Surround sound

First there was one bell.  It wasn't the tone of a church bell nor a small tinkling sound - and it didn't come from the usual chords of the musical stave.  It came from somewhere behind me, compelling and mysterious.  

After a while another bell joined it.  Then I saw the musicians, entering the theatre from different points but creating working together to create a soundscape in which they and the audience existed together.  It was as though we entered another form of space, a place in which sound was chief among the senses.

At last the four musicians stood together on the stage, playing their bells - Ghanaian instruments in music which came, I think, from the Siwe people.  By this time I was in the place that they had created.  And this was just the beginning of the concert by ensemblebash at Nottingham's Lakeside arts centre.

I first encountered ensemblebash a couple of years ago, at Ignite, an exceptional free festival in Covent Garden's Royal Opera House.  They were performing for free, sometimes joined by pianist Joanna MacGregor.  If I'd been asked in advance, I wouldn't have thought a percussion quartet would be much to my taste.  But it was free and gave me chance for a sit-down so I settled down with an audience which ranged from small children to regular opera-goers and prepared to give ensemblebash a courteous hearing.  I was soon entranced and excited - and so, I think, was everyone else who had crowded in to listen.  This was performance with wit, intensity and magic - like nothing I had heard before.  So when I saw that ensemblebash were finally visiting the East Midlands I had to be there.

I knew some of the music from ensemblebash's recent album, A Doll's House.  But listening to a CD on fairly unsophisticated equipment is quite different from hearing pieces by David Bedford and Howard Skempton in a theatre - not to mention the added dimension of seeing them performed.  With percussion the visual element is a particularly important extra dimension, whether it comes from watching four players hovering over a single marimba, the blowing of a conch shell or the way music can be made from a donkey's jaw-bone.  The absurd and hilarious dinner-party of Stephen Montague's Chew Chow Chatterbox, in which the musicians use voice, chopsticks, bowls, wine glasses and bottles, couldn't work half as well in a recording as on stage since the players enact the roles of host and dinner guests.

I loved the varied programme which ranged from Peter Garland's delicate variations in a single chord in Apple Blossom to an arrangement of free-form jazz evolved from Max Roach's improvisation with other drummers.  As I lived in the world of sound, I found my emotions shifting from moment to moment in response to the music.  At times it even seemed that I could see the sound hovering like a cloud above the players as they made the air vibrate.

The evening ended with an exuberant performance of John Cage's Third Construction, using a range of found (but carefully-tuned) instruments.  And I bought two more ensemblebash CDs.  The CDs may not match up to the wonders of performance but they have introduced me to still more percussion music and have already been a source of considerable pleasure and well worth the money I spent.  The CDs will have to suffice until ensemblebash return to the East Midlands.  I hope they come back soon.

An opening

Cynic though I sometimes am, I warmed to the Olympics opening ceremony.   Yes, I know it cost a lot and I know the performers were volunteers and that there are numerous problems with corporate sponsors and the treatment of dissent.  I might not have watched the ceremony had my daughter not been one of the volunteers but, once I'd got used to the style, I found a great deal to love.

It's easy to be critical of the account of history, especially since there was so little time and so much was going on.  I glimpsed the suffragettes but only learned later that the Jarrow marchers were also present.  Perhaps the Chartists were somewhere around though I don't think the Tolpuddle martyrs or the Diggers were included.  They didn't represent the the Commonwealth either - perhaps the execution of Charles I was judged unsuitable for all sorts of reasons - and Britain's uncomfortable colonial history was omitted.  But Blake's "Jerusalem" made a good starting point and the complexity of the Industrial Revolution - with its excitement, achievement and damage - was stupendous.  I'm still thinking about the implications of conflating Shakespeare's Caliban with Isambard Kingdom Brunel.  Perhaps because it appeals so strongly to my imagination, it's made a slight adjustment to my views of the 19th century.


I expect most viewers took what they wanted from the ceremony.  Some of my friends lauded J.K. Rowling. There was great enthusiasm for James Bond, the Queen and the corgis.  Mr Bean had even more fans than Simon Rattle.  I was thrilled to see a huge CND symbol in the arena, even though I understand that it was there as part of the history of Britain in the late twentieth ceremony.  But a huge number of people were excited when the letters "NHS" appeared.  Most people in Britain still agree that being able to go to the doctor and be treated in hospital when necessary without worrying about money is one of the great achievements of Britain's welfare state.  As the story of the health service was entangled with children's books, it wasn't surprising that villains from children's literature appeared to attack children in hospital nor that nurses and a number of Mary Poppinses finally defeated Lord Voldemort.


But perhaps the best thing about the opening ceremony was that it showed so many people what they love about Britain: its countryside, its industrial achievement; its literature;  its music; and above all the huge mixture of ordinary people who mostly live happily together, enjoy life and like one another.  It was an optimistic and hopeful picture of life here today, appropriate for the short period in which, in theory, there should be an Olympic peace.  I liked the way the peacemakers handed the Olympic flag to representatives of the armed forces, because, if we're ever to build peace, we'd be wise to involve armies in the movement away from violence.  


The parade of the athletes, many grinning broadly as they entered the stadium, fitted well with the show as a whole.  I know it's not always like this but I'd like to think of the Olympics as somewhere in which competitors form friendships across national boundaries and despite suspicion and conflict.  I'm also happy to celebrate the huge variety of people who take part in sports for love of it and who often aren't very well-known.  Since I joined a fencing club, I've learned about the amount of dedication shown by people in "minority" sports.  At my fencing club the coaches are unpaid (but qualified) volunteers and members of the committee donate their skills in such roles as web-designer, accountant, social secretary and armourer so that the club can keep its fees down and welcome members of the basis of interest.  It's given me a great respect for people involved in sport.

It seems that Danny Boyle's vision is one of peace, freedom and equality - one in which the contributions of all people are valued.  It's a fantasy, of course, and I see the strength of the objections.  People say it all costs too much in an age of austerity,  that it's a bit unreal and that sport isn't for everyone.  People quote Juvenal and talk about "bread and circuses" - some of them go on to ask "where's the bread?"  I can see their point.  They see sport and the arts as an extravagance when we need to to campaign once more: for the health service, for workers' rights, for food for the hungry, for an end to torture and oppression, for the welfare state, for equality, for freedom. I want all those things but I want circuses as well.  

Juvenal saw bread and circuses as something that distracted the people from Rome's serious political purposes.  He didn't like the people much.  For him they were the enemy of political decency - and he didn't reckon he belonged among them.  But I am happy to be one of "the people."  For me there's a different way of expressing what I want.  Just over a hundred years ago a poem declared that a life devoted to work and survival was not enough.  Two lines have often been repeated:

 Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;

 Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!

 I want a world in which people experience delight as well as having enough to eat.  I don't think art and sport necessarily turn us into passive consumers of whatever the government says.  They can bring people together and widen their knowledge and understanding of the world.  They can set the imagination and intelligence alight, and bring people who would not normally encounter one another the joy of engaging in a shared activity.  They can give us some idea of how much better the world might be, even though they leave us with the task of achieving it.  

Photo by Nick Webb, courtesy of wikimedia commons.

Against the dark times

I have succumbed to temptation again.

The Flying Goose café hosted one of its regular poetry readings and I returned with books by the three poets who read - Ann Atkinson, Alan Baker and Wayne Burrows - as well as books by the Australian Andrew Sant and the Dutch poet and children's writer Toon Tellegen.

As I carried my shiny treasures home I reflected that these are not the kind of books you see in Waterstone's. They come from small presses - Shoestring, Skysill and Smith/Doorstop - and are, like so many books from small presses, lovingly made. While mass market paperbacks can seem impersonal - made to fit in with a marketing officer's idea of what "brand" each book fits - small press books often show the personal care of the tiny teams that put them together. The smallest presses are run by people who make no money from them but work for pay elsewhere. The books small presses produce have a personality which seems to come from their close link with both publisher and author.

These carefully-crafted books and the skilfully-managed poems within them cannot compensate for the horrors on the news. The optimistic and peaceful protests in the Middle East seem to be ending in bloody repression and torture by regimes to whom the British government has been - and in most cases still is - selling military equipment. The threats and massacres that silence dissent have been knocked off the front page by the pain of Japan for which I have no words.

I can't look at the television for long - it's not just the sense of helplessness I experience that prevents me but the fear that if I look too long I'll be a mere voyeur - or worse, be hardened to ignore the devastation and anguish of others.

But literature (and art and music and many other sources of beauty and pleasure) still have their place in the world. I was reminded of this by a short blog message to her Japanese readers from the science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin, who posted at the request of her translator and friend. Reading this - and the first comment that followed - made me feel reassured that there is nothing wrong in the refuge I seek in words, art and music. These have many roles. They deepen understanding and cause us to question. They also nourish and console, in part because of the care with which they are wrought.

So I feel less bad about the joy I take in music on Radio 3, in sunshine, in books, in poetry. These good things exist in the same world in which humans and nature cause great damage. I'll campaign and write letters and even march against great wrongs. I'll try to work out how the world might be better and say what I think. I'll never have most of the answers but can try to contribute to debate and trains of thought - the more people share ideas and work together, the better hope for humanity. And I'll pay attention to things that are quite small and made with love.

This Saturday Leicester hosts States of Independence II, an independent press fair where small and independent publishers will display their wares and writers will read, talk and answer questions. It's a free, all-day event to which members of the public are welcome. It's a chance to celebrate words and the makers of books. However dark the world, these remain worthy of celebration.

Banishing the mouse

I'm in danger of succumbing to a new addiction. In the past few weeks I don't just come downstairs desperate to ignite the gas beneath the espresso-maker. I also tune feverishly to Radio 3.

It began with Buchner. I read his plays years ago and have twice seen excellent productions of Berg's opera Wozzeck. But I've never seen the original plays performed. So when, by chance, I noticed that Danton's Death was being broadcast on Radio 3, I tuned to the station - and didn't tune away.

In the past Radio 4 has been my default station. But the new and views have weighed on me, as has the immense wordiness of it all. I spend so much of my life with words that every so often, I need a break - and the music on Radio 3, at its best, provides that.

But this week started unfortunately. Paul Dukas is composer of the week - and that should have been excellent, because I know so little about him or his work. It was a shame that, early on, the compiler of the programmes felt compelled to play his most famous work, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." I'd have liked to consider it in relation to the Goethe poem on which it was based but I couldn't. I've seen Fantasia. My mind was flooded with images of Mickey Mouse.

It was a relief, therefore, to find a piece of music which I could experience simply as music - which didn't crowd my mind with words and images but existed in sound and space, on its own terms.

I was at De Montfort University's Cultural eXchanges festival - an annual event that offers a range of cultural events, talks and debates - mostly for free - to locals in Leicester and the wider East Midlands. I've managed to attend a number of sessions but the one that stands out for me is the one that's hardest to describe and explain. Its resistance to description and explanation is one of the things I liked best about it.

Simon Emmerson's Memory Machine is an installation. I didn't know what to expect. What I found was a darkened studio - there were coloured lights and bean-bags. We entered in small groups, advised to walk carefully andlet our eyes adjust. Some people chose to sit or lie on the floor. I remained standing and, from time to time, walked around. My interest was in the sound.

When sound doesn't conform to the normal expectations of music - when it isn't in a definable strict form and doesn't include words - the only thing to do is to experience it and either succumb or not succumb. There were occasional sounds that seemed familiar - the fall of water, for instance - that conjured up ideas and past experiences. But other sounds I seemed to feel physically - in my body as much as through my ears. The sound came from different directions at once - the balance changed as I moved (as quietly as I could) across the studio. I felt at times excited - and at others intensely relaxed.

I couldn't stay as long as I wished. Perhaps that is as well. If I'd stayed too long I might have felt I was floating. As it was I had found, briefly, something I craved - a way of being that was neither speech nor image.

I suppose some people would dismiss such work as "avant-garde" or label it "difficult." I found it neither - but I know little about music. All I know is that sometimes, when I choose to experience a new work and am ready to accept what it has to offer, I discover new and unexpected sources of delight.


Note: The photograph is not associated with Simon Emmerson's composition. It was taken during a performance of Ligeti's Poeme Symphonique for a hundred metronomes at Covent Garden last year.

Chaplin's world

I've almost lost count of the number of times I've planned - and failed - to get to a "coffee-time" concert at St Peter's church in Nottingham. I almost always see the notice at the wrong time or discover the concert I'd like has been scheduled for a weekend when I have other plans.

I nearly forgot the Chaplin/Keaton double bill with live organ accompaniment. But I saw the sign again as I paid a brief visit to Light Night and determined not to miss the concert. The sound tracks added later to accompany silent movies leave them seeming incomplete. A live accompaniment, whether by soloist or full orchestra, brings early films to life - somehow when the music is live it more than takes the place of speech.

The concert offered two films: Charlie Chaplin in Easy Street and Buster Keaton in One Week. Donald MacKenzie, the organist, announced his preference for Keaton but I can't agree with him. Keaton may be as physically brilliant as Chaplin - even as good an actor - but I never care about his characters as I do about the various manifestations of the Little Tramp. Keaton's character seems all about expressionless cleverness - although it masquerades as incompetence - and I'm never convinced he really belongs to the societies which provide a backdrop for his escapades.

But I can't help believing in Charlie Chaplin's world. He inhabits the fringes of a complex, recognizable society. Work is possible but gruellingly difficult - bosses employ and sack people for no evident reason. Some people exploit or tyrannise over others. Worklessness, hunger and beggary are regular dangers. This world offers no consistent reward for virtue or hard work but luck and optimism may just pay off. Charlie copes with a mixture of slyness and sympathy. He is also capable of imitating the ruling classes, even in an ill-fitting suit and big shoes.

I find Charlie's imitations of the aristocracy and those in power particularly attractive. They suggest that the easy confidence of the wealthy is no more than a mannerism which can be acquired. It has nothing to do with class superiority. In these days when too many of our rulers are graduates of the Bullingdon Club, this is something worth remembering.

Easy Street isn't my favourite early Chaplin but I like the way it both records working-class life and parodies the contradictory middle-class views of the "dangerous" working class. There are bullies, thieves, families with too many children and - a staple of the time - a drug den supplied by an evil foreigner. Charlie, by the beautiful young woman at the Hope Mission, gives up his life as a tramp and petty thief and volunteers for the police force. But he continues to behave in his familiar way, avoiding bullies unless compelled to fight and easily swayed by sympathy for the poor, pretty and desperate. He may have joined the police but the audience knows that he's not really an agent of the law. He's taken the job and the uniform for the pay and so that he can get the girl.

As a character, Charlie never sets out to change the world. Any difference he makes it accidental. (The real Charlie Chaplin was more politically engaged and kept under surveillance by J. Edgar Hoover's agents at the FBI.) But Chaplin's films remind me constantly that I live in an unjust society where worklessness and desperation still lurk threateningly for many people.
At the end of the screening I suddenly remembered I'd meant to attend a rally and march against the privatisation of the Post Office. My mood plummeted as I decided I'd probably missed it. I went to another short concert (by the pianist Alexandra Diarescu, including an outstanding performance of Ravel's "Ondine") and did some shopping before heading for the railway station.

As I got off the train I could hear drums and whistles in the distance. After what seemed a long time I saw the marchers, banners held high. The front of the march passed me and I still couldn't see where it ended. Laden with shopping as I was, I slipped into the march and headed onward. After a while my son greeted me and friends called "hello." "How many do you think there are?" one asked. "I thought there would only be twenty or thirty. I couldn't offer a guess. Later the local paper estimated the turn-out at a thousand - not bad for a suburban town.

I didn't walk far - just as well given the cans of baked beans in my shopping bag. It was plain there wouldn't be room for everyone in the hall booked for the rally. I left the marchers who had walked the whole distance to the chairs provided and headed home. My back hurt and I wanted to sit in a comfortable chair. But I was cheered by the combination of Charlie Chaplin, Ravel and a community of marchers prepared to carry banners on a cold, grey day to defend something of value.

Late for the punk revolution

I missed the punk revolution the first time round.

Of course, I was aware of punk rock - it was impossible to miss the shock-and-horror news stories or the deliberately outrageous album covers - but I never paused to listen to the music. Looking back, this seems startling, especially since I headed to Anti-Nazi League festivals - I think I may have heard The Clash play live in Victoria Park without noticing.

It's hard to be sure why I missed out. In part I was busy discovering other aspects of music. I was prepared to travel a long way for a Monteverdi opera and to sit through an otherwise dull concert for a spectacularly good performance of Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras number 5.

I first encountered punk through an Oxford filter, which didn't help. Punk was greeted enthusiastically by mostly well-off students - the students who would soon vote Thatcher into power. They loved the excuse to dress down. My sense of punk in those early years is crystallised by watching a gang of twenty or thirty Oxford undergraduates dressed in carefully-styled binbags with imitation safety pins stuck to their faces. They were on their way to a fancy-dress party. I hated the aura of condescending fakery and avoided the whole movement.

It was a long time later that my son started listening to punk as well as metal, folk and other genres. I began hearing snatches of his albums an realising that I'd missed something exciting, angry and thoughtful. A friend who was much more open to a wide range of music educated me further with recommendations of bands beyond my experience.

Sadly, I didn't follow up all his recommendations as he gave them - I tended to listen to a clip or watch a youtube video and mentally file it for later reference. It was only when he died at the end of last year that I re-read his emails and returned to his recommendations. One band cropped up again and again: the Yorkshire-based Sex Patels. I started visiting their myspace page to hear the few tracks there. I watched all the youtube videos I could find. Eventually I managed to acquire their rare and wonderful CD (I shan't say how I did this - I'll just thank the people who helped) and have been listening to it ever since.



I don't know if I'll ever get to see the Sex Patels perform live. I don't know where they would be - and I feel a little uneasy at the idea of going to a gig alone, especially at my age. I fear I've missed something tremendous - a mixture of celebration, anger and fun that fuses punk classics with bhangra .

I'm a little sad that Jacqui Wicks has left the band - she has such a terrific voice. I'm sure her new work will be successful but, just at the moment, I'm sticking with the Sex Patels - and I've a feeling I'll be playing that CD for ever.

Blue tinsel

Perhaps it's the bitter cold or the recession. Perhaps I've missed - or avoided - most of the good Christmas displays. But Christmas decorations seem a little sparse this year.

I don't mind a lack of decoration - it makes the good displays I discover more delightful. I was cheered to find that this year's moving displays in Town Hall Square, Leicester show Paddington Bear and friends and a lively Christmas scene from Wind in the Willows where even the stoats and weasels are having a happy, if malevolent, time. There's the usual nativity tableau as well. Outsiders sometimes assume that Leicester downplays the religious elements of Christmas but posters advertise both the religious festival and the secular feast. Even Advent celebrations (at the cathedral, I think) were proclaimed on official posters.

I don't remember any decorations at Nottingham Contemporary when I made a return visit but there were real carol-singers: the choir of St. Mary's in the Lacemarket. They were dressed in everyday clothes and standing in the gift shop, books of music on the floor before them. I came upon them as they were half-way through "Silent Night" inGerman. It's not my favourite carol but the beauty of the voices held me. I stood to hear a succession of traditional carols from "Hark the herald angels" with descant to "Adam lay y-bounden." As they finished and I went out into the winter dark, I felt more in tune with Christmas than I have for many years.

The memory of the carols helped me through the crowded shops. The queues haven't been long this year - I hardly had to wait in the Post Office when I took my parcels to be weighed and stamped. Perhaps that's why I didn't pause to observe the decorations.

But I have noticed one trend - or perhaps it's a trend from previous years that I didn't notice before. Every so often I encounter blue decorations: blue trees, blue fairy lights and blue tinsel. Gardens that were once bright with white or coloured fairy lights now glow ominously in the falling snow. Walking through streets, I find I'm watching out for faint blue sparkles rather than the old-fashioned red and green. Perhaps blue is supposed to be tasteful. I prefer cheerful vulgarity.

I haven't seen many Christmas tree lights shining through house windows. This strikes me as strange - but that's absurd. As usual, I'm late with decorations. Our decorations are still in the roof and I'm unlikely to get the tree sorted before Christmas Eve.

I'll get the cards up soon. I've enjoyed opening Christmas cards this year. I like seeing the designs friends have chosen or created, reading the messages and hearing snippets of news from the past year. I wish I'd written more in the cards I sent and that my handwriting was better.

Perhaps I should buy some new tinsel for the tree and even a couple of new decorations. I hope I can find things in red, green and gold for my slightly tatty dark-green artificial tree. It won't be tasteful at all but it might be quite cheerful. It may even remind me of my childhood and add some extra comfort as I continue reading Les Misérables.

Endings

Last week, I went to the local branch of Somerfield's for the last time. Large notices proclaimed that it was one day from closure. There were already expanses of bare white metal shelving and half the supermarket was roped shut.

It was mid-morning and most of the shoppers were retired women - some with husbands - seeking the last bargains. Beside their neatly-permed hair and crisply-ironed summer costumes, I felt scruffy; for me this was a chore but for them this was an outing. They knew the assistants at the check-outs well enough for enquiries after health, relatives - even conversations about last weekend. The journey was as much for conversation as for shopping.

But the shop was going to close. "What will you do now? Will you have a job?" the shopper at the head of the queue asked, looking at the large posters that told us the nearest store would soon be two long bus-rides away. The check-out assistant smiled tiredly. "I don't know. They haven't told us."

She managed the same smile as the next woman asked and the next but I think there may have been tears in her eyes. All I could do was wish her good luck.

A few days later I saw that the windows were shielded with metal shutters. Nearby, five youths with dogs made loud and obscene proposals to a young woman walking past. She paused to strap her baby more securely in its buggy and ensure that her two older children were holding on firmly. The obscene suggestions continued despite the mother's calmness; the youths called after her as she walked away. Then the young men strolled off, heads in the air, dogs tugging at their leads. A few small, optimistic shops remain near the expanse of metal blinds. I hope they survive.

So much is coming to an end. I can't grieve for this government, but I'm anxious about what may replace them. I have to vote in a few hours and I'm still not entirely sure where I'll place my cross. I think the Greens get it. I may not agree with all their policies but they certainly care about more than just being in power - and there's much that's close to my own thoughts. I know few people who are sure of how to vote and, for the first time in a British election campaign, I haven't seen a single house displaying an election poster. People declare their trust in our MP's honesty but most say they can't vote for his party. The words "lies", "greed" and "corruption" are everywhere as the initial shock and mocking laughter turns into pain and doubt. What has happened to that old ideal of public service?

The Nottingham Music Society, formed more than 80 years ago by people who wanted to bring classical music to the city and suburbs, has come to an end. All the organisation was done by volunteers. I went to their last concert, in the wonderful, barrel-roofed Congregational Hall. The Nash Ensemble played Schubert - the Trout Quintet before the interval and then the Octet. They were both sad and joyous - the kind of music that makes me feel vividly alive. It was an apt reminder of all those people who gave so much of their time unpaid so that culture, thought and learning might live.

An evening with Hank and Reg

Why are so many otherwise courteous people provoked to a sneer by the mention of country and western music? So they don't like it - who says they should? It can't be the false view of history or the occasional emotional excess - the people who sneer at country music are often happy to praise Madame Butterfly and Turandot or the operas of Handel and Wagner.

I'm not a fan or an expert on country music but for years I've felt uncomfortable about the sneers it receives. It's not just about disliking the music; people who dislike other kinds of music (free form jazz, punk, string quartets) are able to say so without a sneer. If challenged, the sneerers may say that country music is too simple and too direct as though simplicity and directness were faults. Or they say that it's a conservative genre. Many genres are predominantly conservative; if that's the case with country music, it also gave voice to a number of radicals from Woody Guthrie to k.d. lang.

Country music - like the western novel and film - is a large, baggy genre which allows its creators, performers and audiences to interpret it as they choose. It's also accessible and the majority of its fans in Britain are probably working-class. I suspect class is what causes the sneer. Country fans are knows to have a good time - sometimes they dress up and dance. Their pleasure doesn't need intellectual interpretation; intellectuals and critics struggle to find complex words to account for simple directness. It's easier to say that country music is beneath criticism than to admit that it may be beyond the critic's capacities.

I was hesitant about attending a concert by Hank Wangford and Reg Meuross. It was at a small local school theatre which doubles as a community theatre and cinema. I'd heard of Hank Wangford - I think I heard him on the radio decades ago - and that meant he must be famous. I didn't know what to expect but thought I might go - to support the theatre and extend my knowledge. "Hank Wangford's allright," the sneerers said. "He doesn't take country music seriously."

But making jokes about country music isn't the same as sneering at it. Hank Wangford knows the history of couintry music and treats it with respect as well as humour. He treats his audience in the same way - we're in on the joke and enjoy the music.

Reg Meuross was an unfamiliar name. At the beginning of the concert he was silent between songs, as though he was there simply to support the more famous Hank. But gradually he began to introduce songs - as Hank put it, "the spotlight of fame" turned to him. I instantly warmed to his stillness on stage, his quiet sense of humour, his love of history, the songs he wrote and his high tenor voice. There's a cross of folk with country music, which is as it should be - genres don't stay still but evolve in relation to one another. Reg's voice blended wonderfully with Hank's and he shone in solos.

I haven't suddenly remade myself as a country and western fan - I'm still listening to opera, folk, jazz, string quartets and the Beetles. But I've found Hank and Reg's music on-line and am planning to add some of their songs to my MP3 player when I've worked out how to buy them online. First choice from Hank is "Lonely Together", a witty and self-aware song about misery in a relationship. And I don't know how many times I've played Reg's song "Worry no more" - it's definitely a song I want to take with me when travelling.

I'm so glad I spent that evening with Hank and Reg. I wonder if they'll be visiting again.

Time and Relative Dimensions in Space

I wish I could remember which Big Issue seller to thank.

I wasn't going to buy a copy. I smiled, said sorry, walked past - and then had second thoughts. There was enough money in my pocket, I had a train journey ahead and the Big Issue seller would probably be cheered by a sale. I walked back and bought one.

I was already planning my trip to London. I'd have an afternoon free, starting in the Victoria area. Perhaps the V&A, I thought - free admission and I could enjoy treasures I'd loved in childhood, from the Bayeaux Tapestry reproduction to Tipoo's Tiger. But then I saw the picture of Mark Wallinger's TARDIS and read the review of the exhibition he's curating: The Russian Linesman. I looked up the cost of admission to the Hayward Gallery. £9. Quite a lot by East Midlands standards. But I hadn't been to a major London art exhibition for a couple of years.

The South Bank was peopled by large green lizards and faceless queens. That is not a metaphor. These were living statues and I don't know what had drawn them to congregate by the river. They sparkled in the March sun. Passers by and tourists stopped to marvel.

I'm less familiar with the South Bank than I was and briefly forgot which concrete walkway would take me to the Hayward. I found myself at the bottom of a damp-streaked stairwell stacked with rubbish where two young people in the bright uniforms of catering staff clung together in an intense embrace. I doubt they noticed me. From there I saw the way I should have gone and reached the Hayward entrance.

I hadn't realised there were three exhibitions. Before reaching The Russian Linesman, I had to pass through a retrospective exhibition of Annette Messager. I wasn't familiar with her work and at first I wasn't sure I wanted to be.

Messager uses all kinds of ordinary materials including pictures cut from magazines, soft toys, gloves, pencils and, disturbingly, dead birds to create sculptures and installations. Her early work was evidently influenced by the Women's Movement and concerned with how women were seen. People who look back on the Women's Movement tend to assume it simply criticised men for seeing women in sexual ways. But that wasn't the main problem. The real difficulty was that a particular way of seeing women had become so dominant that it was hard to establish any other way of seeing. The male view of women was so dominant that it influenced all areas of life: work, education, culture - even the way women saw themselves.

Messager's early work challenged this. She created alternative selves, presenting herself as a trickster who played with how women were seen (as mothers, lovers, objects of desire) and how women might see men. This was exciting - even dangerous - in the 1970s but I couldn't feel the raw thrill of it any more. I wanted something that challenged me now.

I found the first challenge in Messager's treatment of childhood and motherhood. Dead sparrows, dressed as dolls, fastened to miniature carriages for outings, pinned down for punishment reminded me of the cruelties that are taken for granted in conventional children's games. An exhibit called (I think) Children with their Eyes Scratched Out suggested that women's relationship to children and motherhood was less easy than society supposes.

The bigger, later works combined beauty and horror. Soft toys were dismembered and hung up like the kind of votive offerings I've seen in Mediterranean churches. And three room-sized exhibits were in motion. In Gonflage/Degonflage (Inflation/Deflation), huge body parts - pastel-shaded and cushiony soft - did what the title suggested: inflated and deflated. That wasn't frightening but filled me with awe. Casino (a section from Messager's Pinocchio-themed installation for the Venice Biennale) represented the interior of a whale. Movements of cloth, changes of light and the gradual descent of small shapes from the ceiling created an entrancing experience that simulatneously warmed and disturbed. Finally an installation triggered by mad cow disease created the kind of scene Hieronymus Bosch might have dreamt up if all he had at hand was a selection of human-size soft toys.

Disturbed by Messager's work, I fled up the stairs to the exhibition that had brought me to the gallery.

At first glance, The Russian Linesman looked small, restrained and sane. There was a lack of brightly-coloured soft toys. Instead there were sculptures, videos, frames. Most of the frames contained pictures. But there were also door frames (two frames, one door) and frames that were fragile outlines of thread, creating borders for empty air.

Borders were one of the themes of the exhibition - those fragile lines that contain us. But related to borders was the bigger theme of uncertainty and lack of knowledge. Some of the works exhibited were caught in history. No-one could see the Joseph Beuys lithograph, in which the twin towers are renamed Cosmos and Damian (for two saints killed because they refused to profit from good deeds) without recalling the destruction of 9/11 and the destruction that followed. There was no picture of Philippe Petit's tightrope walk between the towers but there was film from a CNN helicopter showing the thin cord still linking the towers, recalling what came immediately before as well as what occurred years later.

The exhibition showed how easily the brain processes and organises contradictory information - how we impose order on what is disorderly and incoherent. The most obvious way this was shown was the stereoscopic photographs, in which two different two-dimensional pictures - one seen by each eye - together create, in the brain of the viewer, an impossibly sharp and three-dimensional image. The photographs themselves were disturbing: including Nazi propaganda pictures of Hitler and a border post between Germany and Russia. But there were also films shown in parallel: East German feature films screened beside recreations in the same street twenty years later. It was hard to work out what I was seeing.

Everywhere the exhibition disconcerted me. There was raw footage from the recent conflict in Sarajevo - footage discarded by the BBC. It was shown in silence so that I was suddenly aware of how news footage is edited, and shaped by the commentary offered. When I watched film of a corpse clumsily taken from a river, I just saw that the man was dead and didn't know what side he was on. Somehow I was even more upset by the group of happy young people, relaxed and laughing in a bullet-pocked cafe.

There were tricks everywhere - old-style trompe-d'oeuil and Thomas Demand's Poll 2001, a huge photograph of a facsimile of the desk at the Palm Beach count which determined the United States election. There are no people, there is no writing, there are no numbers and the photograph has the same hyperreality as the stereoscopic images.

I wandered into an impossible maze, stood in a sound installation, looked at the 17th century painting by an unknown artist. It showed a dead, unknown soldier - so unknown that no-one knows what war he fought in nor what side he supported - only that he is quite young and wears the clothes of a wealthy man.

Finally I approached Mark Wallinger's stainless steel TARDIS. From a distance it looked disappointingly solid but, as I approached it, the shining, mirrored sides seemed less substantial. I walked round it. At times I caught sight of myself in the shining steel. At others, it seemed on the point of shimmering into nothingness. I walked away and found myself listening to the voice of James Joyce, reading from Anna Livia Plurabelle, in which words and meanings blur to make language anew.

I was losing track of the world. Between them, two exhibitions had skewed my visions so much that I'd find my way home if I stayed much longer. After two and a half hours it was time to leave, while I still could. Perhaps I'd return later, I thought, and asked if that was allowed. But once out, I knew I couldn't go back. I needed to reflect on what I'd seen.

On the way out, I spent time in the Hayward's third exhibition, an installation by Ujino and the Rotators. 1950s furniture and domestic appliances performed a cross between noise music and 1970s disco sounds. It seemed sensible and I listened for a while, feeling I'd returned to a safe, normal world.

Billy and the bananas

On Friday evening I got to hear - and briefly talk to - Billy Bragg. On Saturday morning I encountered a large number of bananas. It was an unusual beginning to the weekend.

Billy Bragg was "in conversation." Tickets cost £3 and, as my son's a fan, I bought two. Then my son was ill with a virus. At the last minute, I asked a colleague. She turned out to be a fan and was delighted at the invitation - she'd been too late to get a ticket. "I'm going to marry Billy Bragg," she told me, as we headed to the event. "My husband says it's fine and he quite understands, so long as it's Billy."

I didn't have quite the same enthusiasm. I enjoy some of Billy Bragg's songs and was interested to hear him talk but half my reason for attending was to report back to my son.

Within two minutes' of Billy Bragg's arrival, I knew I'd made the right decision. He's quick-witted, intelligent, funny, modest and passionate about changing the world. One of the questioners from the audience asked why he didn't stand from parliament. Billy gave two answers. First, he's a singer, not a politicians. And second, he thinks politics is for ever, not just professional politicians.

I don't always agree with Billy. I can see why he thinks patriotism is important (and I'd like "Jerusalem" as an English national anthem) but I simply don't share his love of country. I love places and people but I'm not a patriot in that sense. Perhaps I felt an outsider to early in my life. And I think Billy is too optimistic - but that's a good fault. I wouldn't mind sharing his optimism.

What I share is his concern to involve people in political action and public debate. There are dangers in that - people won't always make the right decision - but sometimes the people are right and their leaders wrong. At least 1 in 50 people in Britain marched against the Iraq war and they were supported by the majority of the population. That opposition came out of public debate - but the leaders told us contemptuously that we were wrong, stupid and cowardly. On the question of Iraq, the majority was right and our leaders were disastrously, cruelly wrong.

Billy was on his way to a gig for the 25th anniversary of the miners' strike. He'd been involved in the campaign to support the miners. I wasn't. Living in London at the time, I thought Arthur Scargill should call a ballot - and that no government would ever close the coalmines on the scale Scargill suggested. I was wrong. I couldn't have done much to support the striking miners but I wish I'd done something.

On the day that Billy prepared for his gig, I too took political action - but it was more modestly expressed. I ate a banana.

It was part of an attempt to set a world banana-eating record (the most in a particular place in a 24-hour period) in support of Fair Trade. There were fairly-traded goods to try (mostly cake and chocolate) as well as games and information. Quite a few people were dressed as bananas.

I'm in support of Fair Trade. Rich countries have a bad record of exploiting poor people in poor countries, forcing them to work for low wages. Obviously we should pay decent wages rather than forcing farmers and labourers into near-destitution. But I'm uncomfortable about the way bigger companies have begun to use Fair Trade to lure shoppers away from small companies and shops. Cadbury is to start using Fair Trade cocoa in its chocolate bars, guaranteeing the minimum Fair Trade wage to its producers. But the world price of cocoa has risen so much in the recent market turmoil that it's not going to cost Cadbury anything just now.

The Fair Trade bananas which we ate for our attempt on the record were provided by Sainsbury's. Speakers thanked Sainsbury's for their generosity and the people in the square applauded. But I wonder what the small greengrocer on the edge of the square thought. Hallam's has been selling fish and vegetables for more than a century. I don't eat fish but the vegetables are good and often grown locally. They had a fine display of organic, fairly-traded bananas - but I wonder how many people bought from Hallam's when Sainsbury's was giving bananas away.

Iceland and the axis of evil

"The half wit does not know that gold
Makes apes of many men:
One is rich, one is poor,
There is no blame in that."

Those words, translated by W.H. Auden and Paul B. Taylor, come from 'Hávamál', also known as 'The Words of the High.' The earliest manuscript version comes from around the year 800 but the poem probably pre-dates Christianity in Iceland as the words are ascribed to the god Odin.

I've wanted to visit Iceland for many years - even before I saw pictures its mountains, plains and geysirs. The starting point was Auden and MacNeice's travel book, Letters from Iceland, which combines comedy with an underlying seriousness - Iceland is a place of sanity in a world rapidly going mad.

The Iceland Auden and MacNeice visited was a relatively poor country. Since I've wanted to go there, it has seemed too expensive. Every so often I leaf through a travel brochure or visit tourist websites and then the prices deter me. I don't want a weekend break - I want to see Iceland properly and learn enough of the language to get by, but that's far too expensive.

Britain's relationship with Iceland has been awkward. I remember the antagonisms of the Cod Wars, especially the third Cod War in which Iceland claimed that its unilateral extension to its coastal waters was an attempt to stop overfishing. Iceland may have had a point as the seas have certainly been overfished since then, but Icelanders were portrayed in the press as unpleasant, violent people trying to grab territory from poor British fishermen.

Later the image changed - the Icelanders were cool, sophisticated people wandering through trendy Reykjavik and swimming in the Blue Lagoon. I was never quite convinced by that. I had, at least, glanced at a copy of a novel by Halldór Laxness and the Icelandic people he described didn't seem quite like that.

I hadn't noticed the rise of Icelandic banks. I don't worry too much about where my money is held, so long as the bank operates efficiently. I know I ought to take more trouble about ethical accounts but I've been defeated by the effort entailed in switching to the Co-op, though I do have an ISA with Triodos. The safety of money seems a matter of luck and quite beyond my control - if it vanishes, I'll have to do without it.

The crash in Iceland took me by surprise and the ripples shook me. I hadn't realised Icelandic companies owned so much - or, it turned out, owned less than nothing. The assets seem to be cancelled out by liabilities and the government has stopped trading on the stock exchange and presided over the closure of the banks.

Poor Iceland - it seems that the country is in debt to the rest of the world. That debt amounts to £116,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. And Gordon Brown is threatening to sue for British assets.

I don't know how one country sues another. I don't know how Iceland is supposed to pay the rest of the world for the money lost by its banks. I can see that there's an argument about where the money should be, just as there was with Lehman Brothers. Lehman was accused of sending money out of Britain to privilege debtors in the United States - but Lehman is old news now.

I'm slightly shocked to find that the British government is using anti-terrorism legislation against Iceland. At 10.00 this morning, Gordon Brown enacted a Statutory Instrument under the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. It was called the Landsbanksi Freezing Order 2001 and it came into force 10 minutes later - one hour and fifty minutes before it was laid before Parliament. The Home Office website is clear on the purposes of the Act. It was introduced to "cut off terrorist funding" and improve security. It was even meant to aid European co-operation. And it was introduced in response to the shock of 9/11, without the detailed debate and analysis that would be usual.


It may be necessary to act quickly on funds. But we were told that this law, like so many others, was introduced to keep us safe from terrorists - to prevent another 9/11. Has Iceland suddenly joined the Axis of Evil?


I find I'm impressed by the behaviour of ordinary Icelanders, as reported on the BBC. And there's something moving about the behaviour of the Icelandic rock star, Bubbi Morthens, who convened and performed at a free concert opposite the parliament building, asking people to stand together. Bubbi Morthens has lost money too. He spoke of a "new reality" and the possibility of a "new dawn". The language is too vague for me to be sure about what he means - there could be implications I've missed. But this does seem a time for people to stand together and face reality - and to think about how society must change. I just hope that what emerges is a more just and kinder society.


Meanwhile, here's Bubbi Morthens performing in Copenhagen (mostly in English) in 2007.

Bartok in Nottingham

Loneliness drove me out and Bartok lured me. I'd been wondering about the concert all week. Bartok's second piano concerto was on the bill. I didn't know the work - my knowledge of classical music has been acquired by chance and is unsystematic - but I once spent weeks listening to recordings of the string quartets. I had a less happy experience a few years ago when, at the last minute, my son chose to accompany me to a performance of Bluebeard's Castle. I liked it but my son, who had assumed a performance about pirates was disappointed. A performance by the Hallé under Mark Elder was tempting - and I reckoned I could run to a £9 seat in the very back row. My son would be away and my daughter probably out. I could have a night out too. Still, I didn't book.

Halfway through this afternoon I rang up. Did they have any £9 tickets and could they keep me one. They wouldn't keep one for me, the lady at the box office replied, but I could just turn up and be pretty sure of getting in. I turned up.

"You could have a £6 ticket," the young man at the box office told me when I turned up. "You sit in the choir and can see the pianist's hands." This wasn't just a saving. I remembered how far away from the stage the back row was. After an enquiry about acoustics, I settled on the choir seat.

There was a free talk before the concert. It was fascinating about the history of Charles Hallé - or Karl Halle as he was originally known. Apparently he added the accent when teaching piano in Paris, so that the French would know how to pronounce his surname. He came to London when the rich families, whose daughters learnt piano, fled from political unrest. Then he planned to move to Bath, until German industrialists who had settled in Manchester called on him to improve the city's musical life. He started running recitals and concerts. Then he assembled an orchestra for the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition on 1857, and the twice-daily free performances were so popular that Hallé was called on to run a proper town orchestra - the first town orchestra in Britain.

Mark Elder told the story well - the story of an ordinary piano teacher (and extraordinary pianist) who, without prior experience, came to lead and manage a major orchestra. But the talk was less interesting on the pieces though when Mark Elder sang or hummed the music it came alive. He assumed that everyone was there for Richard Strauss's Don Juan and Dvorak's 6th Symphony. I wanted to say that they wouldn't have got me out of the house on a rainy evening. I wasn't the only one there for the Bartok either.

The 2nd piano concerto is a strange piece, inflected by its times. It begins with a kind of mad gaiety which seems strangely incomplete, perhaps because the violins don't play. The piano is wild - almost out of control. Then, in the second movement, the violins begin with an almost intolerable depth of grief which the piano then responds to in its own way. In the final movement there's a renewal of furious jollity with the piano and orchestra speaking to - and contradicting - each other. But the rush of notes seems to be in reaction to the melancholy of the second movement - it is frenetic rather than cheerful. It wasn't surprising to find from the programme note that the piece was first performed in Germany, a week before the Nazis took power. Under the Nazis, the Bartok's work was banned.

There was a stall in the foyer selling recordings of Andras Schiff playing Bartok for less than a fiver. I bought a recording of all the piano concertos - I plan to load them onto my MP3 players so that I can listen when travelling. But I've been previewing the 3rd piano concerto on the web. This is the opening - Andras Schiff again but some years ago, when Simon Rattle was conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.


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