Games constitutes a new art form, which I am happy to christen lolsobiography. I trust no explanation is necessary? The third volume in the series (of however many) is underway.

You have been warned.

Beyond the budget.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

(A prologue – not by way of apology but certainly to note the significant and progressive nature of the Reeves budget. Adults are in the room: some congratulations may be in order. However, I stand by what follows)…

Many of us fail to (ahem) network or even accept capitalism(?)/business/the ‘run-of-the-mill’* as a way or The Way because we don’t accept its values. It’s crap; it’s low; it’s a signal underachievement given how brilliant and generous and intelligent people can be.

*(Great phrase, by the way!)

Why would we pretend that systems designed to keep certain wealthy people wealthy and beyond accountability are satisfactory? Why would we accept them? We’re better than that.

Why are there billionaires (and why are most of them vile humans?) when most people have little or nothing by comparison? It’s not right. Why is so little of what we might call politics about redressing these obscene imbalances? (We know why: because most politicians lack the courage or decency or heart to make change and the media universe is nobbled – crippled with corruption and dictatorial myopia – by those billionaires and/or ‘media barons’ effectively corralling or twisting our views towards their own).

This may all boil down to privilege and the protection of privilege. And that may be why I have an issue with private schooling – the Industry of Privilege.

Sure there are wunnerful people – kids/families/teachers – at private schools (I know there are, I’ve met plenty of them) but they all need to be big enough to accept that they are buying or serving privilege. There can be no meaningful change – no ‘re-distribution’, no ‘levelling’ – without this first building block being hauled out, or at least called out. That is, discussed as a real thing.

The assumptions of entitlement – in the ether, in fact – start and are cultivated here. They finish, maybe, they reach their catastrophic low-point with Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and his ilk. How can this world (our world, Blighty) have come to be designed so that a human so grotesque and unworthy in every respect could make good on his wild, childhood intention of being Universe-King (or whatever the feck it was?) Johnson was and is a kind of icon to our system failure. It’s utterly obscene that an arse of his scale could believe and then absolutely find that everything and everybody really would fall in behind his boorish megalomania. Because of family and money and Eton and yup, everything.

In this landscape a budget from a centre-right Labour regime which has eminently capable but some might argue pitifully conciliatory people at the helm is likely to be an irrelevance: relatively. There may be encouraging splashing of the pool but there is already too much invested in  the appeasement of the World Order – from issues of class to the markets, to the media, to Israel, to That Which Is Thinkable – that we know Starmer and Reeve ain’t gonna stir things too much. The leadership is largely of this place; or content with it. There is no anger and no compelling sense of mission – though they talk of little else.

The party has already fallen into the trap of silencing dissenters. However much talk we hear about ‘changes of direction’, The Radical is very much out.

Sadly both this fact and the (less heinous than the Tories but still hugely galling) evidence of ‘successful’ gifting and lobbying feeds into the painful narrative that ‘them fookin’ politicians are all the same’. Plainly they’re not, but who can blame Dave from Wythenshawe for equating hugely trumpeted Labour indiscretions with heavily obscured Tory filth? With media and social media often acting deliberately against truth, how are we to engage intelligently with anything?

I won’t watch the budget coverage because it bores me and I don’t expect it to offer much of a lift. Plus the coverage will be depressingly dim. I do hope they prove me wrong and that there are some brilliant ideas – the Labour hierarchy, unlike the previous clowns, is quite possibly capable of that. Mainly though, it will tinker when we need to rip it up..

There is hope.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Intelligence and good faith. And decency and art – or artfulness. It can destroy evil. I believe it.

Braverman is like some icon of dumb, performative, calculated vileness. She *actually has* a brain, of course, but is so lost in poisonous ambition and that all-too-prevalent urge to penalise, to look to strike back by sticking it to The Other, that she allows herself to fall into obviously racist malice.

She’s probably coached there, by Tory shitholes – probably youngish; probably guys ‘following the ‘trends’ – who tell her that it will play well: it’s Route A for the populist. But let’s not excuse, to any degree, her responsibility and her profound immorality. She’s making choices: they stink.

(For her) to be so far from humanity and understanding must be bleak. Actively seeking the approval of the foaming gammon; courting it; stoking it. Dragging that corpse into the light. Weird and soullessly dark.

Question: is there anything lower than the deliberate, cynical exploitation of the cheapest tribal fears we can muster? Probably not. It’s all the tories have had, for years. I think even some of the divs who voted for Brexit realise that, finally. There’s just a sense that everybody knows, now, that the Conservatives aren’t just incompetent and self-serving, they’re corrupt to the core, with hatred and with greed. Even those with a low brain-cell count have ‘concerns around this’, in as much as they can process moral issues. They know, too, or sense summatz iz up.

So the tories are fucked. A series of appalling governments, with heartless and/or entitled ‘leaders’, not just physically and sociologically estranged from everyday needs but actively accumulating through the crises; busy embezzling, in effect; shameless as well as clueless. Single-message puppets for the cheapest of instincts – driven there by convenience and utter absence of goodness.

The result, a kind of vacuum – or worse, a noxious well. Into which the slimeballs and supremacists have been encouraged.

In time we will have to accommodate the Red Wallers and the Out There Racists; despite feeling that their stupidity was and is monstrous. That’s our challenge. A) To git darn off the high horse and b) to be accepting of their right to be wrong and even foul. We have to accept that many have both voted and acted out of fear and yes, ignorance – no choice, we have to make this work! – and that *even they* can and do make important contributions to family and social life. In short they have, in certain respects and areas of their lives, values and value. (We may think we know what’s right but we ain’t always poifect, eh? Move on; co-exist; make this better, in a civilised way).

Testing as this is, striking that balance between righteous and rightful action and tolerance (even) of excruciating prejudice has to be the way forward. Call it out but let the law do its job: and encourage or improve the legal process over time. All tough, all necessary.

Wonderful and revelatory as this is, it barely feeds in to my signature point: that the @MarshSongs contribution to the long and honourable line of intelligent protest is an example of the beautiful slaughter of political depravity. We need that. It restores us.

Beautifully specific and appropriate to the Moment (when Cruella B gets picked apart by glorious silence) and deliciously bang on the philosophical money, the Marsh Family undress this un-suss, unsuspecting populist clown in the same way that the silent protestors did. She gets it worse than she would in a tongue-lashing from an angry-but-righteous activist, or from someone like me, blasting away from a safe distance.

Bless those protestors and bless the Protest Singers. They keep use sane and alive.

Standards.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Here’s something: hurdles. Willow or hazel. Kindof woven fences. They’re beautiful.

Beautiful and I like them. I’ve used them many times, most often when I was a demon landscaper – actually for many years, in Pembs, in that proverbial ‘former life’ – when I was equally hopeless at sucking a meaningful living out of the earth.

They’re soft, and yet not, being literally but somehow pleasingly coarsely woven from either willow rods or cut hazel. You can buy them at fixed sizes – 6′ x 3′, maybe for hosting borders, or 6′ x 6′ if you need a standard boundary – or you can pay an extra lump and get them custom-made.

But hey they’re not standard. They’re stand-out. Cousins in General Aesthetic Improvement. The one stiffish and redoubtable (but still homely), and the other slicker and speaking more of damp and fluency and slickness.

Willow rods or withys/withies get soaked for aeons after cutting – something to do with tannins and also to extend their suppleness – and they’re often reddish-brown, drying when installed to brown/grey. Coz I’m an extravagantly gifted artiste (as you know), I worked out early doors that you can curve your structures: we made some groooovetastic garden dividers and shapers and sexy-border-backers by gently arcing hurdles. You can do it by simply driving in wooden posts and easing the hurdles into shape.

If you’re not thrillingly sculpturally-inclined like myself, you can bang em in straight: they still look great. You just need bog standard 3 or 4 inch round posts – two or three to a hurdle, depending on size and exposure to wind – a post rammer, and some wire or tie. That’s it. I’m but gobsmacked so few people use them to mark their boundaries or tart up their gardens, given their immediate and obvious wow factor.

They’re not even that expensive. Hazel hurdles, which are heavier-gauge and more robust than the willow, came to me yesterday for £80 each, all-in – so including delivery from Zummerzet (I believe. Or was it?) These were six-footers. Strong and striking and bloody good value: I put them up in less than two hours. Willow equivalents *are more*, possibly £130 a pop. But still worth it.

In that former life I was sad or fascinated enough to visit both the National Willow Collection (Long Ashton, near Brizzle) and to actively consider growing willows. I even had preliminary chinwags about using some of the National Botanic Garden for Wales’s land, to produce them. (Weirdofact no. 827: our landscaping mob did a significant bundle of work up there). I got on well with Wolfgang Bopp, then the Top Man, who was interested – liked the idea. I also tried to persuade my next-door neighbour, Robbie the Inflammable Farmer, to lease me coupla fields: neither plan came to fruition.

I just liked them – the hurdles, I mean. And the garden features and even the basketry-stuff, woven from willow. It seemed a lovely ‘cottagey’, crafty, skilful, righteous way to invest your time. But there were and are negatives.

The trips to Long Ashton and to willow growers, in Somerset, was *revealing*. I watched guys building hurdles on a ver-ry simple frame, and thought ‘blimey, we could do this’. (‘But you’d have to knock ’em out quickish, to make it at all worth your while’). I learned that (shockingly) the willows were sprayed twice weekly, in season, to knock out competing plants and munching critters. And that despite the fabulous and rich diaspora of willow species, almost the entire growing universe was down to two species of salix – maybeee even one. (It was thirty years ago but guessing the Drive Towards Progress may not have civilised this ‘culture’).

This genuinely appalled me. I thought of all the crafty people – o-kaaay, there aren’t that many but they would be exactly the type of person to be Rilly Appalled if they knew their withies had been repeatedly drenched in chemicals – and baulked. Or stalled. When it became obvious that we as a family (and a mob) couldn’t justify the likely indulgence of doing something in this apparently largely disappointingly perverse industry, and couldn’t get the land without battling scarily hard, we swerved the idea.

Wanted to use willows/grow willows. Wanted to do it organically, despite the advice and practice or state of the trade. Was gutted, in fact, that despite the seemingly wonderful tradition for family farming down there in Somerset, the reality was relatively ethically-barren, certainly in terms of chemical use and monoculture.

But hey. Bought some hazel hurdles (to replace willow) and banged them up and they look great.

Final thought: I’m aware that many of those who’ve considered investing in hurdles have been dissuaded ‘because they don’t last’. It’s true this can be at issue. But factoid no. 8 zillion and 82: ours (in a maritime location, in West Wales) lasted a decade. Why? Because we grew or transplanted bog-standard ivy against them. The ivy keeps them going – holds them – and it’s a nicer way than slopping loads of wood-preserver all over the landscape; that being the other alternative.

Hazel is a lovely beast. Yellowish and grey and soft and nutty. With added witches and buccolic wotnots. Willows are beautiful; whether weeping or just producing those erectile functions (rods) year after year, upon that cruel-but-horny autumn prune. Go out and feel them. Feel them. Or get them in your garden.

#Books and #writing and all.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 2 Comments

I know this is kindof niche and I may not be in a position to entirely deny the Cooo, Sales Opportunity factor, but I re-read this (below) and found it mildly diverting. So revisiting.

It’s the transcript of a talk I gave, coupla years back, to Writing Room (writingroom.org.uk) on the ins and outs of self-publishing. Hoping it may be of interest and if not, there are a couple of laughs and the occasional philosophical insight-attempt. With Beautiful Games now unleashed into the wilderverse, and having grabbed a further bundle of knowledge about The Process of Getting Books Out There, it feels okay to piggyback the original event.

To the underslung, I would add, then:

I still really like the whole notion of self-publishing; the freedoms; the Independent Record Labelness; the relative speed of delivering your missive. In terms of practical minutiae, I *now know* that it’s the online behemoths that push for a pre-order period of a month, to allow time for the book files/cover/metadata/whatever to fully load onto their systems. Seems a bit daft in 2024, but this is just how it is. Amazon (e.g.) can put your book up there on Day One but the info about said book, online, may not be correct, or fully described for some weeks. So they call that faff-abart-time a Pre-Order Period and scramble to get things looking right – whilst obviously improving the groovy-‘early’ sales factor.

I have used Grosvenor House Publishing for Beautiful Games, because the people I dealt with were/are tidy and The Dots Will Not Be Joined felt and looked like a kosher book. (In short, happy to recommend). Costs are pretty much unchanged from those included below, other than the increase in prices for copies *to me*, for my book launch and personal supply. This I expected, given the general hike in printing costs, et al, to the producers themselves. Happy to field enquiries on anything around writing or publishing – particularly, obviously, the self-publishing route.

Here’s the new book – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beautiful-Games-Rick-Walton/dp/1803817763

The rest I think is here…

ON SELF-PUBLISHING.

Hi & welcome to everybody, wherever you’re ‘at’, geographically or writing-wise. I feel like I should start with a patently, refreshingly un-focus-grouped soundbite so here it is: I’m here to ENCOURAGE. I really am.

Am I an expert? Nope, almost certainly not… but I have gone thru this self-publishing thing. So I will and CAN give you some PRACTICAL INFO as well as waffle or spout opinion extravagantly. Ignore all diversions – there will be nonsense and mischief en route – just hold on and I will prove to you I am kosher in the sense of having self-published a book. Recently. You may, should the thing fall into your hands, powerfully dislike THE DOTS WILL NOT BE JOINED and therefore think I’m an utter fraud as a writer but the process would be the same for your fabulous, authentic equivalent.

Brief WHO AM I?

I’m Rick and I’m a writer and a sports coach/P.E. Teacher – mainly the latter, in fact. I’ve always ‘written stuff’ – whether that be songs/poems or bigger lumps of words. Always. For me. For me this is personal, so if you do take away one message from the following kaleido-rant(s) let it be this: I think we write because we can’t stop. The Rest is superfluous (for me, anyway): whether we’re famous and brilliant or mischievous and obscure and daft. (Guess which end of the spectrum I’m waving, madly, from?) The Doing is the thing. Your contribution is the thing. Please create this stuff. You need it/I need you to do it. You make the world better. Get your writing done.

I love Nearly Man/Nearly Person stories. I’ve got some byooots and if we have time I’d love to hear some of yours. Wozzat all abart? I think We Writing Peeps may need to be kinda durable or ‘philosophical’ but we may also need a sense of humour about the madness and anti-meritocracy of all this, yes? Maybe more of that later…

My story is… in god-knows-when my first play was workshopped at the Nat Theatre Studio, in London. It was entirely possible that I was gonna make it: I do actually remember a director saying “Christ, Rick, you’re gonna be SO-O BIG!!” LOLS! Been getting smaller ever since.

I shook hands with the top man there – Nick Wright – over the fact of an upcoming production of one of my plays, then got on with my life. They had ‘wanted me in the building’ so I wrote something else on a second visit. IT NEVER HAPPENED. Not because they realized I was the mischievous impostor/rebellious jukebox I may have been but because the funding was cut for new writing festivals etc. I imagine half of you have experienced something similar – the new stuff, the risky stuff being cut or excluded. I didn’t care. I just kept writing – kept living my life.

Apologies, know this is indulgent but let me stick with this momentarily on the off-chance that this feel somehow relatable and mildly diverting. I’ll mention in passing that a reader at Hampstead Theatre dubbed me a ‘free-wheeling absurdist’ (always wanted to stick that on my passport) and an equivalent at the Royal Court called me ‘the diamond in the dung-heap’ and I think that gave me enough belief… but know what? All that belief/confidence/vindication malarkey… that could be an endless discussion in itself… mainly I was happy, living in Pembrokeshire, with NO EXPECTATION or AMBITION to be somebody – be that kind of writer or public figure.

Have no regrets about this. Never, I swear sought to push open that metaphorical door: never bought directors coffee. Always knew I was a longshot and an outsider because of who I am, how I write. I wasn’t going to change that; they weren’t going to change that. We’re all wonderfully different (and I know this can sound incredibly arrogant but) for me there was and is no conciliation around this.

Know it’s going to sound weirdly against the grain of what follows here, if I say I’ve never considered the public aspect of publishing important. But I really haven’t. This is personal and I fear it will sound insufferably pompous or something… but I don’t, essentially seek or need vindication. I just write. So yeh – uncompromisingly.

THE PROCESS

Started with having the headspace and time to write a book, instead of blogs. (Am an accredited cricket writer and bloggist – have two websites. Have also had articles published in various papers and magazines; sports-stuff mainly. Wisden). COVID made the first tome possible.

Conversations (with folk I trust), who might know, about agents/publishing/stuff I’d need to aware of.

Some publishers INSIST on agents forwarding work: think that’s bollocks but it’s how it is. Didn’t expect to get an agent but googled them and chose a few. Did the same with publishers, at the same time, because a) impatient b) knew my work too ‘left-field/’unstructured’ to land with most mainstream publishers.

Looked hard at publishers, on t’internet and chose about ten, to forward manuscripts. Most want the opening 30 pages, with a chapter breakdown and/or similar highlights package. Took this seriously but opted to present in my own inimitable style, in the expectation of ‘failure’, but the hope of maybe just hitting a like-minded spirit in their camp. Didn’t!

Most publishers take months to get back to you – if they do so. They then pre-warn that any subsequent publication will take a year or more after that. This was intolerable for me, given my book feels contemporary to that 2019/20 moment – was about that moment. Feels urgent.

IN SHORT I THINK IT’S RIDICULOUS (in any case) that it takes 2 years to publish a book. In 2021/2/3? Madness. Simply don’t believe it’s necessary, in the digital age and it was a major driver in pointing me towards self-publishing.

Wrote the book between winter 2020/21 and early Summer 2021 with a view to publishing that autumn. Timing-wise, felt daft not to try to collar some of the Xmas Market. Lols!

 (It had become apparent, from more conversations and possibly email exchanges with publishers, that even with lockdowns meaning half the universe was writing books, self-publishing could happen start-finish in a matter of weeks/a few months. That was the clincher, for me).

So, basically, I didn’t wait for many agents and publishers to respond. I saw an ad on-line, probably under The Guardian banner, probably on the Twitters, for self-publishing via Grosvenor House. I remember asking my good friend Paul Mason if he had any experience or knowledge around this and he said he was aware of other options, but no. Didn’t recommend his agent, neither did the other guy I spoke to. No easy ‘in’: I emailed Grosvenor House Publishing Ltd.

DETAILS AND COSTS.

Abstract: I wanted complete control of my book. I’m a Stiff Records kindofaguy rather an EMI geezer. I didn’t want proofreading or copy-editing services: I was always going to do as much editing and re-writing as anyone but I wanted to make all the choices. Independent Record Label equivalent. Self-publishing makes that possible. It can be thrillingly punky in a way I like.

In July 2021 it cost me £795 to sign up with Grosvenor House. We had inevitably exchanged some emails – you get an individual assigned to you – which prepared the ground in terms of what the writer gets and what the publisher expects. Then you get a Publishing Agreement, (show it!) with just a few pages of contractual stuff – none of which was too intimidating to a newbie like myself.

What the writer has to do – probably not an exhaustive list!

  • Write the manuscript.
  • Produce some publicity/back of the book blurb.
  •  List the book correctly for web searching (metadata – had no idea myself but not over-taxing). Not *actually sure* how vital that is, but they want you in the right box and some people will probably search.
  • Choose or design a cover and internal pics – at £5 per image, from memory. Best part of my adventure: Kevin Little. Somebody I trust, who GETS ME. We talked, I gave him some keys and a picture and away he went. Magic. IT WAS FREE – he understood. He enjoyed it. He brought His Thing. I needed some of his technical knowledge as well as his understanding of me and the book. Find a soulmate in this!
  • Take responsibility for slander/liable/originality etc.
  • Provide ‘an electronic file in Microsoft Word of the book text plus digitally scanned photographs/artwork in the correct format’.
  • Choose fonts and formatting (you’ll get some advice, in my experience). Also matt or gloss, etc.
  • Choose what price you want the book to be.
  • Allow the publisher to distribute sample copies free of charge. (Not sure if this happened, in my case).
  • IMPORTANTLY, THE AUTHOR MUST DO ALL THE MARKETING & ADVERTISING.

What the publisher agrees to do:

  • Arrange and provide an ISBN number – essential, people tell me.
  • To typeset sample pages and send them out to the author for approval.
  • To provide an electronic full proof within 30 days.
  • To assemble a cover – either from material the author provides or from a royalty-free website. (Grosvenor House can, for a fee, design your cover).
  • MANUFACTURE BOOKS ON DEMAND as orders are received.
  • ‘Supply our distributors with your book’s metadata/synopsis’ to ‘all major retailers/wholesalers in the UK and to Amazon.com’. Will list the book with Nielsen Book Data.
  • Make royalty payments twice a year – got £640 for my first!
  • Provide the author with 5 bound and printed copies free of charge. Supply the six national libraries of the UK with a copy of your book.

IMPORTANT NOTES.

Grosvenor House offer services such as editing/proofreading/design. The base rate for that is about £35 an hour but they will offer you specific quotations for particular tasks. They will professionally check-over your manuscript for about £200, in short. I didn’t want that and couldn’t really afford it, given my confident expectation to lose money at this venture. However, I inevitably missed a couple of typo’s and restoring those cost me about £100, post-publication.

The marketing thing is key. You, the author are doing all the marketing. They effectively produce the book and put it on Amazon. You sell it. I absolutely hated the idea that my only realistic option was to sell via Amazon BUT IS THIS IS PROBABLY HOW IT WILL BE.*

EVERYTHING IS DOWN TO ALGORITHMS AND CLICKS (apparently).

Grosvenor House did advise me that pre-publication sales can be major: if a certain number are sold, early doors, that triggers algorithms (or something) that may release your book into actual shops – or get it noticed by actual shops, who then order copies in. THIS DID NOT HAPPEN WITH MY BOOK -I’m a nobody, why would it? But FIND OUT ABOUT THIS STUFF. Lean on the publisher?

*Or by-pass Amazon, maybe… by buying lots of your own books and touting them around bookshops, yourself. (I am going to seriously consider this for my next book). Grosvenor House told me they would sell me any number of my first book at about £4 each – I bought 50, for the book launch.

 Next book I may contemplate buying many more and going on a road trip: let’s do the math.

Haven’t really thought this through but it may be possible to buy at £4 and sell at £10, having persuaded the booksellers to split that remaining money. If you take £7 & the bookshop gets £3, I make that £3 profit per book, for both of you. You may only need to sell 3 or 400, to break even. Could you face that initial expenditure, that risk, that work – that selling? Could that be part of your adventure?

We’re racing ahead. You need to be cute. You also need to be realistic – or not. I simply accepted the near-certainty that I would lose money on this adventure and daren’t buy 400 of my own books – didn’t really want to charge round the country with a car full of books.

My chosen route may have been something of a cop-out, then. I bought just enough books for the book launch, and to place a few in a local hotel and a couple of local shops.

Re-wind. WHAT I DID cost me around £1,000, trying to keep costs down a bit. The Killer Truth is that if you SELL YOUR BOOK FOR around £10 Grosvenor House will pinch £4-plus of that, and so will Amazon or equivalent. MEANING YOU WILL GET A ROYALTY OF (ONLY) £1.40 for every book sold. Outrageous but true.

I bit that bullet and tried from the outset to a) live with the loss but b) push to sell as many as possible.

MARKETING.

Nobody knows who the f*** Rick Walton is. He has no clout, no real ‘presence in the market’. But he knows a man or two that do(es).

I’m a Twitter fiend and have one or two celebrity Twittermates. Or Twitter Big-hitters. Critically for my ego (maybe) and certainly for any sales, both these guys think I’m a decent bloke and an interesting writer. They have many thousands of twitter followers and they both were kind enough to pump the book just a little, on that sagacious platform. The result was I sold about 5-600 books and gathered about £700 back from my outlay.

CONCLUSION.

I loved the whole process of self-publishing. It suited me. Never for one moment did I think it would make me a profit: I was doing it for other reasons. Primarily, rightly or wrongly, I feel there’s something I have to say. It felt like a next step. If the reality is nobody’s going to take me on – no agents, no publishers – so what? I can do it anyway.

It was a brilliant, gratifying adventure; I strongly recommend it. But think about how you might sell a lot of books. You’ll probably need to sell best part of a thousand to get yourself close to parity, dollars-wise, if you do it the way I did.

So who do you know with 300,000 Twitter followers? That’s, in my experience, the way to go. Or what’s your equivalent to that going to be?

Van Gogh: the letters.

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Our view of van Gogh feels so blanketed in known imagery and so ripe with cliches about art, ‘psychology’ and sentiment that maybe we can’t know what’s real. He’s arguably the one we all have some grip on but given the industry of tragedy and romance that time and coverage has engulfed his life and work in, the temptation may be to sit with our collective understanding – that of a man who couldn’t cope with the depth of his own feelings – rather than delve towards unlikely or potentially less satisfying clarity. Why learn more? Don’t we *just know* that he poured himself into his art more wholly and relentlessly than almost anyone who ever lived, and that therefore it figures the dam burst? Aren’t those central truths true enough and big enough?

They probably are… but given the genuine, affecting, visceral enormity of the man’s achievement, maybe we owe him another look. In this case – and does this sound feeble? Maybe? – via the stuff he wrote.

Yup. I’ve gone back to the letters; specifically the Thames and Hudson ‘Vincent van Gogh, A Life in Letters’ which beautifully and skilfully presents 76 of the 820 surviving missives. Chapeau to the editors – predictably all senior figures at the van Gogh Museum of Amsterdam – who a) select well and b) present compelling, authentic, believable chunks of the extraordinary content. There are plates, of course, and many of the letters feature the sketches that the artist so often embedded (and described so revealingly and copiously) within the text. (Guess what? The sketches alone make this an essential read, for their astonishing, three-dimensional but also emotional/symbolic life).

It’s a fabulous, poignant book and a truly historic record. Hard to imagine that there could be a fuller or more generous account of the business of human expression anywhere. The very first bit of puff inside the cover describes it as ‘A literary masterpiece that would be worth reading even if the paintings were rubbish’ – Jonathon Jones, The Guardian – which saves me a line or twelve. All I would add is that all of us who (with or without vanity) wish to be passably cultured should be well familiar with this material. It may define the word ‘seminal’.

The letters prove that van Gogh was an immensely cultured man, as well as a kind of gloriously honest empathist for peasants and The Lowly. His knowledge of literature, music and art, from Dickens to Delacroix via Wagner or Zola or Rembrandt, was remarkable, but also figured, given the family art business and the profoundly religious, rather scholarly, early home environment. Letters to Theo, his brother and saviour-benefactor, are deeply concerned with habits and trends and meaning in art, as well as the endless supplying of materials and living expenses. Vincent was all of the following; a religious ‘weirdo’ (early-doors); bookworm; philosopher and theorist. All to a high level of intelligence. Meaning the notion we may have of a Troubled Artist-of-the-Soil-and-the-Night Cafe is a poor under-estimation. The guy could think.

He could think and he could learn. He learned to draw: look at the sketches! From a late start he scorched or ground himself towards a kind of revolutionary draughtsmanship. Unique: brilliant; technical but deep and soulful and evocative in a way that may be unrivalled. (Meaning this image of him as a godlike but rather fearsomely crude colourist, devouring our eyes with the coruscating Sunflowers or cavorting Cypresses is again a travesty). Van Gogh worked tirelessly to understand structure and perspective and body: he did this knowing he needed it – and probably before he knew how his facility for ‘figures’ might light up the universe of possibilities (and the universe!) in tandem with his colours from the South. He also unquestionably felt that he had to earn the right to be taken seriously – to emulate or follow the masters – by working incredibly hard, with (somehow) invincible integrity.

His correspondence beyond Theo – with Bernard, Gauguin, Signac and others – confirms both that van Gogh was a theorist and intellectual and that this idea we have of him as a tragic failure in public or commercial terms is also an inadequate view. Sure there was no widespread appreciation of his genius or his work. But the artists swapped paintings and drawings, out of mutual interest and respect. And some of van Gogh’s works were hung, publicly. He earned a little money teaching and what we might now call mentoring. If it’s true he was so brilliantly revolutionary with his painting that the world simply wasn’t ready for him then a) this is surely a familiar tale, in the arts and b) this again hardly counts as failure. He was a powerful source and a focus for discussion around art in the contemporary artistic community whilst he lived.

Despite his tremendous feeling for historical giants such as Rembrandt and Holbein, Vincent both rated and respected modernists and those who challenged: but my god they had to it well, and with conviction. He became something of a semi-detached Impressionists, alongside or parallel to the likes of Bernard and Gauguin and despite his being challenging and undiplomatic (or worse), their correspondence alone validates the intellectual contribution the man from the dull grey North made. Of course Gauguin did play a role in the breakdown at the Yellow House (and did flee, arguably rather ignominiously after the ear-loppage) but the two great painters of colour did continue to exchange letters, after the event. Touchingly, van Gogh, having had a genuinely positive review from the precocious critic Aurier, deferred very much to Gauguin’s superiority and importance.

With regard to the ending (that we all feel we know something about), a few thoughts. Look at the letters, look at the paintings. The latter, from the yellow but iconically ‘purple patch’ at the house in Arles, to the ravishing-but-maaaybe-tormented cypresses and the last cornfields, painted in Saint-Remy or Auvers, are amongst the most affecting works of art in any medium. In both locations the artist was very much ‘in recuperation’, post crises. It’s therefore become classically tragic but let’s not that obscure the quality – the qualities – of the painting. It reaches more of us than almost anything in the entire history of art; this despite not being immediately easy on the eye. The mystery around how van Gogh found a gun, and what *exactly* triggered its use *at that time* does nothing to undermine the sense of hurt and of waste, that registers with all of us, even now.

Having re-read these letters I suspect that the family gathering, to discuss a long-contemplated potential escape for Theo from his unhappy employment (and the subsequent setting-up of an independent art dealership) was instrumental to Vincent’s suicide. Both brothers had been hugely anxious for some time about how they might proceed if some new way was not secured. Theo’s hopes lay with a brother of his wife, Jo… but it was not to be. No agreement meant Theo and family remained vulnerable to his own poor health and material angst, and that meant even less stability for his elder brother.

Scared, disturbed and no doubt feeling somewhat guilty and even responsible for much of Theo’s predicament – he had, after all, been utterly reliant upon him for a decade – Vincent shot himself, not immediately fatally, in a cornfield in Auvers-sur-Oise, dying two days later. Theo was devastated. He also succumbed to mental illness (although it is generally believed this was just a part of a medical picture including advanced, untreated syphilis) and died himself, six months later. It was Theo’s wife who published the letters, in 1914 and went on to further champion Vincent’s art.

Without the letters, the art is godlike. But the letters are huge. I deliberately choose not to direct you to a particular place. Read them all.

Notes on Nationalism… and porkies.

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In the new age of Tory über-twattery it was a tad deflating to note, as I innocently flipped open ‘Decline of the English Murder’ that Eric Arthur Blair himself was educated at Eton. Jesus. Had forgotten that. But the more I dug in to that collection of disparate essays the more I liked, or re-liked the man.

It’s opinionated; it’s judgemental; it’s prone to the occasional hideous lapse – n-words, daft generalisations – but also chockful of brilliant, even timeless observations about life, politics, philosophy. It’s bolshy in an entertaining way about trends of thought and cultural icons. Almost certainly, it’s prescient regarding the filth that is fake news and that particularly modern (but plainly not) phenomenon of swamping the universe with porkies of a particularly poisonously-charged variety. This in the knowledge that most of the media will give it a platform unchallenged and enough of the people will be titillated by its raw bigotry.

(From Notes on Nationalism, 1945);

‘The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs. Since nothing is ever quite proved or disproved, the most unmistakable fact can be impudently denied’.

This of course is absolutely the essence of the Bannon and Trump playbook… but also surely redolent of the Cummings Project in the UK, and more recently Braverman’s ‘appeal’ to Confused and Angry, of Grimsby. Yes, Orwell’s essay is specific to nationalism but plainly – and sadly – its reach is into and across the racist spectrum.

I am much taken with the idea that although

‘nationalistic loves and hatreds… are part of the make-up of most of us, whether we like it or not’,

we must and can

‘struggle against them, and that this is essentially a moral effort’.

For me this is a truth and something of an inspiration: that we must recognize some degree of ‘inevitable bias’ and then act intelligently. We can therefore prevent both concession to evil and, through opposition that is self-aware, steer clear of ineffectual, ultimately inactive rage.

‘The emotional urges which are inescapable, and are perhaps even necessary to political action, should be able to exist side by side with an acceptance of reality’.

Orwell is making the case for a generous kind of engagement here, something which decimates the (il)legitimacy and rank ugliness of Braverman’s contemporary posturing. The absence, within the current political discourse, of Orwell’s connection to commonly understood decencies has been profound. And deliberate, surely? We may fascinate over the degree of consciousness exorcised around the fug that is our philosophical vacuum, but not, I think over its prevalence.

If only the likes of Kuenssberg and Peston had the wit, nerve or grounding to challenge the likes of Johnson, Patel and Braverman for their obvious, perennial spite – their badness. The UK might be in a very different place had the direct and essential questions not been confined to honourable margins such as Byline Times, or the Twitter feeds of outraged individuals.

Major journo’s have gone missing. They apparently remain undisturbed by the grotesque distortions around Small Boats. They failed to stir at the whole Rwanda invention, despite it being a manifestly provocative kite-flying operation, designed to delight the most perverse and cerebrally-deficient amongst our rightist brethren. They saw and heard nothing during Partygate.

Presumably it’s just too difficult these days to find balance around moral questions? These people, even those with no ties to ‘journalistic principles’ or obvious stake in the grift of the press barons, utterly facilitatedthe fall into mindlessness. They were lazy, they were cowed. Orwell calls them out, from 80 years back:

‘this, I repeat, needs a moral effort’.

We also did this.

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Of the three of you who might read this blog, two may remember that the raison-d’etre of the mighty bowlingatvincent.com span round the sport/art axis, pret-ty much alternately. Meaning I *really did* try to write something sporty then arty.

This I think was more about gentle inclination than actual cunning planning – although I reckon I was conscious that no fekker on the planet was writing on M U then Frieda Kahlo. That minor dawning was about as close as I’ve ever gotten to Marketing , or Social Meedya Planning. Anyway – apologies – I’ve drifted from that aspiration.

I’m not in a position to promise any meaningful kind of comeback; just that I’m conscious of the drift and *would like* to address it to some extent. (In the (allegedly) Real World, I’m writing another book and pouring most of the creative energy into that… so don’t expect any progress on this for some months. However).

We all have faaaar tooo many WhatsApp groups, yes? I certainly do – and I almost hate it. Who are these people who feel they have to set up a separate group for every micro-section of every ‘team’ or department? (Answer; these people are YOU!) Bollocks. They are bollocks, most of them.

I have eight hundred but need two WhatsApp groups. Maybe three, including family. One for cricket and the other for keeping shit together; real shit, like heart and soul and meaning of everything. (Thankyou, lads). This WhatsApp is the greatest and funniest and richest and most life-enhancing WhatsApp group in the history of the universe. Like yours is, I hope.

One of the four individuals within this magbloodynificent posse sent a Spotify covers version-thang over. Most of it was instantly of us. Meaning it was surefire gorgetastic and appropriate: an easy win. Some of it, less so. I’m going to write about one of the tracks.

We all grew up in and through punk and the glorious aftermath. Joy Division, Bunnymen, Costello, Weller, Fall, Magazine, Clash, Cure, Gang of Four, Talking Heads. Later Pil, Specials and all that malarkey. One of us – *cheesy grin emoji* – still hasn’t grown out of the phase predicated on anger. But guess what? I’m writing about K D Lang.

It was a cover, yes? Guess which one?

Nope – or yeaaaah! – A Case of You: the Joni Mitchell song.

This is not my territory. I’m deeply (punkily?) suspicious of the world of melody, of beautiful projection – of choons. Realise this is utter cobblers, the immediate exclusion or de-legitimisation of everything Paul McCartney and Almost Everybody ever did… but still hold onto that ultrapunk notion that making cute, beautiful-sounding things led us to the wall-to-wall masturbatory shite that was the seventies super groups and most of commercial Pop Music.

Us Angry Bastards are still right to be anti-airhead, anti-vacancy, anti-conciliatory: it’s still not right, not enough, to be a music-maker who wants to be adored for their wizardry or musicality. Not when the world needs improving so much. But hey; I’ve gone off on one…

Torch songs are not my territory. Great, tuneful singing rarely moves me.

A Case of You is about Mitchell’s fine, fine songwriting… but mainly it’s about the singing. It’s next-level gorgeous. Lang can sing but here she is into the sublime, crossing and dipping her toes into the stream that is the piano.

Things ease more than they twinkle: the vocal is parallel then sliding or surging ahead. It’s rich and melancholic but (critically?) somehow ego-less. Lang and the sound crew produce a quiet triumph of technical excellence where the soulfulness is in no sense neutered by ‘performance skills’. (In fact the fekkers make it work, goddammit!) This is High Torch but still manages to be risky and human and genuinely poignant.

Try singing it. The spacing – and the range, obvs – are a challenge. Lang is masterful. It’s a dollop of perfection, the kind of thing you want aliens want to discover when they land next August and find we’ve self-incinerated. Because it’s about us. Lang’s singing is Peak Expression of our capacity to relate and to feel. It captures and vouches for us.

The more you listen the more you hear a very rare mix of control and luxuriant risk. It’s full of blood and wine and maybe damage. A Case of You is not, I think going to change the world but it passes the Punk’s Test for value. It’s a great, full human statement: a complex story we don’t need to unpick. I want those space-travellers to find it and nod in approval.

We humans were lousy but we also did this.

The bowlingatvincent.com Multinational Corporation Review of the Year – 2022.

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bowlingatvincent.com – literary wing of the Protest Channel that is @bowlingatvinny – had a strongish year. (I know ‘cos I just looked back). Except that it accidentally traduced the original purpose of the whole damn enterprise, which was to roar about sport and art pretty much alternately. I may reflect on this.

Of the fourteen blogs during 2022, five were about football. I rather unpicked Wales’s World Cup Adventure, got into United and Ten Hag (v West Ham), covered England’s Lionesses v USA and through their Euros win and watched my home town Town at the Play-off Final. Astonishingly, of the eight zillion opinions and tactical judgements I expressed through nerve-janglingly live coverage of all these occasions, I can – even in the allegedly sobering light of day – find none that were wrong.

  • Contest. And then maybe not? I was dead right that Wales needed to play better and that Bale should retire from (certainly) international football and probably club action, too. Now.
  • ‘Where are Wales? What level they at? Are they heroic over-achievers, in a cruel, more heavily-endowed-with-everything kindofa world? Or what? Where’s the Wales Place, in footballing terms – and maybe the other stuff? Football-wise, are they brave and bold, or are they ungenerous and perverse? Are the ‘limitations’ enabling or stultifying? Where do, or should Wales pitch themselves?’
  • I was right to note with some embarrassment that the USA – not Argenbloodyteena – ‘slaughtered’ Wales in the first 45 minutes of their campaign and that for all the justifiable gas about a rare and wonderful World Cup appearance, Page’s ‘pragmatic’ conservatism disappointed. Sure, Wales have few great talents (so responsible caution blahdiblah) but the endless holding patterns only seemed to undermine both individual performance – no surges; no racing adrenaline for player nor support! – and the essential hwyl that has carried Wales for aeons. It was all a bit lame.
  • I nailed the Rashford Thing and the signs of re-growth, under Ten Hag, in Holding Players. Elanga was similarly *seen* and Fernandes un-picked, en route.
  • …’quality-wise, there was little difference. In the first ten both Casemiro and Eriksen showed glimpses of their rarified best, either threading or spraying fabulous passes into feet, offering real hope that the mythical(?) corner into Team Flow and Sumptuous United-ness might yet be turned. But no’. 
  • In Things Have Changed I trumpeted the stunning transformation in women’s football, in England, and by implication, beyond. Ingerland ‘bossing the yanks’ said it all, after a decade or more where North American soccer all-too-serenely ruled over us amateurish Brits. I noted the ‘supreme equanimity and humour (as well as tactical intelligence)’ of the new gaffer – Wiegmann.
  • More controversially, perhaps, I mischiefed-up the Euros Final, fearlessly calling out relative under-achievement, performance-wise – even in victory – on the day. (Come ON. Don’t you get bored of the faux euphoria that massively over-inflates the *actual performance(s)?* It’s perfectly possible and generally the case that trophies are won in ordinary games by ordinary performances. This in no way deflates the fabulous significance of the achievement).
  • So, in Clickbait? You betcha! I do argue that recent SPOTY winner Beth Mead was one of several who were mixed, rather than brilliant, in an absolutely brilliant tournament win. I correctly identified that presser invasion as ‘the best moment in the history of sport’ and named Millie Bright Player of the Tournament… because she was.
  • Finally – well, previously – I *actually went* to the home of West Ham United FC, to cover the Mighty Mariners. Great day/crap game.
  • ‘It’s absurd in 2022 to use phrases like ‘attractive football’; worse still to associate that with abstracted, rose-tinted community goodness but as I look around the acres of ‘park’ now home to the Happy Hammers, the clash of values, vistas and jazzed-up-verbals is somewhat mind-blowing’. 

The Other Channel, now sportslaureate.co.uk , carried more football but bowlingatvincent.com was always the home for rugby. Life and *things* – like cricket, mainly – have regrettably drawn me away from funny-shaped balls but I managed to post homages to the egg on three occasions.

Despite being a Likely Phoney – male, middle-aged, possibly voyeuristic; at best a flawed dilettante – I watched a good deal of the Women’s Rugby World Cup. It was sensational. England may not have produced to their absolute peak but they have been utterly magnificent – frighteningly, powerfully so – for two years. France are not far behind. And then there were the homefolks.

  • The final, between England and the Black Ferns, had to somehow bear comparison with the semi, between New Zealand and France, which may have been the best rugby match of all time. I wrote rather wryly about the Black Fern’s ultimate, inevitable win; again creating mischief, again misunderstood. England had a player sent off – rightly, under the rules of the modern era. It (the offence) wasn’t malicious and it happened so early that the contest was effectively re-drawn as a training-ground routine. England held-out wonderfully gamely but were done, from the moment of the card.
  • ‘The second half may have been as colossal as the first. It was an exhausting watch, with the defiant visitors floating through chunks of time, before selflessly, heroically heaving against the inevitable. Both sides naturally made changes and inroads. Both scored. But the universe had been shifted. The crowd knew it. England were overhauled, before striking back. Then overhauled. With three points in it, the battered visitors kicked for the corner rather than look for the three points that would bring extra-time’.

I wrote two posts on (men’s) Six Nations stuff, back in February. They stand up, too. One of them channelled both The Mekons and Dylan Thomas: it also morphed into part-coverage of Eng women v Aus, at The Cricket, with ‘Rafters clanging. Sea rumbling’. It’s likely that I was in a caravan, in one of those storms, at the time, so it wasn’t Heather Knight who was fearing airborne adventure. Oh: I may or may not have been drinking.

There were but two artsy posts. One on Freddie Flintoff’s TV caper and the other around the Sensationalists/YBO’s art and lifestylery. I am critical of both… but right… as you will see… if you go back through. I’m really not sure what caused the apparent shift away from The Arts: they remain at the core of my life and my learning. I still believe I have some contribution to make, to reviewing and/or ‘criticism’.

From Sensationalists: people who might convince us: ‘Morons at the Mail, poor or tokenistic arts education and profound levels of ignorance have engineered a situation where we are a) visually illiterate b) suspicious and small-minded and c) too bloody lazy to stand in front of an artwork and let it do its job – beguile us, transport us, challenge us. This, for what it’s worth, is my context; the belief that art matters and that artists carry that privilege of being our conscience with courage and often a deep, deep, incorruptible honesty’.

From The Sublime to…

The unfortunate truth is I felt compelled to write upon multiple occasions – well, four – about the Tories, or Our Government. These are angry pieces.

In more than one of these blogs I savage Johnson and regret not a word of it. Plainly he is the worst Prime Minister of my medium-considerable lifetime. In A Christmas Puppy? I almost dare to bid an un-fond adieu.

‘So could the Age of Embarrassment finally be over? Might the Bumbling Buffoon, the Etonian Mess really be done?

It’s possible. In a characteristic veil of porkies and shameless, conscience-less swerves between the reported fact, his Urgent Gatherings and the forbidding fridges of a life lived in cosseted anarchy, Johnson really may have spent himself. It’s possible. The lies and the deceit and the vile uncaring will of course go on, endlessly, but it may be that his time in the Real Spotlight is over’.

I am content, foolishly, perhaps, to judge him morally as well as describe his practise, which has brought chaos, death and shame to an increasingly grubby kingdom. There is surely a kind of Shakespearian wickedness, an epic foulness around his skiving off from the first five COBRA meetings, in a world emergency, in order to a) sort his ’women problems’ and b) finish writing his effing book. This is un-caring – not needing to care – on a truly appalling level. It’s absolutely him.

So I’m fuelled with hatred and contempt, for Johnson and his thin acolytes. There are dishonourable mentions for the whole filthy clan: Mogg; Truss; Kwarteng; Hancock; Cummings – and by implication for the quietly grotesque hinterland, into which the likes of Dido and Mone hope to disappear. They appall and offend me, as does the xenophobic Brexit catastrophe and the ongoing, raw corruption across those VIP Lanes, corporate favours – particularly the gaze-averting re our scandalous water industry – and the whole, humiliating House of Lords gravy-train.

My dismembering of the Tories is less forgiving, less funny than (say) Marina Hyde’s – deliberately so. I fully accept that driven, polemical writing of this sort may contribute little to the task of ‘turning things around’: but forgive me if I simply bear honest, angry witness. Despite the fact that nobody’s paying me to do this, it does feel like ‘my job’. (Plus lacerating hostility may not necessarily devalue the writing).

The year, then. Set in a matrix of an Ingerland that feels like it’s unravelling further – or at least the brink seems closer.

Thankyou to all who do read. Regulars, who may have a sense of how ‘niche’ I remain, will understand that there are times when I am tempted to either give this malarkey up, entirely, or to further streamline, by gathering all the writing and twittering into one place. This may yet happen, but might curtail my ability to speak the truths I want to speak. We’ll see.

Anyhow. Please do continue to visit the two websites and, if you would, RT on the Twitters – that’s oxygen, for us bloggists. In case you’re wondering, if energy permits, I hope to produce a sportslaureate.co.uk Review of the Year, too.

Love and heartfelt thanks to all: have a wunnerful New Year.

              Rick.