Layer 186 The Inner Voice, Film Noir, Meditation, Spiritual Intelligence, a Japanese Revolution, and the Silence of the Left

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Film Noir

There was an interesting documentary on TV last week about Film Noir. Wikipedia says this:

“Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize moral ambiguity and sexual motivation.

Crime, usually murder, is an element of almost all film noirs; in addition to standard-issue greed, jealousy is frequently the criminal motivation. A crime investigation - by a private eye, a police detective (sometimes acting alone), or a concerned amateur - is the most prevalent, but far from dominant, basic plot. In other common plots the protagonists are implicated in heists or con games, or in murderous conspiracies often involving adulterous affairs. False suspicions and accusations of crime are frequent plot elements, as are betrayals and double-crosses.

Film noirs tend to revolve around heroes who are more flawed and morally questionable than the norm.

The characteristic heroes of noir are described by many critics as "alienated" . . . "filled with existential bitterness." Certain archetypal characters appear in many film noirs - hardboiled detectives, femmes fatales, corrupt policemen, jealous husbands . . .

The city is presented in noir as a "labyrinth" or "maze." Bars, lounges, nightclubs, and gambling dens are frequently the scene of action. The climaxes of a substantial number of film noirs take place in visually complex, often industrial settings, such as refineries, factories, trainyards, power plants . . .. In the popular (and, frequently enough, critical) imagination, in noir it is always night and it always rains.

Film noir is often described as essentially pessimistic. The noir stories that are regarded as most characteristic tell of people trapped in unwanted situations (which, in general, they did not cause but are responsible for exacerbating), striving against random, uncaring fate, and frequently doomed. The movies are seen as depicting a world that is inherently corrupt.

The tone of film noir is generally regarded as downbeat.  Influential critic (and filmmaker) Paul Schrader wrote in a seminal 1972 essay that "film noir is defined by tone," a tone he seems to perceive as "hopeless.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_noir

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In other words, take all that's nasty and vile in human beings and make a film about it.

Throw in plenty of sinners, predators, liars, killers, and femmes fatales that are beautiful and sexy but dangerous and interested only in material gain. Make sure that nobody laughs, nobody loves and nobody trusts. Fill it with coldness and manipulation, violence, power relationships and exploitation. Add some dashes of psychosis and plenty of psychopaths. Avoid intimacy and tenderness. Add corruption, sleaze, venality, callousness, cruelty and cynicism. Flavour it with gloom, pessimism and evil.

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At this point I'm going to avoid any temptation to make cheap jibes about South London. Or Westminster. But it must have been hard work making those films. I guess they're still being made. I guess the world in general remains the same. Substantially lacking in emotional, social, and particularly spiritual, intelligence.

Why focus so hard on the brutish side of human nature? Maybe because some people don't even realise it exists so starkly in certain areas, certain cities.

Maybe 'noir' is  a kind of glamourisation of a certain sort of macho 'toughness'. Maybe it helps 'normal' 'sinners' to feel better about themselves, since no matter how harshly they might judge themselves it's clear they're nowhere as bad as they could be - compared with the characters in those films.

You could show a young person any of those films and say, “That's what spiritual and emotional intelligence is NOT”. It's learning to recognise malice and evil in order to learn to be something far better.

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Neither Is It This

Last year I wrote about how Noel Gallacher would be better off without his dope of a brother in his band. Well it's going to happen. (see Layer 98 – Looking Back In Anger, in which the words 'drunken', 'yobbish' and 'uselessness' appear.)

Oasis bust-up blamed on booze
(Monday August 31, 2009 09:26 AM) YAHOO News

http://uk.news.launch.yahoo.com/dyna/article.html?a=/31082009/364/oasis-bust-blamed-booze.html&e=l_news_dm

The vicious fight between Oasis brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher that ripped the band apart on Friday was sparked by an argument over the frontman's drinking, according to report.

Guitarist Noel sensationally quit the band after a ferocious bust-up with singer Liam just minutes before they were due onstage at a music festival in France.

The star subsequently came out and blamed his brother for his decision to leave, insisting life in the band had become "intolerable."

Noel also mentioned the band's axed headline slot at the V Festival in Chelmsford, England last Sunday, hinting the cancellation was not down to Liam's throat virus, as had been previously claimed.

He wrote, "I can only apologise - although I don't know why, it was nothing to do with me. I was match fit and ready to be brilliant. Alas, other people in the group weren't up to it."

Now new reports claim Liam's boozing became an issue between brothers throughout their US tour this year and sparked the final fight in France after the frontman allegedly turned up to the gig drunk.

A source tells British newspaper The Sun, "Liam has been drinking heavily for the duration of the tour and regularly got very abusive and personal. He has taunted Noel's girlfriend Sara, other band members, and the crew. People have been frightened to go near him. He is one very angry man who needs to sort his issues out."

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Sorting Out Our Issues

Synchronicity again – having mentioned in the last Layer the need for alcoholics to look within and give voice to their observations about what they see there -

“It’s also why alcoholics need to stand up and be counted, and admit certain things to themselves, and others.” - Layer 185

Thinking about the benefits of meditation in its broadest sense, it occurred to me that meditation might be understood by starting with meditation that's specifically on walking and breathing, and generally  considering the state of one's body.

When you go for a strenuous walk you begin to notice your breathing, and your cardio-vascular level of fitness. You begin to notice your muscles, your joints and your stamina levels. Thanks to these sensory inputs you begin to consider how you feel about what you're monitoring. Happy? Worried? Puzzled? Maybe determined to do more to take care of your body?

The activity itself causes self-monitoring, self-assessment, and decision-making with regard to how to live in the future. You know instinctively and intuitively that any improvements in physical wellbeing will have benefits mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Balancing these elements is key to wellbeing.

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Now consider non-walking meditation. Sitting still meditation.

You can still monitor your breathing. Slow and steady? Deep or shallow? What does it say about your state of relaxation, or agitation? Are you able to affect the way you're breathing?

And now your mind. Your thought-streams. Slow and steady? Deep or shallow? Relaxed or agitated? Are you able to control them, slow them down, etc?

Consider what's within those thought-streams. What's dominating them? Don't try to figure out why - just be aware of what IS. Become aware of what's filling your mind, and affecting your spirit.

Positive thoughts and feelings? Or negative? Happy? Anxious?

Can we become more determined to do more to take care of our souls and spirits?

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Prison meals 'better than hospital' 

Unbelievable.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090831/tuk-prison-meal-better-than-hospital-6323e80.html

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Japanese opposition hails election victory

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20090831/twl-japanese-opposition-hails-election-v-41f21e0.html

“As votes are still being counted, one Japanese broadcast network has predicted that the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has won 300 seats in the 480-seat lower house, ending 50 years of almost unbroken rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP.)

Prime Minister Taro Aso said on Sunday that he took responsibility for the defeat and would resign as head of the LDP.

Japan is suffering a record 5.7 per cent unemployment and its economy is struggling to emerge from the recession.

The DPJ has said it will shift the focus of government from supporting corporations to helping consumers and workers.

In a news conference following their win, Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama said: "We have been saying that people's livelihoods are the most important thing. Unfortunately, the politics to date did not realise that. I would like to bring about a Japanese society that will care about each and every one's hearts and where everyone can find a place to be and a place to work."

Bloody hell! A society that will care about each and every one's hearts! The radio reporter this morning was talking about the Japanese being excited about their 'revolution' - and if it's really the winners' intention to start taking more care of people's 'hearts' then it really will be a revolution. At least they have the horrible example of Britain to learn from and to use - to make sure they don't squander their fantastic landslide and their overwhelming majority after so many years of being out of power. GO people! You have a MANDATE! Don't fuck up!

According to The Guardian,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/31/japan-elections-yukio-hatoyama?CMP=AFCYAH 

“Questions are already being asked about his government's ability to end the bureaucracy's stranglehold on economic policy and to focus on the interests of consumers rather than those of powerful corporations.

"It has taken a long time, but we have at last reached the starting line," Hatoyama told reporters at his home in Tokyo. "This is by no means the destination. At long last, we are able to move politics – to create a new kind of politics that will fulfil the expectations of the people."

“The party has vowed to end wasteful spending and invest heavily in welfare, to introduce a child allowance and to raise the minimum wage while keeping the consumption tax unchanged at 5% for the next four years.

But despite disquiet about Hatoyama's recent attack on "unrestrained market fundamentalism", business leaders offered him a cautious welcome.

Fujio Mitarai, chairman of the Japan Business Federation, said the DPJ had made a "genuine transition of power" possible for the first time in Japan's postwar history.

Kaoru Yano, president of the electronics firm NEC, said the result was "an expression of the people's call to break out of these tough economic and stagnant social conditions".

The US president, Barack Obama, said he looked forward to working closely with Hatoyama, who has promised to end Japan's "subservience" to US foreign policy.”

Bloody hell! Go Japan GO!

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Foreign Policy

Afghanistan strategy must change, US commander McChrystal says

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/31/general-mcchrystal-afghanistan-bull?CMP=AFCYAH

A leading counter-insurgency expert said Afghanistan's government must fight corruption and deliver services to Afghans quickly, because Taliban militants were filling gaps and winning support. The Taliban were already running courts, hospitals and even an ombudsman in parallel to the government, making a real difference to local people, said David Kilcullen, a senior adviser to McChrystal.

"A government that is losing to a counter-insurgency isn't being outfought, it is being out-governed. And that's what's happening in Afghanistan," Kilcullen told Australia's National Press Club.

A radio report this morning made it (McChrystal) clear that McChrystal had said, “It's not just about winning territory – it has to be about winning the confidence of the people.”

So these military guys really do learn lots of sophisticated stuff in their military academies. How many lessons were learned after Vietnam, we ask ourselves. Back then the buzzwords were winning the 'hearts and minds' of the indigenous people. Then, as now, the more intelligent military guys took a good look at the situation and decided that the real answer to the unwinnable war, apart from winning people's hearts and minds, was to replace American forces with indigenous soldiers, prior to getting the hell out of the place.

We also learned today that it will be another three years before they will be able to train enough Afghani recruits to take over the tanks and the guns.

Surely these people must remember that after achieving 'Vietnamisation' of the armed forces in South Vietnam, and pulling out the American military, it was only a matter of time before the guys they'd been fighting against for all those years took over anyway.

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Discipline has given way to the silence of the graveyard

Jackie Ashley's column in The Guardian bemoans the fact that there are no voices on the left speaking out with bold statements, big ideas and a coherent alternative ideology.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/30/labour-government-leadership

Who can now say that the iron discipline of New Labour MPs during the boom years was such a good thing? If it meant that there was very little probing of the City and banking practice, wasn't that a mistake? Where there was real dissent, such as over the Iraq war, and the limitations on freedoms produced by the so-called war on terror, we can only wish there had been more of it.

The great argument inside Labour now seems all about which individuals should be in which positions before and after the expected election defeat. And yes, it matters, a little. But Labour seems internally unargumentative and worryingly uninterested in big ideas. Has the party really understood how the state works? Does it need to rethink the reform of public institutions? What about the euro? What about Afghanistan?

Labour does not have enough bold people asking bold questions.

Too many thinkers on the left are outside parliament, and even outside the party. Question: if Zac Goldsmith is an acceptable Tory candidate, why is it impossible to imagine Labour allowing Monbiot to stand for them?

Here's the final irony. Just as Cameron contemplates his growing and articulate awkward squad, Brown's Labour party has gone quiet. Government spin-doctors try to turn this into a positive thing, by attacking Tory splits and gaffes, but it isn't working.

Voters know that argument and dissent are signs of life – and as long as the arguments are serious and creative, people respond. Once, Labour seemed in danger of falling apart. Then it learned discipline. But it learned silence and discretion too. Just now, it sounds like the silence of the graveyard. Let's remember the value of the shockers – and have a little more noise on the left.

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Oxzen said this on Comment Is Free:

@peitha
Labour, rather more than the Tories, decided to go down the route of professional 'career' politicians creating a class of MPs who won't step out of line because if they do their career will be over.

Very well said.

Jackie Ashley says, "Let's remember the value of the shockers – and have a little more noise on the left" - but she's surely not suggesting that the kinds of MPs that New Labour has recruited into its ranks and into this Parliament are even capable of holding, articulating or daring to voice radical and intelligent views that might be useful at this time. If so, they'd surely have done so by now, given the provocation of what's happened in the world and within Westminster in the past year or two.

On the subject of intelligence, ElliottCB commented, "being intelligent just makes most people better at being stupid. Stupid is not a level of capability but a set of choices," - but even this misses the point that being intellectually able is not the same as being intelligent. Those who are intelligent in the sense of what Buddhists and others would call enlightened also need to have well developed emotional, social and spiritual intelligences, which includes capabilities such as empathy, intuition and sound instinctual intelligence.

The problem with many so-called intellectuals is that they're sometimes very low in, or completely lacking, other intelligences that give balance and grounding to mere intellect, often through no fault of their own. This is a profound issue that our education system is very far from dealing with, and will probably never be able to deal with, given the types of people who hold the power, create the policies and the targets, and make the decisions in our dumb politics.
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Layer 98 Morris Minors, Outliers, Outright Liars and Oasis.

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Now here’s a thought. The Morris Minor is 60 next year. And someone called Martin Wainwright has just published its ‘biography’. It’s a vehicle that’s still seen on our roads, in spite of having been developed and manufactured initially way back at the end of the 1940’s, when all cars had proper wheel arches, chrome bumpers, thin tyres, wing mirrors, if any, on the front wings, and chrome wheelcaps.

Those were the days - the 1950’s - when new council estates like ours had streets that were virtually car-free, and the few cars you saw parked on them tended to be ancient black Austins, Morrises, Standards, Hillmans, Fords and Vauxhalls, some of them with semaphore indicators, not flashing lights.

I happened to notice when I was out walking the dog yesterday that most of the vehicles in my relatively downmarket part of the city are now BMWs, Mercedes, Audis, VWs, Citroens and Renaults, with a scattering of Fords and Vauxhalls. Not many of them new or nearly-new, but all the same - quality vehicles that are comfortable, quick, safe and reliable.

The Morris Minor was none of those things, but what it did have, and still has, is character and charm. It had individuality and a certain funkiness. It’s a legend, like that other Issigonis classic, the Mini. See also the Beetle, the Fiat 500, and the Deux Chevaux. It’s ripe for an update, a revamp, a retro makeover.

Kathryn Hughes’ review of the new book about the Morris Minor mentions the possibility of a complete update and a new version, but also points out that the Nanjing Automobile Corporation of China has, since 2005, owned all the rights to the Morris marque.

It’s impossible to imagine that VW or Fiat (or GM, Ford and Chrysler for that matter) would ever let their brand die and be sold off to the highest bidder, but we do things differently here, and New Labour, like Thatch, has been no respecter of the traditions and skills of our Midlands motor manufacturers, designers, engineers, craftsmen and assemblers, and all that their industry did to help win the last war and bring prosperity to this country when the war ended.

One day I’ll get round to writing a long meditation on what I saw from the inside, as a trainee and a ‘commercial apprentice’ (and I still have my certificate of apprenticeship), within the Midlands motor industry. What a sorry tale of management incompetence and failure that was - with the unions of course getting all the blame for all the problems that caused the indigenous UK motor industry to flounder and sink.

What a sorry tale of management arrogance, incompetence and gross negligence. How could any decent management possibly have allowed the manufacture of rubbish like the Austin Allegro and the Morris Marina, which no sensible person wanted to buy?

A green Morris Minor van was the first commercial vehicle I ever drove, in my first ever job, working part time delivering unwrapped bread for what would now be called a ‘boutique bakery’ - a wonderful Victorian bakehouse set at the end of a row of terraced Victorian houses. I was seventeen and had just passed my driving test in a mark one Vauxhall Viva. Lovely car. Excellent gear change, as I recall. Even then it made the Morris seem outmoded and past its sell-by date.

I’d started the job when the bakery was still delivering bread from two 2-wheeled horse-drawn vans, and as a fifteen year old I had to learn from my cousin how to feed, groom, saddle up and insert the horses between the shafts of the vans. And then I had to learn how to drive them safely on city streets, where many drivers were startled to see such vehicles trundling around like some sort of throwback or apparition from a bygone age.

The two horses, which were stabled right next to the door of the bakehouse, had very different characters. By the time I started they were quite old, and after a couple of years the decision was made to replace them with two Morris Minor vans. Truly the end of an era.

So the Minor has always had a special significance for me, and I feel nostalgic about it, as do many people who take the trouble to keep thousands of them running in spite of their unfitness for purpose.

The wonderful Tony Hawks even had a band called Morris Minor and the Majors, which you can check out on youtube, performing the magnificent Stutter Rap:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=JAIOzM7SsMo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Minor_and_the_Majors

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This weekend I’ve read two other reviews that are worth noting:

1. Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell.

Clearly Gladwell has been a minor sensation on his recent visit to this country to promote his book and his ideas.

A couple of quotes from the review, by Derek Draper:

The crucial factor in achieving the extraordinary is to be in circumstances that allow sustained development of innate talent - "a kind of accidental 'hot-housing'" . . .

(NB all those responsible for education policy)

Gladwell does more than regurgitate. He first identifies and then takes hitherto obscure ideas, fills them out into a compelling narrative and adds plenty of anecdote and drama, before finding for them a mass and appreciative audience.

At the book's heart is the revelation that pure intelligence isn't enough. What great successes need is not the highest IQ but a high IQ, accompanied by other factors. What he's saying, in a message that should be seized on by anyone who regards themselves as progressive, is that it is society that provides the conditions for success, rather than the super-talented individual alone.

(The message should also be that other sorts of intelligence plus creativity and imagination are essential, and that IQ alone achieves nothing.)

Nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer . . . reached the pinnacle of achievement because his family taught him the social skills necessary to work his way through numerous obstacles.

(NB social intelligence)

Gladwell's previous two books, Tipping Point and Blink, sold nearly five million copies. They eloquently argued that social phenomena are spread in the same way as disease, and that our instinct can be more valid than our circumspection.

(This is a crucial point - that we need to understand and appreciate the importance of instinctual intelligence. Interestingly I had a conversation with my son this morning about how dogs, for example, live entirely in the present, and by instinct, or instinctual intelligence. They have no reference to either the past or the future, and cannot deal with anything through intellectual processes. Trainers of dogs understand that you cannot make a dog learn anything through either punishing them or rewarding them for something that happened even a short time previously - you have to act on what they’re currently doing in order to reinforce or diminish a certain ‘instinct’ or tendency, or else forget about it.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/dec/06/review-outliers-malcolm-gladwell


2. The Hugo Young Papers edited by Ion Trewin - reviewed by Chris Patten

A few quotations:

This is not the single focus of the self-centred diary of a bit-part shit or of a grander political beast on the post-retirement financial make; this is what a balanced and intelligent man found out about what was happening in Britain and beyond over a generation. For anyone interested in the politics of our times, this is a gold mine. Bring your drills, hammers and chisels, and start digging.

For any serious journalist, this volume must be an object lesson in how a clever practitioner should pursue the professional quest for information and insight.

As a peerless political commentator, an old-fashioned liberal intellectual with a rigorous attachment to values and principle, he managed to keep in play a range of contacts that spanned the political firmament, including many whose political careers had never been touched by his own instinctive liberalism.

In this volume, Blair is the missing prince, or perhaps gravedigger. He was clearly one of a small number of politicians who declined to allow the record of their conversations with Young to be published, even after some necessary revision. He stands at the heart of the tale that wends its extraordinary way through these pages - Britain's bizarre relationship with its principal chosen instrument in the pursuit of its national interest, the European Union.

[Blair was] a prime minister who frittered away the large majorities lavished on him by the electorate and who forsook the chance to augment Britain's influence in Europe, choosing instead to provide fawning and sanctimonious support for Washington's dirty work in the Middle East. So, as Young wrote from his deathbed, our country ceased to be sovereign, making the sort of sacrifice of independence never required in the EU, and was left by Blair "in abject thrall to Bush and his gang". The moral contempt scorches the page.

Talk about looking back in anger - these eleven wasted years; these years of disastrous, unproductive, neo-conservative, neo-thatcherite arrogance, stupidity and cowardice .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/dec/06/hugo-young-chris-patten-blair-brown

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Looking Back In Anger

And talking about arrogance and stupidity, and looking back in anger, there was a long and very revealing article in the Weekend magazine yesterday about Noel Gallacher and Oasis. I’ve never understood their popularity, though by listening to Mr G talking to Russell Brand live on the radio I’ve come to appreciate that he’s a very bright and quick-witted individual with a really good sense of humour.

The music, however, and his appreciation of music, is another story. The magazine piece begins;

Noel Gallagher is listing the world's 10 greatest bands on his fingers, and working out where Oasis sit among this lot. "The Beatles, Stones, Who, Sex Pistols, Kinks, Jam, Smiths, Stone Roses, Bee Gees." He pauses. "I'm putting us at seven ahead of the Smiths cos we've done more." It's classic Gallagher, the great Mancunian motormouth.

It’s complete bollocks is what it is. Where do you even start with someone who thinks like that? Those aren’t even Britain’s greatest bands, let alone the world’s. What they are is just a selection of the best ever POP music bands. The Stones and The Who are the only ones with any blues or R & B roots. The Jam and the Stone Roses are just terrible anyway, though the Beatles had a touch of genius and the Bee Gees wrote and performed some brilliant eclectic songs that appeal to a very wide range of people and age groups.

The Sex Pistols and The Smiths are English eccentrics, brilliant in their own way, but not capable of long life due to the fact that they wrote so little that was of the very highest calibre, and also because of the personality defects of their key members.

The character defects of the Gallacher brothers are very well known, though Noel, at least, used to have some musical talent. But how can he seriously ignore the true greats of the musical firmament - people like Cohen and Dylan, Hendrix and Santana, let alone the great jazzers and bluesmen. This is pure ignorance and stupidity.

Live Forever [from ‘Definitely Maybe’] was Oasis' first top 10 hit - a unique mix of raucous rock and drunken optimism. But while their first album anticipated success, the second (What's The Story) Morning Glory? was about rock'n'roll fulfilment. There was a sense of wistfulness in the famous ballads, Wonderwall and Don't Look Back In Anger, as if Gallagher was already nostalgic for something that had barely started. These two songs became the supreme arm-in-arm, cigarette-lighter anthems of the 90s. They were also archetypal Oasis songs - loaded with emotional meaning, and yet virtually meaningless in themselves (what is a wonderwall, why is Sally waiting, who exactly is looking back in anger?).

He says he often didn't understand his lyrics, yet the larger meaning is transparent - the yearning for something better.

Well if HE didn’t ‘understand’ his damn lyrics then it’s no wonder nobody else could either. As for ‘yearning for something better’ - is that supposed to be insightful, profound or enlightening? ‘Cos it’s not.

Noel regrets that Oasis never did well in America. Well I have to tell him, one of the reasons for that was because Oasis were not very good. America has thousands of decent bands that play great music with real musicianship and some great vocalists. Liam looks, behaves and sounds like a twat. And according to Noel, Liam was supposed to be the focal point and the star attraction of the band. Duh! He was such a tosser he didn’t even manage to get on the plane for the band’s first tour of the USA. Though that could have been a clever move on his part, if he sensed that American audiences were going to react very badly to his drunken, yobbish uselessness.

What interests me is how he managed to keep going when he thought his best work was behind him. He says maybe he shouldn't have done. After Wonderwall and Don't Look Back In Anger became national anthems, he struggled.

"Between ‘Be Here Now’ and ‘Don't Believe The Truth‘, which spans five years, I was putting out records for the sake of it. We shouldn't have bothered, I didn't have anything to write about."

The trouble is nobody told him he was writing rubbish songs. Liam would tell him everything was great because he'd be desperate to get back in the studio and record something new.

"A lot of it I listen to and think only an egomaniac would convince himself that that was worth putting on. I say to my manager, 'You told me it was brilliant.' And he goes, 'Well, you don't tell the goose that laid the golden egg that his arse is blocked up, do you?' " If he'd been really brave, he says, he would have called it a day after Definitely Maybe.

"Morning Glory is for the squares... It's up there with all those great crossover albums like Thriller, and the greatest-selling albums of all time like Phil Collins and Genesis."

So if Morning Glory is just mediocre, meaningless mush that’s ‘for the squares’, which it is, then clearly Oasis should have quit right after their very first album. And yet he has the gall to say Oasis are the seventh greatest band in the world? What an idiot.

As for the Oasis/Blur rivalry, Mr G says,

"Looking back now that fight's all so pathetic over two really quite shit pop songs."

And that’s all that Oasis have ever been about - some really quite shit pop songs.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/dec/06/noel-gallagher-oasis

PS Noel couldn’t write decent lyrics, but what he could do was put together some music that had some interesting and satisfying chord changes and some good melodies. Credit where it’s due. Unfortunately that’s not enough to make him a good songwriter.
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Layer 80 Hands, Hearts, Minds, Education, Jay-Z, Russell B, Gok Wan, Gad Saad, Oasis, Ray Charles, and the End of Civilisation.

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Just when you think you’ve seen just about everything, something else happens. There are still tomatoes ripening in the garden, the days are sunny and bright, the leaves on the lilacs, sycamores and ash trees are still solidly green, and last night it snowed. There was a real blanket of snow on the cars in the street. Apparently it’s the first time it’s snowed in London in October since 1934. Global warming?

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There was an item on the Today programme this morning which allowed a couple of 14 year olds who live in Edmonton a chance to speak at length about their involvement in gangs, and gang culture in general. I happen to know that Edmonton is a seriously scary place, and I say that as someone who’s lived is many different parts of our inner cities.

When I decided to earn a little extra money as a young, broke teacher some years ago I signed up to work on the Census, and was dispatched to Edmonton with a patch of several streets to survey. Not a good experience - and that was way back in the days before carrying knives and even guns became commonplace. Those dark streets had a real air of menace.

When asked why young people belong to gangs, these kids said, “We just hang about our territory. We got nothing else to do.” In other words, the kids just congregate together on the streets - the parents don’t want them bringing their mates into the home. They are there because they’re there. They’re unwanted and rejected, so they stick together and become allies. If one of them gets picked on and beaten up by ‘outsiders’ then they go out looking for revenge. This is all that life has to offer them. They know no other.

One of the kids said, “It happens when this stuff kicks off - it make the gang angry, innit”. Quite.

Destructive emotions play havoc with the lives of groups of emotionally and spiritually unintelligent young people who are bored, frustrated and angry.

And then right at the end of the interview one of the lads said, “Everyone’s got a talent. But this government ain’t doing nothing for us.” How very true.

I remember well the discussions that took place when the government decided to fund a ‘gifted and talented’ programme in schools in an attempt to placate the middle classes by pushing more of their Level 4 predicted kids up to Level 5. Those of us who argued that the money should be used to fund non-academic pursuits for kids whose talents were clearly elsewhere, in the arts and creativity for example, were told very clearly that the funding was ring-fenced for raising test scores, essentially. In order to qualify for the extra funding the schools had to agree to set targets for the academic progress that would be made by those kids who were so-called ‘gifted and talented’.

Listening to these interviewees it was patently obvious that they weren’t talking about wanting the government to do more to push them to higher academic attainment. They clearly recognised that they were never, ever, going to compete in the race to get to university to do conventional academic studies. But they had a sense of their own burning energy and desire to do something fruitful, creative and positive with their lives.

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Before going on to say something about Jay-Z, as well as something about the architects of New Labour’s education policies, I must mention something someone said on Thought For Today just now.

He was talking about how American forces in Iraq have, through actual contact with Iraqis and through working alongside them, come to realise just how idiotic all their previous stereotyping has been.

It’s pretty obvious, really, that you only really get to know people by spending time with them, especially if you’re doing something constructive together.

The speaker then talked about what he called a “Hand to Heart to Mind” formula, which I think nicely encapsulates what we should be doing in every situation that requires people of different backgrounds to know one another better, which roughly means all of us, all of the time.

The Jesuits always talked about needing proper balance in our lives, and that every day should contain “something for the hands, something for the heart, and something for the head”. I wonder how many people actively seek such a balance?

The formula clearly works, and you can see in any good school that learning begins with practical activities that engage students physically in doing something constructive or creative - an experiment, building something, a survey, etc.

Through helping and supporting one another through success and failure they build up emotional bonds, respect, and a proper sense of their common strengths and weaknesses.

From all of that - understanding emerges. We learn at a deep level from activity, experience and involvement with others.

Except when we don’t - which is in traditional model schools where the learning is based on didacticism, individualism and competition. No wonder kids become alienated and can’t stand school.

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I read somewhere this week that Andrew (‘Lord’) Adonis, who’s done so much to push schools back towards concentration on raising test and exam scores, towards being concentration camps, along with other idiots like ‘Sir’ Michael Barber (another academic/pundit/politician/nobleman whose vile ideology has done so much to set back the cause of real education), was being courted by the Conservative party to join their ranks. Well he would be, wouldn’t he? There’s not a jot of difference between Blairite/New Labour views on schools and education and that of the Tories.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article3934165.ece

Lest we forget, according to a website called “Politico’s” (sic?),

“Sir Michael Barber has a real record of delivery in the Blair government, first at the Department for Education and Employment (1997–2001), and then as head of the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit (2001–5), where he was tasked with ensuring the government's public service reforms delivered significant results.”

“His vision of a restructured school system was a major influence on Blair's education reforms.”
“He now works for a major global consulting firm advising governments around the world on how they can improve their performance.”

He advises governments! On improving their performance!

So many arrogant, ignorant academics and so-called advisors, who’ve been messing around with the school system and with kids’ lives, have made the lives of even the more able kids far more competitive, dull, uncreative and stressful, and have done literally nothing for those who were never even part of the academic rat race to begin with. I doubt they will ever go to hang out in Edmonton, though.

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Jay-Z, on the other hand, grew up in Brooklyn, which makes Edmonton look like pussyland. A bad boy made good if ever there was one. From the age of nine, when he encountered hip-hop, his love of language and of music synched with his intelligence and his need for self-expression and he began rhyming his own raps and developing his talent for this essentially verbal art form.

Of course he didn’t do well academically, and he was never destined to follow a conventional mainstream career. He even amazed himself when people began offering him money to perform and to make records.

However, he also discovered he had a talent for business, set up his own record label, and subsequently developed his own brand through diversifying into clothing, fashion, and so on. He’s now more of an entrepreneur and a businessman than he is a performer, though music remains his first love.

Being of a certain generation I didn’t even know this guy existed until the controversy blew up this year over him being invited to headline at Glastonbury. And when Noel Gallagher sounded off about Glasto making a huge mistake having him as the star of the festival I thought he probably had a point, since I’ve never liked the little I knew about the boastfulness, misogeny and the glorification of violence in rap and hip-hop.

When Jay-Z came on stage with a guitar and did a great performance of “Wonderwall” to start his set it was immediately obvious that this guy not only had a sense of humour but he was also a magnificent performer whose music was powerful, thoughtful and intelligent. I was pretty much blown away, just watching it on TV. The guy is a force of nature.

Last night Alan Yentob’s ‘Imagine’ documentary on BBC1 did a brilliant exposition of the life and times of Jay, and gave a real sense of the man’s brilliance and his importance in modern culture. It also powerfully conveyed a sense of how otherwise wasted lives can be transformed through individuals discovering their creative talents, and doing so without any benefit from a school system that fails to recognise talent in the first place, let alone does anything to develop it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay-Z

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Coincidentally, this week the BBC also broadcast the Oasis concert that took place at the Round House as part of their ‘Electric Proms’ series of concerts. I still don’t really get Oasis, especially their lead singer, and the band seems to work a lot better when he steps back and leaves the vocals to brother Noel, who’s clearly the talent driving the band.

Liam’s entire body language at the microphone is a total turn-off, and his singing is less than inspirational. What IS that idiot stuff about bending his knees in order to sing upwards into a downward-pointing microphone? Ridiculous.

The concert was interesting, though, for its employment of a huge choir behind the band, which certainly added another dimension. The show ended with a very original version of the Beatles’ ‘I Am The Walrus’ which was certainly arresting and powerful, and completely unexpected. I don’t get this stuff about Oasis being some sort of clone of the Beatles. Clearly they’re not, and their music has never had even a passing resemblance to the wit and originality of the Beatles. Fair enough, though, to say that a love of the Beatles’ music is what got them wanting to play and to write their own music.

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Noel G is a big mate of Russell Brand, and Russell and his mate Jonathan Ross are in big trouble today over their antics on Russell’s Radio 2 programme 10 days ago. Seemingly they did some pretty childish things - making obscene phone calls to a well-known actor - and the Beeb allowed it to be broadcast. The ridiculous thing is that when the show went out there were only two complaints about it - because the audience for Brand’s show actually enjoy the stuff he does.

However, thanks to everyone else piling on the bandwagon and calling for the sacking and disembowelment of Brand and Ross, including the bloody Prime Minister it seems, they’ve seemingly offended at least half the population, who wouldn’t otherwise have known or cared about it.

Brand has apologized and says he’s made a mistake. We’ll have to wait and see what happens. Odds must be on the BBC dropping his programme, which would be ludicrous, considering Brand is not only incredibly talented and funny but he’s also one of the lone voices calling for a saner, more spiritual and more human society, which presumably means he’s even more annoying to reactionaries and Tories.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20081029/ten-sack-the-bbc-sickos-ea4616c.html

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Gok Wan (crazy name, crazy guy) is also in trouble today.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20081028/ten-gok-defends-new-show-ea4616c.html

His new TV programme, Miss Naked Beauty, which was broadcast last night, showed women being blasted with a water hose to remove their makeup. Big Deal.

I really like Gok. He’s a great character, and he’s done so much to promote the idea that women should be proud of their bodies, no matter what they look like. Apparently he was once 21 stones in weight himself, which is quite hard to believe.

His work always seems to promote the idea that women should stop worrying about their body shapes and concentrate of wearing flattering, well-made clothes as well as the minimum of makeup, together with a decent haircut. Most of all, women need to really believe they’re worthwhile as an individual, no matter how different they look from the contemporary ideals and stereotypes of womanhood.

Amazingly he’s never, as far as know, advocated either dieting or cosmetic surgery, which goes completely against the grain of our culture’s contemporary fixation with both of those things.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gok_Wan

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There was a very interesting article in G2 yesterday about women and stiletto heels, called ‘Are we just masochists’. The article takes up three whole pages, such is the importance of this subject.

There’s a quote from Dr Gad Saad (crazy name, crazy guy!) who’s associate professor of marketing at Concordia University, Canada, and author of The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption: “High heels may well be the most potent aphrodisiac ever concocted.”

Hmmm. And they might not.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/oct/28/fashion

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Meanwhile, the main article in G2 was a four-page piece on whether we’re seeing the beginning of the death throes of our planetary civilisation, and whether the financial chaos is likely to lead to the destruction of the world’s financial and economic system, with predictable effects on human life on earth. It also links with the climate and the ecological disaster that’s being widely predicted.

I must say these same thoughts have been occurring to me for some time now in my darker moments.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/28/climatechange-population

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On the brighter side, my record of the week is a new triple-disc CD of the early recordings of Ray Charles, roughly 1949 - 1956: The Great Ray Charles (Not Now Music).

This was the period before rock and roll, and before the mainstream acceptance in America (and elsewhere) of black musicians. Ray plays incredible blues and jazz on this collection, and as the CD notes point out, he’s pretty much the originator of soul music through his fusion of blues, R & B and gospel.

Subsequent to this period he regrettably, though unsurprisingly, moved on to make more ‘commercial’ records, cashing in on the public’s new-found taste for rock n’ roll and pop & rock generally. He did some great stuff, but nothing better than what appears here, which shows his true inventive genius, regardless of its lack of commercial mainstream appeal.

Also of note on this album is the quality of the musicians Ray chose for his band. This quote from Will Flannery’s piece on Amazon gives a flavour:

“The best slow sax tune ever recorded, in my opinion, is residing right on this CD. Unfortunately, at the time of this review, Amazon has not sampled it for your online listening pleasure, but, maybe by the time you read this, they will have. The tune - "Ain't Misbehavin", the sax man - Ray's regular sax man at the time of this recording, David "Fathead" Newman. It's a great tune to begin with, but Fathead doesn't play it straight. He throws down one incredibly perfect phrase after another, taking the tune and twisting it just a little, pulling the listener into his own unique harmonic space, and it is as pleasurable a place as you'll ever find yourself. This is a unique tune, and, of course, Fathead never plays cliches, and the result is incomparable to any other performance I know. It is completely relaxed, but full of fascination and energy. Is it really the best slow sax tune every recorded? Well, that's a subjective call; for me, it is, and in any case it is an extraordinary performance.”

Here’s an interesting piece on Ray Charles that Van Morrison wrote for Rolling Stone a few years back:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5939211/the_immortals__the_greatest_artists_of_all_time_10_ray_charles

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Stop Press

Sex Gag: Ross And Brand Suspended

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20081029/tuk-sex-gag-ross-and-brand-suspended-45dbed5.html

I guess the young lady at the centre of this row might do quite well out of the publicity, as might her ‘burlesque troop’, Satanic Sluts.
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