I haven't quite given up watching TV but I'm nearly there.
It wasn't something I planned to do. Given the right mood, I can enjoy an evening with the television. I don't just watch serious shows. I can sink into programmes that are merely pleasant and those that counterfeit an undemanding friendship between presenter and viewer. When real friends aren't on hand, fakery will do.
These days, while I still sit down to enjoy the occasional film or music programme, I try to avoid much of what TV offers. That skews my criticism - I ought to know more about the subjects of my discomfort. But there's a limit on how long I can endure some of the latest trends. Sometimes that limit allows me to watch for two or three minutes. Occasionally I last nearly half an hour. Often I reach for the remote or the off switch in a matter of seconds.
My discomfort began many years ago. The council estate on which I grew up was a popular haunt for TV documentary-makers, eager to present all of us who lived there as feral creatures, alienated from society by whatever the bogey-man of the moment was, from modern architecture to the innate stupidity and violence of the working classes. We gradually learned their methods. They would move in smilingly, ingratiating themselves with the locals, praising anyone who would embody the director's views in a speech direct to camera.
There's always someone who wants to be TV. It's easy to find someone with a grievance – or genuine anguish – who can be treated as typical of a whole community. Teenage youths with a sense of bravado are prepared to declare their involvement in gangs, threats, mugging – anything the pretty young interviewer wants – because it's better to gain her smiling approval than to admit the uncomfortable truth that they're only 12 or 14 and their mum won't let them out after 7.00 p.m.
Television lies. It doesn't often tell direct untruths but it lies by selection and omission, by choosing a single person, a small group or a set of episodes to stand for a class, a racial group or a community. This is not governed by the laws of libel – and TV companies usually know how to stay within the guidelines laid down by those who control broadcast media.
Besides, TV offers what the audience and the tabloids demand. It feeds into prejudice, hatred and contempt. I can't talk with authority about My Big Fat Gipsy Wedding because I knew from the advance publicity that the programmes would drip with contempt for the people they persuaded to take part – and that it would add to the daily contempt and hatred which too many members of the Romany and Traveller communities have to endure. I didn't watch. After transmission I listened to anguished voices of a number of intelligent travelling people and their descendants. I noted that they didn't even sound angry – the misrepresentation and the attitudes that programme-makers encouraged in the viewers were too familiar to cause anything but resignation to pain.
Freakshows used to be a staple of travelling fairs but they're dying out now. I've mixed feelings about them. No-one wants to be defined as a freak but the people who toured the country, exhibiting themselves in booths, seem to have found some kind of camaraderie as well as a regular income. Some – like the fat man Daniel Lambert – achieved respect for their courtesy and intelligence. It's hard to think that the freakshows on television offer such an opportunity.
TV freakshows want two things: outlandishness and suffering. The ideal freak-star should have an agonising past with a few ex-friends or embarrassing relations who are prepared to sell their stories to the tabloids. It helps if the freak-star is working-class and lacks the means or confidence to question or challenge the freakshow system. Then the freak-star should have outbursts of unacceptable behaviour – the sort of outbursts any of us might have if watched round the clock and required to perform for cameras that follow every move. The more polite freak-star will recognize the outburst as misconduct, subside into tears and apologise. The badly-behaved freak-star defends her or his conduct and can be held up for further contempt.
Any freak-star who attacks the system is blamed. Good, pliant, commendable freak-stars talks of their “journey” and praise the system. The reward is more TV exposure. Occasionally the freak-star achieves financial gain, though this is usually short-term.
Sometimes a freak-star tries to trick the system – or is incited to trick the system – by falsely representing a past as tragic or impoverished. You can't become a freak-star without overcoming illness, grief, abuse or addiction. You have to make your exploiters cry for the cameras – so long as they don't smudge their carefully-applied make-up.
But if you lie to elicit those much-needed tears, the tabloids and public will turn on you. They want authentic suffering, a real journey – and you mustn't deceive them. If you do, they'll turn away from you at once. There's always another outlandish figure or group to hate, despise or pity. The trickster who tries to exploit the freakshow system is condemned to isolation. The TV companies and their bosses rake in their millions.
And the audience stays smug in a contempt which provides warm insulation from most of the pain in the world.
I was looking for Samuel Beckett. He was hard to find. Instead I stumbled across Serge Gainsbourg.
I'm never sure what to make of Gainsbourg. The recent film, which didn't aim at accuracy, deepened my ambivalence - and reminded me how erotic "Je t'aime ... moi non plus" is. So I stopped at Gainsbourg's grave.
I was in the Montparnasse cemetery. I hadn't meant to visit but, as I drifted round the 14th, that was where my feet took me.
The Cimetiere de Montparnasse not a tourist haunt in the way Pere Lachaise is. No-one was hawking pictures of the graves or plans of the cemetery. However there were casual and dedicated strollers as well as the mourners who came to place flowers on family graves. I was pleased to find a helpful plan of which graves were where although that didn't always make them easy to find.
Gainsbourg's grave was plainly a place of pilgrimage. There were flowers, photos, a packet of Gitanes and a colourful selection of cigarette lighters. As I watched, a young couple standing by the grave rolled cigarettes in silence and solemnly lit up. Whatever else he may have been, Gainsbourg has become the patron saint of smokers.
I've been anti-smoking for as long as I can remember. I recall my father's serious illness when I was six. As he was too ill to be moved, hospital staff brought equipment - including, I think, a portable x-ray machine - to the flat where we lived. As he recovered he was warned to give up smoking and struggled for years to overcome the addiction. Now, in his late 80s, he can't stand the stench of cigarette smoke.
But when I watched the young couple, I saw their cigarettes as a form of protest against a controlling state - and that too seemed admirable. France has a history of resistance which is the ground of the national belief in liberty, equality and fraternity. That belief is at the heart of protests from left and right against the forced deportations of "les Roms", the Roma who have travelled from eastern and central Europe, as allowed by law. Some deportations have been stopped by the courts - the grounds can be as slender as finding smoking in public which is not, the tribunal found, a serious public order offence - but many families, seeing their children scared by early-morning police raids, have simply agreed to leave, taking the very small amount of money the French state will pay as inducement or compensation.
It's easy to look away when a small group is under attack. Paris has numerous plaques to remind residents and visitors of the round-ups and deportations carried out by French police during the Occupation - and these are often cited as a reason to oppose the deportation of "les Roms". There's even a plaque commemorating the 1961 police massacre of Algerian protesters, although the French seem less comfortable considering the implications of that episode.
As a tourist I was observing and doing nothing. I strolled round the cemetery contemplating past injustice and resistance.
I chanced on the grave of Dreyfus, who sparked Zola's famous letter "J'accuse" and a huge campaign of resistance. I saw where Sartre and de Beauvoir were together in death, though forced to occupy separate hotel rooms in life, as a plaque on the Hotel Mistral recounts. They were forced by events to make difficult choices and their messy, muddled lives remind me that political involvement can't be limited to those whose lives are above reproach.
As the cemetery was closing, I made another attempt to find Beckett, who chose to stay in occupied France (though he could have escaped to neutral Ireland) and was awarded the Médaille de la Résistance and the Croix de Guerre for his activities. He didn't talk much about what he did but I wanted to pay tribute to his courage and reported kindness as well as his plays.
At last I found the grave, thanks to a shabbily-dressed and unshaven man who stood contemplating it. As I paused, the man turned to me. "Samuel Beckett," he said. "En attendant Godot."
I made a slightly stumbling attempt to explain why I thought Beckett a great man, trying to recall the French titles he gave his works when he first wrote them. But the man wasn't listening. "En attendant Godot," he repeated. "Samuel Beckett. En attendant Godot."
Then he bent down and began to clear the blossoms which had obscured the names of Beckett and his partner Suzanne.
I'm not sure what he meant to say. Was he just naming Beckett's most famous work? Was he telling me that in death too Beckett was "waiting for Godot." Or was he himself Godot, arrived too late and tenderly clearing the playwright's tomb?
Yvonne from Nemeton has nominated me for this I Love Your Blog award. I gather that I should link back to her and also nominate some blogs that I enjoy.
The idea seems to be that I should nominate further blogs and link to them, and let the authors know I have done so. I think I'm supposed to nominate at least seven.
I've decided not to nominate Nemeton back, simply because it was the source of this nomination. However, I recommend readers to read the blog and learn more about all sorts of things, including science, literature,. peace and paganism.
When I started blogging, on the assumption that no-one would read what I wrote, I took fencing as my subject. After a while, I found other fencing blogs.
The first of these was Elizabeth McClung's Screw Bronze! - I loved her determination and humour. She was doing much better at fencing than I was and, as I read, she published her novel, Zed. Beth wrote about all sorts of other subjects too. I learnt about her spouse, Linda, about her childhood in a strict fundamentalist sect, and a great deal about manga, anime and Japan. Since I started reading, Beth fenced in the Canadian nationals and was improving at a startling rate. Then she became seriously ill. Now in a wheelchair she takes on the routine abuse of people with disabilities and faces her own death with even greater courage and determination thnt she once showed as a fencer. Her honesty about her pain and her emotions is startling. She also shows great generosity in her concern for others.
Beth recommended I read a blog by another older fencer who calls himself The Gray Epee. Jim, the author, is based in North Carolina, and his blog is probably only of interest to fencers. But fencers will find his account of club fencing and tournaments in his part of the United States fascinating. There are also occasional insights into his tastes in music and references to his wife and children, whom he plainly loves.
Two of the blogs I'm nominating are what I think of as "public blogs". Of course, all blogs are public but these two have a profile beyond the blogosphere.
The first is Craig Murray's blog, to which I've already linked in the past. For those of you who don't know who he is, Craig Murray is the former ambassador to Uzbekistan who lost his job because he spoke out against torture. I don't share all his perspectives - I like experimental literature which I suspect he detests and am probably to the left of him on economics. However, at its best (and his blog is frequently at its best) he manages to combine information on a range of subjects with anger and humour. (I recommend Craig Murray's book, Murder in Samarkand, as well.)
I'm also an avid reader of Mary Beard's blog for The Times. Mary Beard is a classics don at Cambridge who writes excellently and clearly on all sorts of subjects, but I'm happiest when she writes on Roman life and Latin literature. Sometimes she almost persuades me to prefer Romans to Greeks but she'll never quite manage it - I love the Greek language, especially the prose of Plato and the poetry of Sappho and Callimachus. I was forced to study Latin, though I grew to enjoy it at A-level, but the two 6th-form years in which I studied Greek - from scratch to A-level - were filled with intellectual excitement and I value the D I gained for Greek more than the A for Latin.
Sheenagh Pugh's blog, Good God! There's writing on both sides of that paper! is one that deserves to be better known. It takes in nmumerous areas, most of which I enjoy. Recently I've seen her pictures of the Shetlands (a recurring theme), read her thoughts on poetry in translation and discovered a Georges Brassens song I hadn't known before. Sheenagh Pugh is also a fine poet - and I recommend her novels too.
Another poet's blog is written by David Morley and hosted by Warwick University where he's Professor of Creative Writing. The blog includes lots of poetry, by David and others, and thoughts about poetry. I'd also like to mention his recent posts on the treatment of the Roma in Italy. If you visit his blog, please read these and consider signing the petition on the subject.
I also read Alan Baker's occasional blog, Litterbug, for its thoughts on poetry and literature. I wish I had time to follow up all the writers recommended there. It has particularly good comments.
The blog kllrichrd is also one with occasional posts. I first found it when there was a post about W.H. Auden, and realised that it was written from the perspective of someone who knew the Northern landscapes Auden loved. I particularly like the posts about gardening (which is a mystery to me), about working-class life and culture, about learning Chinese and world music. And there are also posts - sometimes with photos - about Northumberland. I hear Morpeth was badly flooded and the library seriously damaged. I can't fully express my concern for the people and their books.
Sometimes there are long gaps between posts on calm, almost too calm but the posts are always worth reading. The author had the terrifying experience of being arrested in the underground shortly after the Menenez shooting. He'd made the mistake of travelling equipped with a back-pack and mobile phone. Fortunately he lived to blog about it and to challenge the police's actions. His blog on civil liberties issues is well worth reading. The blog's marvellous title comes from the police notes on his behaviour on the day of his arrest.
Finally, I can't resist commending my brother's newish blog, Risky Thinking. It's related to his work on risk analysis and business continuity but don't let that put you off. It's clearly written and well thought through and makes me think about the ways in which I probably should organise my life better, particularly were I to set up in business on my own. I wish Mike would turn one or more of the scenarios into a thriller - he ought to be a writer - but I fear he hasn't the time, what with work and family. So I make do with his blog.
I would have liked to recommend Kate's Blog, but Kate has, sadly, stopped blogging. You can find occasional cached posts through google, but nowhere near enough. I regret Kate's departure from the blogosphere.
