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11:55 am, Monday 30th January 2012
Evan Jones (1907-69) Coronary care unit (CCU), St Thomas' Hospital, London

Barbara Burch in memoriam

__Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise women at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good women, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild women who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave women, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my mother, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

by Dylan Thomas
 (with slight modifications)

_Over a hundred years ago H.G. Wells imagined "a modern substitute for books" in his futuristic novel The Sleeper Awakes (1899/1910).

After downloading this fascinating novel for free from Project Gutenberg I added it to my newly acquired Sony eBook Reader PRS-T1 using the open source Calibre programme. And, stylus in hand, I found myself doodling Wells' prophetic words on the touchscreen.

Goodness me, what a joy and a privilege it is to live in an affluent part of the world at the dawn of the 21st century...

_ Earlier today I decided to brave the crowds in order to experience Turner, Monet, Twombly at Sweden's Moderna Museet.

As so often happens at these so-called "blockbuster exhibitions", the main things on show were the backs of people's heads. This was exacerbated by partition walls inserted into the large gallery space. They made it feel like we were sheep being rounded up into our artful pens.

Acting like an art-loving Luke Skywalker in the garbage compactor, I squeezed through a narrow gap at the end of one angled partition. Frantically pushing aside the forest of infrared audio-guides being wielded like lightsabers, I reached a relatively unpopulated scrap of wooden flooring.

Despite this comparative lull in proceedings I began toying seriously with the idea of making an early exit. The only reason I decided to stay was thanks to the sharp eyes and keen imagination of a girl who must have been about six or seven years old.

She'd clearly been giving her mother an impromptu guided tour because I overheard a slightly frazzled voice asking, "Where exactly is the rabbit?" Following the line of a small finger, my eyes settled on the top left hand corner of a large canvas: "It's up there!"

Remarkably, all this eagle-eyed connoisseur got as a reward for her investigative work was a less than convinced, "Oh, um, yes..."

And with that, they were gone, leaving me alone with the rabbit. Because it really was a rabbit. Grown-up art historians like the exhibition's curator, Jeremy Lewison would no doubt mistake it for the letter "V" at the start of the word "Victory" in Cy Twombly's unhelpfully labelled work, Untitled (1992, private collection, courtesy Thomas Ammann Fine Art AG, Zurich).

Lewison is incapable of seeing rabbits on account of being awed by "the immensity of the sky" and the fact that the canvas features scribbled quotations from the likes of Rilke and Baudelaire. This, he urges, "links [Twombly's] work to feelings of man's insignificance before the infinite, his vulnerability and intoxication."(1)

This is great big piles of mystification.(2) I can no more share Lewison's wordy nonsense than I can his insistence that there is a "small boat bobbing on the sea" of Twombly's Untitled.(3)

And, anyway, what sort of magician is Jeremy Lewison if he can't even pull a rabbit out of a Twombly?

So, next time you find yourself at a blockbuster, ignore all the artspeak mystification and follow a child's logic. Because "sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish".(4) Or, if you're very lucky, a Twombly that's rabbitish.

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Notes

(1) Jeremy Lewison, Turner Monet Twombly: Later Paintings, Tate, 2012, p. 59.
(2) Stuart Burch, "Pistoletto piss-take", 17/09/2011, accessed 05/01/2011 at, http://www.stuartburch.com/1/post/2011/9/pistoletto-piss-take.html.
(3) Lewison, 2012, p. 59.
(4) Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 4.14, line 2.

_ Rymdinvasion i Lappland is most unlikely to feature in anyone's list of classic movies. However, once watched, it is extremely difficult to forget. Indeed, this Super 8 science fiction epic dating from 1959 really has to be seen to be believed.

Despite being a joint Swedish / American production the movie was never actually released in the United States. Instead, a newly shot, alternative version entitled Invasion of the Animal People was unleashed on the American public in 1962. Fortunately my fellow Britons were allowed to experience the original, rechristened as Terror in the Midnight Sun.

This is an apposite title for a film set in the snowy wastes of northern Sweden. This world has been turned upside down by the arrival of a spaceship whose crew includes a band of humanoid telepaths and a very hirsute escaped giant. The latter runs amok, much to the consternation of a figure skating American and her uncle plus the latter's scientific colleagues (whose number includes that heart throb of the geological community, the dashing and dangerous Erik Engström). They, together with a band of torch-wielding Sami, see off the extraterrestrial Yeti and his dome-headed masters.

See? I said it was an unforgettable film.

Terror in the Midnight Sun refers not only to the space visitors. It also alludes to the film's principal song, "Midnight Sun Lament". This terrifying acoustic experience kidnaps the music of that famous folk melody, "Ack, Värmeland du sköna" and sets it to new words by Gustaf Unger and Frederick Herbert. The relocation of this song from the county of Värmland in mid-Sweden to Lappland, plus the urban scenes of Stockholm with which the film begins, underscores the extent to which Rymdinvasion i Lappland presents a wildly inventive interpretation of "the North".

It strikes me, therefore, that this unique landmark of cinematic history is a perfect candidate for bringing to a close the Nordic Spaces project in which I have participated for the past four years. This multinational, multidisciplinary exploration of all things "Nordic" could find no more fitting denouement than an icicled, grizzly monster going up in smoke in the company of locals, visiting scientists and a troupe of guests from far further afield.

_________
Supplemental
04/01/2012

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963):

    Man has lived only too frequently on his planet almost like a parasite living upon the host it infests.
    And whereas many parasites are sensible enough not to destroy their host
    (as, after all, if they kill their host, they destroy themselves)
    man, instead, is not one of the sensible parasites.
    So, he has lived at the expense of his host, to which he caused its absolute ruin.

    Cited in PAN, No.40, August 2011, p.2

At the end of last year I posted the following, facetious tweet:

    Today marks exactly X year(s) since
    something crucial happened.
    It is very important that we remember
    this vitally significant anniversary.

My apparently inane twittering represented a conscious attempt to poke fun at our collective obsessions with the past. It feels as if every chronological coincidence is pounced upon as an excuse for commemorating something that simply must be recalled.

Proof of this will be in abundant supply in 2012. A cavalcade of all things Dickensian will mark the fact that one of England's greatest writers happened to be born exactly 200 years ago. Charles Dickens will be deployed as a cultural flagbearer during the London Olympics. Yet how members of the sporting fraternity will actually pick up a book by Dickens is far from certain...

Moreover, before we get carried away with what is remembered, it's always a good idea to ferret out those things that have been conveniently forgotten or suppressed. And what better day on which to consider the overlooked than 1st January 2012? This is because exactly ten years ago something truly momentous happened. But no matter how hard you listen, you'll hear no fanfare or fireworks. There are no pageants or celebratory get-togethers. No back-slapping congratulations and high-spirited toasts.

Why?

Because the birthday to which I refer is a mournful affair. A decade after its birth this prematurely aged ten-year-old is adrift: "floating without steering or mooring; drifting... [W]ithout purpose; aimless... off course."(1)

Adrift. There could be no better word to describe the Euro. This shiny new currency was introduced shortly after midnight on 1st January 2002. As the clock struck midnight "celebratory fireworks exploded above the European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt. The Pont Neuf in Paris was lit up in European Union blue, with 12 rays of light to symbolise the 12 nations circulating the euro."(2)

The skies are dark a decade hence. Our politicians don't have time to get nostalgic about the past. They are too busy fretting about the future.

The tenth anniversary of the Euro is adrift. How terribly appropriate.

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Notes

(1) Collins Dictionary, London & Glasgow, 1987, p.16.
(2) Nicholas Kulish, "To be franc, after 10 years the euro has failed to make its mark", 02/01/2012, Sydney Morning Herald, accessed 01/01/2012 at, http://www.smh.com.au/world/to-be-franc-after-10-years-the-euro-has-failed-to-make-its-mark-20120101-1ph5x.html.