Harold Pinter (10 October 1930 - 24 December 2008)

Art, Truth & Politics

In 1958 I wrote the following:

'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.'

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.

Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word or an image. The given word is often shortly followed by the image. I shall give two examples of two lines which came right out of the blue into my head, followed by an image, followed by me.

The plays are The Homecoming and Old Times. The first line of The Homecoming is 'What have you done with the scissors?' The first line of Old Times is 'Dark.'

In each case I had no further information.

In the first case someone was obviously looking for a pair of scissors and was demanding their whereabouts of someone else he suspected had probably stolen them. But I somehow knew that the person addressed didn't give a damn about the scissors or about the questioner either, for that matter.

'Dark' I took to be a description of someone's hair, the hair of a woman, and was the answer to a question. In each case I found myself compelled to pursue the matter. This happened visually, a very slow fade, through shadow into light.

I always start a play by calling the characters A, B and C.

In the play that became The Homecoming I saw a man enter a stark room and ask his question of a younger man sitting on an ugly sofa reading a racing paper. I somehow suspected that A was a father and that B was his son, but I had no proof. This was however confirmed a short time later when B (later to become Lenny) says to A (later to become Max), 'Dad, do you mind if I change the subject? I want to ask you something. The dinner we had before, what was the name of it? What do you call it? Why don't you buy a dog? You're a dog cook. Honest. You think you're cooking for a lot of dogs.' So since B calls A 'Dad' it seemed to me reasonable to assume that they were father and son. A was also clearly the cook and his cooking did not seem to be held in high regard. Did this mean that there was no mother? I didn't know. But, as I told myself at the time, our beginnings never know our ends.

'Dark.' A large window. Evening sky. A man, A (later to become Deeley), and a woman, B (later to become Kate), sitting with drinks. 'Fat or thin?' the man asks. Who are they talking about? But I then see, standing at the window, a woman, C (later to become Anna), in another condition of light, her back to them, her hair dark.

It's a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche. The author's position is an odd one. In a sense he is not welcomed by the characters. The characters resist him, they are not easy to live with, they are impossible to define. You certainly can't dictate to them. To a certain extent you play a never-ending game with them, cat and mouse, blind man's buff, hide and seek. But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort.

So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time.

But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot.

Political theatre presents an entirely different set of problems. Sermonising has to be avoided at all cost. Objectivity is essential. The characters must be allowed to breathe their own air. The author cannot confine and constrict them to satisfy his own taste or disposition or prejudice. He must be prepared to approach them from a variety of angles, from a full and uninhibited range of perspectives, take them by surprise, perhaps, occasionally, but nevertheless give them the freedom to go which way they will. This does not always work. And political satire, of course, adheres to none of these precepts, in fact does precisely the opposite, which is its proper function.

In my play The Birthday Party I think I allow a whole range of options to operate in a dense forest of possibility before finally focussing on an act of subjugation.

Mountain Language pretends to no such range of operation. It remains brutal, short and ugly. But the soldiers in the play do get some fun out of it. One sometimes forgets that torturers become easily bored. They need a bit of a laugh to keep their spirits up. This has been confirmed of course by the events at Abu Ghraib in Baghdad. Mountain Language lasts only 20 minutes, but it could go on for hour after hour, on and on and on, the same pattern repeated over and over again, on and on, hour after hour.

Ashes to Ashes, on the other hand, seems to me to be taking place under water. A drowning woman, her hand reaching up through the waves, dropping down out of sight, reaching for others, but finding nobody there, either above or under the water, finding only shadows, reflections, floating; the woman a lost figure in a drowning landscape, a woman unable to escape the doom that seemed to belong only to others.

But as they died, she must die too.

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past, by which I mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. I believe it is obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some kind of even limited scrutiny, which is all that time will allow here.

Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.

The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a potent example of America's view of its role in the world, both then and now.

I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s.

The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: 'Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity.'

Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravity. 'Father,' he said, 'let me tell you something. In war, innocent people always suffer.' There was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did not flinch.

Innocent people, indeed, always suffer.

Finally somebody said: 'But in this case "innocent people" were the victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidised by your government, one among many. If Congress allows the Contras more money further atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the case? Is your government not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign state?'

Seitz was imperturbable. 'I don't agree that the facts as presented support your assertions,' he said.

As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he enjoyed my plays. I did not reply.

I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the following statement: 'The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.'

The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.

The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilised. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.

The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighbouring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.

I spoke earlier about 'a tapestry of lies' which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a 'totalitarian dungeon'. This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships.

Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. 'Democracy' had prevailed.

But this 'policy' was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.

The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.'

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.

The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.

What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days - conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the 'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally - a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anaesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticise our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You're either with us or against us. So Blair shuts up.

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading - as a last resort - all other justifications having failed to justify themselves - as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'.

How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if they're interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London.

Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don't exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. 'We don't do body counts,' said the American general Tommy Franks.

Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. 'A grateful child,' said the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the only survivor. 'When do I get my arms back?' he asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn't holding him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when you're making a sincere speech on television.

The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm's way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves.

Here is an extract from a poem by Pablo Neruda, 'I'm Explaining a Few Things':

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate.

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives.

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land.

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets!*

Let me make it quite clear that in quoting from Neruda's poem I am in no way comparing Republican Spain to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. I quote Neruda because nowhere in contemporary poetry have I read such a powerful visceral description of the bombing of civilians.

I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.

The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they got there but they are there all right.

The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity - the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons - is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.

Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government's actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force - yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.

I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man's man.

'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'

A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection - unless you lie - in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.

I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I shall now quote a poem of my own called 'Death'.

Where was the dead body found?
Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?

Who was the dead body?

Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?

Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?

Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?

What made you declare the dead body dead?
Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the dead body was dead?

Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror - for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man.

---

* Extract from "I'm Explaining a Few Things" translated by Nathaniel Tarn, from Pablo Neruda:Selected Poems, published by Jonathan Cape, London 1970. Used by permission of The Random House Group Limited.

The above is Harold Pinter's 2005 Nobel acceptance speech

The Tiger Lillies

So you grew up thinking Alice Cooper was extreme…You were convinced that Marilyn Manson was the ultimate Goth horror provocateur. Surely, you said, nobody could top Mayhem, Gorgoroth and their other Norwegian compadres in blasphemous and obscene lyrics and behavior. Well, think again. For here come the …Tiger Lillies.

Martyn Jacques, an accordion wielding "Tom Waits on helium" British countertenor, spent almost 8 years of his life in a brothel perfecting his piercing and faultless falsetto. Adrian Huge prefers to play drums with toy babies instead of sticks. As for former session musician Adrian Stout on double-bass and/or musical saw, if you look in his bio details you will find that "…This once serious musician has since then found himself dancing in leider hosen, making love to inflatable sheep and dressing as a cheap prostitute."

Shockheaded Peter was the start and from then on their creativity has been phenomenal. Theme albums and performances, circus acts and punk operas, gypsy cabarets and strange collaborations. Take for example their collaboration with the Cronos quartet on the brilliant 2003 album "The Gorey End", homage to writer and illustrator Edward Gorey. Or the DVD only 2006 "Mountains of Madness" collaboration with Alexander Hacke (Einstürzende Neubauten) on the works of H.P.Lovecraft.

For 24 years they have been banging in the nails and they have thrived in the controversy surrounding their songs and performances. Unclassifiable and a marketing nightmare, the Tiger Lillies have never played it safe. In the words of Martyn Jacques: "People come up to us in airports and say ‘Oh, you’re in a band’ and they say ‘What sort of music do you make?’ and the three of us sort of look at each other. ‘What should we say today?’ We usually say ’satanic folk,’ that usually scares them away."

If you are not yet familiar with this band you deserve to …sleep with the fishes.

When the Grosvenor school becomes the movement

Here come the 30s. And here comes London as you've never seen it before. A city of speed, of rhythm and machine patterned life. Welcome to the repetitive majesty and urban dynamism of London encapsulated in 4 colors. It all started with Claude Flight who was a teacher at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in the late twenties. Together with his pupils, who included Cyril Power, Lill Tschudi, Eileen Mayo and Sybil Andrews, he transposed Marinetti's Italian futurism (without subscribing to the Italian movement's military undertones) to its English equivalent.

A new age was dawning and there was a necessity to artistically express the accelerated pace of modern life as exemplified by the dynamism of machines and the sheer exhilaration of automated speed and motion. A simple medium, cheap to produce and therefore more accessible to the general public, was chosen. The linocut. With themes taken from everyday city life such as transport, architecture, leisure and sports, the linocuts of the Grosvenor school artists are vivid and exciting examples of how graphically one can capture the modernity element of an evolving society.

They were representative of the times but even today they stand as perfectly valid depictions of a world in constant motion. In fact, when one mentions the Grosvenor School of Modern Art today, he does not only refer to the school as such but to the movement.

Jiro Taniguchi's "The Walking Man"

Don't expect your usual manga comic book characters here. There is no violence, no passion, no extreme expressions, no movement, and no action. Nothing ever happens in "The Walking Man". Or rather, everything happens. According to Jiro Taniguchi, life is in the details. Behind the seemingly mundane course of everyday existence lie the surprise discovery of beauty and the re-invention of the senses. The Walking Man is somebody who has managed to look at things from a distance. Taking in the whole picture, he observes, experiences and reflects on the extraordinary world of the ordinary.

In fact the book shows that nothing is usual or routine. The only thing that can become routine is the perception that we have of our surroundings and ultimately of our life. It's our perceptions that are distorted and it's on these false perceptions that we construct our lives. The Walking man is present and absent at the same time, managing to distil everything into few essential things that remain, that help him to arrive to a certain demystification and the so called simplicity of the wise. "Life is what happens to you when you're busy doing other things" John Lennon.

On the finacial crisis

"…Well, it's too late. And the owner men explained the workings and the thinkings of the monster that was stronger than they were. A man can hold land if he can just eat and pay taxes; he can do that. Yes, he can do that until his crops fail one day and he has to borrow money from the bank.

But - you see, a bank or a company can't do that, because those creatures don't breathe air, don't eat side-meat. They breathe profits; they eat the interest on money. If they don't get it, they die the way you die without air, without side-meat. It is a sad thing, but it is so. It is just so.

The squatting men raised their eyes to understand. Can't we just hang on? Maybe the next year will be a good year. God knows how much cotton next year. And with all the wars-God knows what price cotton will bring. Don't they make explosives out of cotton? And uniforms? Get enough wars and cotton'll hit the ceiling. Next year, maybe. They looked up questioningly.

We can't depend on it. The bank- the monster has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size…"

Extract from "The Grapes of Wrath", a novel written by John Steinbeck, published in 1939.

On the train to Pompei

An old refreshments seller walks into the carriage. He is overweight and his upper teeth are missing. The sweat trickles down his forehead and creates imaginary islands of sweat on his brown shirt. With a tired expression he lets down the basket with the cold drinks and leans slightly on one of the seats. He wipes his forehead, and with his crooked mouth gaping, he breathes heavily. The eyes, with the sagging eyelids, reflect his pain and exhaustion. It's hot today and the refreshments are heavy to carry. He rests for a few seconds and then briefly looks around. Nobody seems to feel as thirsty as he feels right now. But he must go on. The drinks are getting warm. He has to cover a whole train and he's only in the second carriage.

The television of our lives

In the sixties, the counterculture phrase "Turn on, Tune in, Drop Out" coined by the High Priest of LSD, Timothy Leary, was in fact saying to "Get stoned, abandon all constructive activity" and the rest would follow.

Today LSD actually stands for Liquid Screen Display and we have in a perverted way finally achieved Timothy Leary's wish. We turn on the television set, tune into a soap opera, the news, a film, a reality show and then we drop out. In 1974 Gil Scott -Heron already made the link between the power of television and what could be understood as the ultimate expression of reality, revolution. Do you remember this…?

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
By Gil Scott-Heron

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag
and skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able to predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back
after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, the tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

But in reality the revolution was televised all along. The revolutionaries of the sixties and seventies became the stockbrokers of the 80's and all the marches and demonstrations were put on VHS and kept for viewing on special family occasions. Ideologies were put in a can and served cold. And then we realized that it was television that was live and not the revolution. Slowly but surely we had been hypnotized, driven to substitute our reality for the fabricated reality of television. We were in fact little by little poisoned. Murdered by television. Like in the title of the bad 1935 B movie starring Bela Lugosi. Then again, even in this film, what you see is not what you get. In the film nobody is murdered by television. A murder actually takes place on television. Live. It's that subtle and we've had many re-runs since then…

Real and imaginary magazine covers

Das Eckhaus

Das Eckhaus. The corner house. Ludwig Meidner painted the Villa Kochmann in Dresden in 1913. The house, as if made of cards, gives the viewer the impression that it's moving, that it's alive.Bathed in a Van Gogh green light and blue shadows of a cloudy afternoon, the house stretches and swells the contorted lines of its façade like wrinkles on an old face. Through the windows, behind the eyelid curtains, there is a reflected darkness of private space and hidden lives. The cellar windows transform into gaping mouths with a mouldy breath exchanging vows with the dark green shadows of the garden overgrowth creeping in from the sides. Vows that will eventually be broken.

The owners of the house seem to have belonged to the family of Franz Kochmann who later on, in the twenties, established a photographic equipment company in Dresden manufacturing folder-cameras, such as the Enolde in 1924 and the Korelle in 1930. However one of Kochmann's most innovating designs was the Reflex Korelle which was launched in 1934-35. In 1938, Franz Kochmann decided to emigrate and his company was totally destroyed during the bombing of Dresden in 1945. Nothing was ever heard of him.

It is not clear who lived in the villa Kochmann from 1938 to 1945. One could imagine a forgotten butler, like Firs in the play "The Cherry Orchard" by Anton Chechov, taking care of the house, keeping things in minimal order while awaiting the return of the Master of das Eckhaus who would never return.

The villa Kochmann did not survive the bombing of Dresden which took place between the 13th and 15th of February 1945 and destroyed 90% of the baroque capital of the German state of Saxony. But das Eckhaus of 1913 still lives on in the Meidner painting. In the painting it is only late afternoon…

Peter Lorre, the scene stealer

It was 1924-1925. Peter Lorre in his early years on the stage had very quickly earned the reputation of a scene stealer. Hilde Wall, the later wife of Max Ophüls, remembered sharing the stage with Peter Lorre who in that particular performance played the insignificant role of a servant. His little bit was to come in and announce that Frau Schultz was here to see her. That's all he had to do, just come in, say those words and go out. Lorre came in and sat down. "Of course, you know Frau Schultz," he said. "Yes, of course I know her," Wall said, simply trying to follow along. Lorre pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and looked up. "She's been here quite a few times lately, hasn't she?" "Yes, of course, she's a friend of mine." Lorre drew long drafts, puffing the moment into something greater, stubbed out his cigarette, and then got up. "Well, Frau Schultz is here to see you." he said, finally delivering his one and only line. On that, he exited and the audience applauded.

Taken from the newly published biography of Peter Lorre "The Lost One" by Stephen D. Youngkin.

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

It is called “The arrival” and you could call it a silent movie graphic novel. I guess you could also call it a comic but that would be quite insufficient a characterization considering the artistic achievement of Shaun Tan’s work. Immigration, the voyage from the familiar to the foreign and the unknown. What you leave behind and what you carry with you. A family torn apart and reunited.

The photorealistic drawing precision of the known, devoid of any identification, is in constant interaction with the imaginative plane of the new and the strange. They playfully mix into landscapes of the mind where history and the future blend effortlessly and everyday objects are enveloped with the magical aura of an archetype nostalgia and an imprecise shape of things to come. If nevertheless, this is a measure of the things to come from Shaun Tan, then we are in for some pleasant surprises in the future.

From Brussels with Love

Compiling music is an art. The vast majority of rock and pop music compilations fall normally under the category of dispensable product. Leaving aside the financial and legal constraints of bringing together licenced songs owned by diverse record companies, people who normally put together compilations do so not for the love of music but mainly for commercial reasons. In most cases it is quite clear that the "compiler" has a very superficial knowledge of the music genre he/she is trying to represent objectively in 60 to 70 minutes. Most compilations use the commercial formula of including two, three well known songs and the rest filler with no particular attention given to the order of the songs as they are played. People are attracted by the decoy songs and buy the album.

In the time of the vinyl and the cassette, you were more likely to listen to an album from start to finish simply because to change from song to song meant to either get up, lift and place the needle or go through the hassle of pressing the forward wind button on the cassette deck. Today with the automatic zapping of music offered by the CD, the order of the songs is not important anymore. Concept albums are a thing of the past. But I think there are things that we have lost in the technological fire…

The order of the songs in a compilation is an essential element in defining the journey, the mood, the importance, the point or the link you are trying to make. You see, to compile is to make a statement. A song is also defined by its neighbouring songs. You can kill a good song and you can also "create" a masterpiece out of a mediocre song by placing it after a certain type of music that happens to be different.

And then the main mistake people make when compiling songs is that they don't think of the compilation as something more than a simple collection of individual tunes or songs. But the real art of compiling music is actually creating something more than the simple addition or collection of its parts/tracks. The fact that I like all the tracks compiled does not make a good compilation. Each track could be placed to lead effortlessly to the next one or the succession could bring the element of surprise without cancelling the flow. Does it all sound Greek to you?

Here is what I mean…

"From Brussels With Love" was an eclectic compilation released in an initial edition of 1000 copies on 20 November 1980. At the time it took the form of a deluxe cassette together with a book in a plastic wallet. It featured 22 exclusive tracks from the front rank of the international avant-garde and new wave, as well as several artists from the feted Factory Records stable in Manchester and Belgian label "Les Disques du Crepuscule". The collaboration between the two labels started after the organisation of the Joy Division concerts at Plan K venue in Brussels (21 rue de Manchester) on 16 October 1979 and 17 January 1980, and was cemented when A Certain Ratio, Durutti Column and Section 25 performed at Plan K on 26 April. In addition, Brussels band The Names joined the Factory roster.

Besides Factory, another crucial influence on From Brussels With Love was radio producer and new music composer Wim Mertens, whose book American Minimal Music had just been published by Kahn & Averill. The featured interview with Brian Eno had been recorded by Wim in New York in June 1979, as was the recording by Phill Niblock. It's therefore hardly surprising that Michael Nyman and Gavin Bryars also agreed to contribute tracks. Mertens would make his own debut on Crepuscule (initially as Soft Verdict) the following year. Eno's Obscure label was another key influence on early Crepuscule.

The compilation which included interviews with Brian Eno and Jeanne Moreau was purposefully international in scope, with France (Radio Romance), Belgium (The Names), Germany (Der Plan) and even Scotland (Richard Jobson) all represented, as well as the more familiar British and American contingents. The design, too, was seductively Continental, with text printed in a variety of languages, and copious line/cartoon illustrations by Jean-Francois Octave which reflected the Belgian and French obsession with bande dessinee.

The remastered CD (2006) version of the tape features all tracks included on the 1980 cassette version, with the exception of Felch (live) by A Certain Ratio. These are:

CD tracklist:

John Foxx - A Jingle *1
Thomas Dolby - Airwaves
Repetition - Stranger
Harold Budd - Children On The Hill
Durutti Column - Sleep Will Come
Martin Hannett - The Music Room
The Names - Cat
Michael Nyman - A Walk Through H
Brian Eno - Interview
Phill Niblock - A Third Trombone
Jeanne Moreau - Interview
Richard Jobson - Armoury Show
Bill Nelson - The Shadow Garden
Durutti Column - Piece For An Ideal
Kevin Hewick & New Order - Haystack
Radio Romance - Etrange Affinite
Gavin Bryars - White's Ss
Der Plan - Meine Freunde
B.C. Gilbert & Graham Lewis - Twist Up
John Foxx - A Jingle *2

Source: Read the article of James Nice at http://brainwashed.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5881&Itemid=90

Simon Leys

Simon Leys, de son vrai nom Pierre Ryckmans, né le 28 septembre 1935 à Bruxelles, est un écrivain, essayiste, critique littéraire et sinologue belge, de langue française et anglaise. Le livre "Le bonheur des petits poissons" contient une anthologie de observations, des aphorismes, des idées et des chroniques que Simon Leys a publié dans divers magazines. C'est un livre à ne pas manquer.

Voici un extrait:

[…Ce que je voulais souligner est simplement ceci: notre équilibre intérieur est toujours précaire et menacé, car nous sommes constamment en butte aux épreuves et agressions de la réalité quotidienne; l'issue des luttes de l'existence demeure à jamais incertaine, et finalement c'est peut-être un personnage de Mario Vargas Llosa qui a donné la meilleure description de notre commune condition: "La vie est une tornade de merde, dans laquelle l'art est notre seul parapluie."]

The Night of the Hunter

"…
- Ah, little lad, you're staring at my fingers. Would you like me to tell you the little story of Right-hand, Left-hand? The story of good and evil.

H-A-T-E.

It was with this left hand that old Brother Cain struck the blow that laid his brother low.

L-O-V-E.

See these fingers, dear hearts? They has veins that run straight to the soul of man. The right hand, friends. The hand of love. Now watch and I'll show you the story of life.

These fingers is always a-warring and a-tugging, one agin t'other.
Now watch 'em. Old Brother Left-hand. Left-hand hates a-fighting. And it looks like Love's a goner.

But wait a minute!

Hot dog! Love's a-winning. Yes, sirree. It's Love that won.
And old Left-hand Hate is down for the count.…"

In 1955 the film "Night of the Hunter" hit the cinema screens in the United States. It was to be the only film in which Charles Laughton would stand behind the camera as a director and not in front of the camera as an actor. Robert Mitchum was perfectly cast in the role of the sinister "Reverend" Harry Powell.

In many films Mitchum comes across as someone difficult to decipher. You're not sure if he is a flawed good guy or a sympathetic bad guy. In "Night of the Hunter" this ambiguity is still there, at least in the beginning of the film. But something is seriously wrong. Appearances seem completely deceptive and as the story unfolds you feel trapped in this black and white idyllic tale that transforms into a nightmare. The film is remarkable because it has this certain dream feel quality to it. The expressionistic angles, the light and the studio confined artificiality of the scenes, contribute to create archetype landscapes and situations such as those found in some sinister fairytale which had scared us when we were young and innocent.

The glorious black and white photography was the work of Stanley Cortez who had shot Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942 and later was responsible for the cinematography of Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor.

When the film came out it left critics puzzled and was completely ignored by the public. Today, "Night of the Hunter" is rightly acknowledged as one of the masterpieces of 50s American cinema. So if its not entirely clear in your mind, press play and let Robert Mitchum explain to you the difference between Ying and Yang. Love and hate. Good film, bad film.

Nijinsky's last jump

VASLAV NIJINSKY, the world-renowned dancer and choreographer of the Ballets Russes, suffered a nervous breakdown in 1919 and his career effectively ended. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and taken to Switzerland by his wife. He was to spend the rest of his life in and out of psychiatric hospitals and asylums. By the late 40s his mental and physical condition had worsened and he was reduced to a robot like state as if in a living coma. In an effort to revive him, his wife, Romola, decided to try one last thing that she thought could breathe some life in him. With the consent of psychiatrist Eugene Bleuler, she brought to the asylum a dancer dressed exactly like Nijinsky was dressed when he performed his famous ballet for "L'après-midi d'un faune" (The Afternoon of a Faun). The idea was that this dancer would re-enact in front of a seated Nijinsky the exact choreography of the master to help him maybe remember. The year was 1945.

Nijinsky had danced for the last time on the evening of Jan. 19, 1919. That same afternoon he also had began writing his famous diary. His last public performance, was a disturbing solo recital, ''Marriage With God,'' at a hotel in St. Moritz, Switzerland, where he and his family had taken up wartime residence. For the next 45 days, sometimes all night, the 29-year-old Nijinsky wrote feverishly in four leather-bound school exercise books. He stopped abruptly on March 4, when his wife, Romola, and her family, took him to Zurich to see the noted psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler. The verdict: schizophrenia, a diagnostic term Bleuler had recently coined.

Fast forward, 26 years later. Nijinsky is brought into a large room of the asylum and is seated on a chair. He is wearing a suit with the jacket buttoned. Dr Bleuler, Romola and a photographer are also present. The door opens and the dancer dressed as Nijinsky dances in front of the man himself. Nijinsky stares. He turns his head. He smiles. He stares again intensely at the dancer…and then…he jumps in the air. It is a glorious jump for which Nijinsky was famous. And the camera shutter clicks. And he is captured as if floating in the air with his jacket buttoned. Immediately after, he resumes his position sitting on his chair and darkness descends once again to envelope his mind forever. But for that fleeting moment in time the power of art and his explosive talent managed to brake the confining walls of madness. Darkness was illuminated for an instance. Alas, the light flickered and was extinguished again.

This incredible moment of magic is captured on a black and white photograph which now belongs in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Nijinsky died of renal failure on April 8, 1950, in London.

It all started with the damn firecracker

Imagine the very first meeting of the human race with beings from outer space. And let us suppose that the extraterrestrials are fluent in English. What would they discuss? In Ed Wood's sublimely bad B movie "Plan 9 from outer space", we get a taste of this first encounter of humanity with a civilisation from outer space.

In the following scene the extraterrestrial EROS who has come all the way to earth to tell us that we are stupid, has to provide some more explanations after being confronted by two humans…He goes on to explain the sinister role of the firecracker…

"…JEFF
You fiend!

EROS
I? A fiend? I am a soldier of our planet! I? A fiend? We did not come here as enemies. We came only with friendly intentions. To talk. To ask your aid.

COL. EDWARDS
Our aid?

EROS
Yes. Your aid for the whole universe. But your governments of Earth refused even to accept our existence. Even though you've seen us, heard our messages, you still refused to accept us.

COL. EDWARDS
Why is it so important that you want to contact the governments of our Earth?

EROS
Because of death. Because all you of Earth are idiots!

JEFF
Now you just hold on, Buster.

EROS
No you hold on. First was your firecracker, a harmless explosive. Then your hand grenade. They began to kill your own people a few at a time. Then the bomb, then a larger bomb. Many people are killed at one time. Then your scientists stumbled upon the atom bomb. Split the atom. Then the hydrogen bomb, where you actually explode the air itself. Now you want to bring on the destruction of the entire universe, served by our sun. The only explosion left is the solaronite."

COL. EDWARDS
Why there's no such thing.

EROS
Perhaps to you. But we've known it for centuries. Your scientists will stumble upon it as they have all the others. But the juvenile minds you possess will not comprehend its strength, until it's too late.

COL. EDWARDS
You're way above our heads.

EROS
The solaronite is a way to explode the actual particles of sunlight.

COL. EDWARDS
Why that's impossible.

EROS
Even now, your scientists are working on a way to harness the sun's rays. The rays of sunlight are minute particles. Is it so far from your imagination they cannot do as I have suggested?

COL. EDWARDS
Why a particle of sunlight can't even be seen or measured.

EROS
Can you see or measure an atom? Yet you can explode one. A ray of sunlight is made up many atoms.

JEFF
So what if we do developed this solaronite bomb? We'd be even a stronger nation than now.

EROS
Stronger. You see? You see? Your stupid minds...stupid! Stupid!!

JEFF
That's all I'm taking from you!

[JEFF LEAPS AT EROS]…

In the punch up that ensued, EROS found out that the human fist is a weapon far superior to the solaronite bomb. It was time to board on to the string pulled flying saucers and head back home. As Bela Lugosi said in another Ed Wood masterpiece: "Pull tha strink, pull tha strink".

Karen Dalton's "Ribbon Bow"

"Ribbon Bow" is a song that can be found in Karen Dalton's first album which was called "It's So Hard To Tell Who's Going To Love You The Best". I first heard of Karen Dalton from my good friend John Sortix. He made me listen to her second album "In my own time" and in particular the song "Something on your mind". You cannot resist Karen Dalton. She has a capacity to deconstruct a song until it is being held up only by a few threads. And she then takes these few threads and weaves a completely new emotional palette. Few singers can achieve the emotional commitment that she puts in every interpretation. Tim Buckley, Billy Holiday, Flery Dantonaki, Nick Drake and Tim Hardin come to mind.

The song "Ribbon bow" is a traditional folk song written sometime in the 30s by Huey Prince and Louis C Singer. It is about the aching plaint of a poor country girl who lacks the alluring fineries of her big-city rivals. But with Karen Dalton it becomes a brooding song of ethereal beauty and longing. All traditional elements of the song have been shed in favor of a style that resembles a kind of transparent musical tapestry. A summing up. The crystal quality of the guitar parts interacting with the haunting voice achieve a fragile balance that disarms the listener. Karen Dalton uses her voice as an instrument. It is devoid of embellishments such as the vibrato of Billy Holiday even though the phrasing is quite similar. She lived a troubled life and never pursued commercial success, fame or recognition. Even without a ribbon bow, her talent still managed to shine through in the end.